Thursday, March 28, AD 2024 3:08pm

Another Perspective on the Helsinki Meeting

Like Donald McCleary, I was much distressed by Trump’s press conference remarks after the Helsinki conference with Putin.  After reading David Goldman’s (“Spengler”) article in PJ Media, I wonder whether Trump may be more subtle and knowledgeable than I had thought (and, let me add, I was a Never Trumper until that final moment in the voting booth).   What Goldman is saying, I believe, is that US foreign policy with respect to Russia has gone awry over the last 20 years.   And he speaks as a former neo-con.

“President Trump offended the entire political spectrum with a tweet this morning blaming the U.S. for poor relations with Russia. “Our relationship with Russia has NEVER been worse thanks to many years of U.S. foolishness and stupidity,” the president said, and he is entirely correct. By this I do not mean to say that Russia is a beneficent actor in world affairs or that President Putin is an admirable world leader. Nonetheless, the president displayed both perspicacity and political courage when he pointed the finger at the United States for mismanaging the relationship with Russia.

Full disclosure: I was a card-carrying member of the neoconservative cabal that planned to bring Western-style democracy and free markets to Russia after the fall of Communism. As chief economist for the supply-side consulting firm Polyconomics, I got an appointment as an adviser to Boris Yeltsin’s finance ministry and made several trips to Moscow. Of course, the finance ministry really was a family office for Yeltsin’s oligarch friends, who were too busy stealing Russia’s economy to listen to advice. The experience cured me of the neoconservative delusion that democracy and free markets are the natural order of things.

Unfortunately, the delusion that the United States would remake Russia in its own image persisted through the Bush and Obama administrations. I have no reason to doubt the allegations that a dozen Russian intelligence officers meddled in the U.S. elections of 2016, but this was equivalent of a fraternity prank compared to America’s longstanding efforts to intervene in Russian politics.

The United States supported the 2014 Maidan uprising in Ukraine and the overthrow of the Yanukovych government in the hope of repeating the exercise in Moscow sometime later. Then-Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland pulled whatever strings America had to replace the feckless and corrupt Victor Yanukovych with a government hostile to the Kremlin. She didn’t say it in so many words, but she hoped the Ukraine coup would lead to the overthrow of Vladimir Putin. Evidently Nuland and her boss, Hillary Clinton, thought that the Ukraine coup would deprive Russia of its Black Sea naval base in Crimea, and did not anticipate that Russia simply would annex an old Russian province that belonged to Ukraine by historical accident.

At the time, liberal opinion evanesced with the notion that Moscow would follow Maidan. The Christian Science Monitor reported in February 2014:

Some in Russia’s liberal community see in the Maidan a hope that the Kremlin, no matter how solid it looks, could one day crack under similar popular pressure. “What we are seeing in Ukraine is the realization of the Ukrainian people’s aspiration for democracy, of the right to revolt,” says Sergei Davidis, a board member of Solidarnost, a liberal opposition coalition. “It doesn’t mean we’re ready to follow that example. Russian conditions are different. But in the long run, as the contradictions pile up, we may well come to the same pass and find ourselves with no alternatives but the Ukrainian one.”

Of course, no such thing occurred.

The Maidan coup was the second American attempt to install a Ukrainian government hostile to Moscow; the first occurred in 2004, when Condoleezza Rice was secretary of State rather than Hillary Clinton. As I wrote in Asia Times a decade ago, “On the night of November 22, 2004, then-Russian president – now premier – Vladimir Putin watched the television news in his dacha near Moscow. People who were with Putin that night report his anger and disbelief at the unfolding ‘Orange’ revolution in Ukraine. ‘They lied to me,’ Putin said bitterly of the United States. ‘I’ll never trust them again.’ The Russians still can’t fathom why the West threw over a potential strategic alliance for Ukraine. They underestimate the stupidity of the West.”

Go here for the rest.

I expect there  will be a lot of flack in response to this post; let me say that I’m still ruminating on Goldman’s article,  trying to see whether it’s an apology for a tyrant or an attempt to look at foreign policy realistically.  He does mention at the end we should make a super effort to surpass Russia defensive efforts against missiles.
0 0 votes
Article Rating
7 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
ken
ken
Thursday, July 19, AD 2018 8:12am

Bob,
After reading Don’s post from earlier this week I too stumbled upon the Spengler article. His articles in the Asia Times are an excellent resource as well. This entire episode has been tough for me. I do feel that Trump looked weak and submissive with Putin-very unusual for him. I don’t know if he has some master plan.But I do wonder what is the U.S. benefit of this continual hostile posturing towards Russia. And I do wonder what is the benefit of this seemingly one-sided friendship of our western European allies. One thing I do know for sure, people (I’m talking about you President Trump) need to stop spending so much time on their cell phones tweeting and texting. Not every thought you have needs to be published.

Tom Byrne
Tom Byrne
Thursday, July 19, AD 2018 9:09am

Ken:
“Not every thought you have needs to be published”.
That’s because thoughts take time to form. These people are posting emotional reactions. In the days of pen and ink by the time you got the letter written in correct and reasonably polite English (which the culture demanded and which some of us harried teachers still demand) and the words had passed through your head several times before they got to the paper, you actually had “thoughts” to put down. Ironically this new technology, put together after much hard thought on the part of the developers, is discouraging thought on the part of the users.

ken
ken
Thursday, July 19, AD 2018 10:48am

Tom,
Very true.
I started using that line with my kids when they would say foolish or irresponsible things, usually to each other at the dining room table. It seemed to fit conveniently into the social media age.

Foxfier
Admin
Thursday, July 19, AD 2018 7:33pm

Sadly, the “every random thought through my head needs to be said” far predates the internet.

It was old hat among my classmates’ parents, for goodness sake.

Michael Paterson-Seymour
Michael Paterson-Seymour
Friday, July 20, AD 2018 1:00am

“One of the consequences will be that our competitors and adversaries will take us for knaves instead of fools, or even worse, will recognize that we are fools after all.”

It was said of Napoléon III that he deceived Europe twice: once, when he persuaded it he was an imbecile and once when he persuaded it he was a statesman

Perhaps, the same will one day be said of Mr Trump?

Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus
Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus
Friday, July 20, AD 2018 4:47am

“It was said of Napoléon III that he deceived Europe twice: once, when he persuaded it he was an imbecile and once when he persuaded it he was a statesman.”

Trump is not even attempting to deceive Europe. He is quite the open book. Witness his tweets.

Trump is not an imbecile (a stupid or idiotic person) either, nor of course a statesman. He’s a reality TV star and a real estate mogul who somehow made it the the Presidency, and that’s how he is acting.

Maybe we have had professional politicians in Europe and America for too long. Maybe this is the change we need.

Penguins Fan
Penguins Fan
Tuesday, July 24, AD 2018 4:08pm

Somehow? Trump made it to the Presidency because, in no small part, the mostly pathetic bunch that sought the same office in 2016. Ted Cruz and Rand Paul are not pathetic but they had little chance. Jeb Bush is what Trump said he is – low energy. He ripped into both Bush Administrations and blamed the ineptitude of Dubya for Obama, which left Jeb speechless.

Shrillary fails at everything she attempts. Thank God there were enough voters in November 2016 to realize it.

I read somewhere else today that President Trump is the result of the media’s attacking of Romney in 2012…..and their punishment as well.

I was not bothered by Trump’s words about the US screwing up Russian relations. The State Department is Swamp Central, or more appropriately, a clogged septic tank. They have screwed things up for decades, going back to WWII when it was infested with Communists. I am no Putin-bot. I know what Russia is capable of doing in abusing human rights, to the earliest days of the czars and their often brutal treatment of their neighbors. Screaming at Putin or making loud demands of him at Helsinki would have solved nothing.

Discover more from The American Catholic

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading

Scroll to Top