Sometimes being right on the substance and wrong on the form isn't good enough. While trying to do too much in one week, the president's proclivity for disruption and the media's proclivity for hysteria - familiar shows in domestic venues - fell flat when translated to the world stage. Some things just don't sound as good in French or Finnish as they do at a rally in Kansas City. A perspective:
The Bad
1. The United Kingdom is in the midst of an epochal struggle to redefine the nation and it's relationship with the world. Prime Minister Theresa May is trying to thread the needle, adopting a "soft Brexit" stance which retains "free trade" and shared customs procedures with Europe, a posture which has caused some 10 of her ministers to resign. The Donald found it necessary to opine that remaining part of the EU for trading purposes would make it impossible to have a trade agreement with the United States - and that her most problematic Conservative Party rival would be a good prime minister. On the merits, a "hard Brexit" would have reflected a choice to align more closely with the United States and the Anglophile world, but this advice reflected a most unwelcome intrusion into British politics at a most inopportune moment.
2. Trump's apparent acceptance of Vladimir Putin's perfunctory denial that Russia had meddled in the 2016 election over the American intelligence community's consensus that they had was a low light of the presidency to date. In truth, no level of Trump berating Putin in public would have satisfied the critics. The Justice Department's decision to indict 12 Russian intelligence officers three days before the meeting was intended to ensure that the issue received prominence in the Putin discussions; cries of treason from Obama's CIA director James Brennan and House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer say much more about them than about Trump's actions; and Trump did see the need to correct the record on the following day. Back in 2016 President Obama told Putin to not meddle again; a similar admonition would have been good.
3. Trump's assertion that the United States leaders had acted foolishly relative to Russia in the past deserves domestic discussion, but does little to further our negotiating position with Putin. It is a good thing that Trump was not asked to put some meat on the bone by the collusion-obsessed media. For the big picture from a Russian perspective, the original post-war core NATO was expanded by President Clinton to add Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic; by President Bush to add Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Bulgaria, Rumania, Slovakia, and Slovenia; and by President Obama to add Albania, Croatia, and Montenegro. President Trump is being asked to add Bosnia/Herzogovina, Macedonia, and the former Soviet Union states of Georgia and the Ukraine. On the substance, one might also ask about American meddling in Russian elections during the Yeltsin and Gorbachev era; President Obama's assertion that Russian ally Assad must go in Syria; or the coup in the Ukraine which overthrew an elected pro-Russian president and (coupled with potential accession to NATO) put the key Russian naval base in the Crimea at risk. When it comes to Russia, we do lack empathy and self-awareness.
The Good
1. NATO, and particularly Germany, need to be taken out behind the woodshed. Past presidents have politiely tried, but Trump is committed. Most are not making much progress toward their 2014 commitment to increase defense spending to 2% of GDP by 2024, relying instead on the United States to carry the burden of deterring the Russians while the Western alliance has extended eastward into what was once Moscow's sphere of influence. A major re-thinking is needed when Germany, stuck at 1.2%, enables their former Chancellor (Gerhardt Schroeder) to become CEO of a large Kremlin-connected Russian energy company (Rosneft), and to build a natural gas pipeline which will make Germany reliant on Russia while undercutting Ukraine, which sits astride Russia's current major pipeline to Europe.
2. The list of things which Trump discussed with Putin is long and appropriate - the North Korean nuclear program; the war in Syria; the need to contain Iran's ambitions in the Muslim world; a follow-up to the 2010 nuclear arms reductions agreements; Israeli security; the conflict in the Ukraine. In the age of Resist, the Left doesn't think that Trump should be talking to Putin at all and is critical that there was not a memorandum of new groundbreaking agreements. Talking is good - and the press conference comments relative to North Korea and nuclear arms agreements offer some optimism for those so inclined, as is the offer of a second meeting in Washington.
3. We have an annual trade deficit in goods of $150 billion with the European Union, partially offset by a $50 billion surplus in services, driven by both tariffs and other barriers such as exclusion of genetically modified agricultural products. While the big goods imbalance is with China ($375 billion) and there are significant problems with Mexico ($70 billion ) and Japan ($70 billion), Trump was right to explain the need to restore a trade balance with the Europeans. They are allies and not "competitive foes" as Trump claimed, but they are certainly competitors. Everyone objects - major trading partners; the industries facing higher tariffs; the Resisters; the anti-Trumpers - but our global $800 billion trade deficit in goods is not sustainable. There was time when most of our markets were internal; we were rich enough to use trade deficits as a major geopolitical tool; and "free trade" did not need to be balanced. That time has passed, and Trump is willing to take the short term heat - particularly at a time when the economy is booming.
Bereft of other ideas, the Left has escalated its "Russia is the enemy, Trump wants to get along with Putin, Mueller will find the smoking gun" meme. From a long term geopolitical perspective Trump has it right - as did Obama, if by intent if not action. With their nucler arsenal, energy resources, broad geographic sweep, and United Nations veto power, the Russians are an important player relative to both Europe and China. Trying to work with them - regardless of what Chuck Schumer and Rachel Maddow think - is a good thing. For that Trump deserves credit.
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This week's video is a short, little-reported section of the Trump-Putin press conferendce in Helsinki - in which Putin talks about $400 million which were illegally obtained in Russia and contributed to Hillary Clinton (presumably through the Clinton Foundation.)
bill bowen - 7/20/2018
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