Suppose you were Vladimir Putin, emperor and autocrat of all the Russias. And suppose you somehow controlled the president of the United States. What would you make him do?
Withdrawing America’s support from Ukraine, switching off intelligence-sharing, and canceling even the weapons that were already in transit — that would be just the start. Ideally, he would actively take your side. He would repeat your propaganda points, calling Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky a dictator, a crook, and an embezzler of aid money.
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Would he go so far as to accuse Zelensky of starting the war? It might seem a bit of a stretch. Ukraine, after all, was attacked by a country that it in no conceivable way threatened. Is anyone really going to believe that Zelensky waited until Russia had massed more than 100,000 troops on his northern and eastern borders in a “peaceful training exercise” before launching an attack on his larger neighbor? Well, that’s what President Donald Trump says, and his ovine followers duly repeat it.
Of course, as a Russian dictator, you don’t just want to win in Ukraine. You want to be able to menace whomever you please. You need the message to go out to every nearby state that it is on its own. You want your American asset to tell the National Security Agency to stop monitoring Russia and to let that fact be known. You want him to declare that Russia is no longer a cyber threat. You want his support to be public. Might the U.S. somehow be brought to vote with Russia, Belarus, and North Korea against a boilerplate United Nations motion condemning Russian aggression in Ukraine, a motion that not even China opposes? Worth a go, surely.
Your greatest prize is the breaking of the Western alliance. For this, you need the U.S. not only to turn the other cheek to Russia but simultaneously to go after the least threatening and most easygoing of its NATO allies. Who fits the bill? The Danes? Hard to think of a more laid-back people. Maybe the U.S. could threaten to rip Greenland away from them. No, even better, what about the Canadians?
Am I saying that Trump is a Russian asset? No, I have no way of knowing that. All manner of rumors have swirled for years. Yuri Shvets, a KGB major who was posted to Washington in the 1980s, claims that the Soviet Union started cultivating Trump 40 years ago. There is the unverified story, originating in a report by a British intelligence officer, that the Russians had compromising footage of Trump with prostitutes in a Moscow hotel. There is the bizarre claim by a Kazakh spy that Trump was actually recruited by the KGB in 1987 under the codename “Krasnov.” There are better-documented reports of his links to various dodgy Russian biznesmeny, some of them mobsters and black marketeers, in his property dealings.
My point is not that Trump is a Russian agent. I just want you to ask yourself how his behavior would be any different if he were.
There are other possible explanations for Trump’s Putinism. We know that he is narcissistic, determining U.S. policy on the basis of who flatters him personally. The fact that Zelensky, through no fault of his own, was dragged into the impeachment attempt might be the root of the problem. “Putin went through a hell of a lot with me,” Trump told the Ukrainian leader as if talking of an old friend. “He had to suffer through the Russia hoax.”
Or perhaps Trump’s natural predilections are Putinite rather than Reaganite. He admires strongman leaders and chafes at restrictions on his powers. He may simply be pro-Kremlin on political grounds, as so many were during the Cold War — many more than were ever on the Soviet payroll.
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Whatever the explanation, should it not shock us that the U.S. president is lining up with a tyrant who murders opposition politicians and journalists, helps himself to slices of neighboring countries, and makes no secret of his loathing for the West? Does that support not cancel out the good things that Trump is doing in terms of deregulation, tax cuts, and anti-wokery? Is it not unsettling to see senior Republicans who have spent their careers railing against dictators, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, now obediently repeating the new line and claiming that Putin is America’s bestie?
The fact that Americans are not shocked is, for me, the most shocking thing of all. The freest country in the world is giving up on freedom, and no one seems to care.