Putin must be wishing he hadn’t schemed
Ihaven’t been to Russia lately, but from what I’ ve read it seems clear that criticism of Vladimir Putin is not encouraged.
It can be damaging to your health. You might die mysteriously of radiation poisoning, like former spy Alexander Litvinenko in London; or get shot to death on a Moscow bridge like opposition figure Boris Nemtsov; or find yourself snatched from a Siberian airport and jailed for a decade, like one- time oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
Putin doesn’t abide opposition. He prefers nodding heads and zipped lips. That’s too bad. Because there are likely a few figures in the Kremlin who wouldn’t mind sidling up, throwing an arm around his narrow shoulders and inquiring, “So how’s that Trump scheme working out for you?”
It’s taken for granted that Putin was the ultimate authority behind the campaign to undermine the U. S. election, and western democracy in general. It’s impossible to imagine a project of that magnitude and consequence could have been launched without his knowledge and approval. To do so would constitute a challenge to his authority, and, as we’ve seen, that’s not the path to a long and pleasant life.
The point of the exercise was evidently to sow some chaos, discomfit his rivals, and impress Russians once again with Putin’s disruptive skills. He’d been successful time and again in similar ventures, seizing the Crimea, destabilizing Ukraine, and outmanoeuvring Barack Obama in Syria. Wreaking havoc in the U. S. election process would add to his reputation back home, and hopefully have the additional benefit of helping to defeat Hillary Clinton.
Putin presumably had little regard for Clinton. A Trump presidency might have seemed far more promising. Trump had nice things to say about Russia and the potential for doing deals there. He seemed like the kind of guy a ruthless autocrat could work with. Perhaps not the brightest or most sophisticated cookie in the jar, but, from a Russian standpoint, all the better.
Instead, it’s been a disaster. What started out so promisingly, with Clinton sent packing and Trump appointing a Moscowfriendly oil baron as his top foreign emissary, has come apart at the seams. The nadir, for now, was last week’s vote to impose new sanctions on Russia over Trump’s protests, with the vote in both houses of Congress so overwhelming it precludes any chance of a presidential veto. Of 522 votes cast, only five were opposed. It’s the first time Democrats and Republicans have managed to work together to pass anything of consequence since Trump became president. It’s the most important legislation of his administration. It strikes directly at presidential power in managing sanctions, and Trump hates it. But so diminished is his stature that he had no choice other than to sign.
The Russia crisis has Trump’s administration in chaos. On Friday, Special Counsel Robert Mueller impanelled a grand jury as part of his investigation into Russian meddling. The New York Times reported that Mueller’s team recently asked the White House for documents on former national security adviser Michael Flynn, and are questioning whether he received secret payments from the Turkish government. Trump’s son has acknowledged meeting with Russian intermediaries in hopes of obtaining damaging material on Clinton. The President reportedly personally dictated a memo on the meeting that falsely claimed it had nothing to do with the campaign; Mueller is said to have issued subpoenas on that issue as well.
Putin denies it all, and in increasingly bitter terms. A week ago he ordered that three- quar- ters of U. S. diplomatic staff in Russia be slashed. Of about 1,000 Americans and employees at the U. S. embassy and various consulates, 755 will have to go. He dismissed the sanctions bill as illegal under international law, and warned that “we can see that over a lengthy period they are trying to provoke us more and more.”
None of whatever benefits of a Trump presidency that might have been expected have come to pass. Rex Tillerson, the former Exxon boss now serving as secretary of state, might as well return the “Order of Friendship” medal he received from a grateful Putin in happier times, for all the good he’s done Moscow. During a recent G20 gathering, Trump made a show of a long chat with Putin, which supposedly went well, yet the moment he’s back in Washington the aggravation starts all over again. Like other leaders, Russia is learning that nothing that falls from the lips of the U. S. president can be trusted any longer than it takes him to say it.
How do you handle a man like that? Perversely, Trump’s unpredictability makes him even harder to deal with than Putin himself. George W. Bush maintained he’d looked Putin in the eye and found a man “very straightforward and trustworthy.” Barack Obama thought he could re- set relations with Moscow on a more co- operative plane. European leaders felt it was safe to shift their focus to other concerns. They even invited him to join their club, expanding the G7 into the G8 until kicking him out again over the Crimea episode.
Putin outwitted them all, but now finds himself accused of helping deliver the presidency to a man who in seven short months has reduced relations to new levels of post- Cold War chill. The Russian president’s reputation as a global strategist looks badly frayed when he can’t outwit a man the world increasingly views as the punchline to a bad joke. Perhaps to forestall any murmurs of discontent, Putin had himself photographed for a new series of bare- chested strongman snapshots — nabbing some fish, piloting a boat, catching some Siberian rays.
While he’s playing he- man, maybe he’ ll reflect on the whole U. S. disruption project. If he did give the go- ahead, he must wish he hadn’t. His minions in Moscow may be too frightened to mention the truth to him, but he’d probably have been better off letting Americans pick their own president without his aid. Democracy has a funny way of getting its revenge.