Trusting Russia’s devious Putin a fool’s errand
A long time ago, in a classroom far, far away, I started working on my master’s degree in Russian Studies at George Washington University. I was planning to go to work for the State Department as an expert in U.S./Soviet relations, or perhaps into the Foreign Service.
That was in the mid1970s, at a time when phrases like Mutual Assured Destruction and Massive Retaliation were common, and movies like “Fail Safe” (Henry Fonda) and “Dr. Strangelove” (Peter Sellers) were a nervous part of the American psyche. No one could imagine that West and East Germany would ever re-unite, or that the Soviet Union would collapse.
Now fast forward to July 2018 in Helsinki, Finland, where a U.S. president has botched a summit with a crafty Russian dictator, and what a long strange trip it’s been. We’re back to the future with a peculiar relationship with Russia.
Russian President Vladimir Putin may deny Russian meddling in the 2016 election, but the U.S. intelligence community knows otherwise. ( Just as it did when the Soviets denied putting offensive missiles into Cuba in 1962.)
President Donald Trump may not want to concede the point — his ego is involved, as it often is — but the truth is out there.
In the wake of the indictment of 12 Russian agents for that meddling, even White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders admitted, “It is very clear that Russia meddled in the election.”
That’s probably just the tip of the iceberg.
Putin is a former agent of the Soviet KGB, and he wants more than anything to restore his country to its past glory. (Exhibit A: Crimea.) Does anyone really doubt that the Russians are working against U.S. interests on a 24/7 basis?
Yes, Russia is a formidable nation, and the United States needs to have an ongoing political and economic relationship with her. But she is not going to be a partner or an ally.
Putin may concede that he was rooting for Trump to win the election — hello ... that’s why they were meddling! — but he is not going to be Trump’s golfing buddy next year.
Trump needs to stop undercutting his own intelligence community and his NATO and EU allies in order to flatter the Russian strongman. Nobody expects the U.S. and Russia to exchange nukes these days, thankfully, but Trump should take a pragmatic and wary approach toward Putin and Russia. Trusting the devious Putin is a fool’s errand.
I was in the Soviet Union for three weeks on a memorable student tour in 1970, so I’m probably on somebody’s list somewhere. For a few days, I saw the other side of the Cold War. It was fascinating.
I didn’t stay at George Washington University, and I never second-guess myself on that decision. We all have some regrets in life ... that isn’t one of mine. But my radar goes up whenever I hear about U.S./Russian interplay. I’m sure it’s very hard to be a Kremlinologist these days with the ongoing White House flights of fancy. Dirk Q. Allen is a former opinion page editor of the Hamilton JournalNews. He is a regular contributor.