With Russia, Trump must not copy Obama response

PRESIDENT Trump’s recent comments on Russian efforts to interfere with U.S. elections have been widely criticized. But many of Trump’s critics act as though the federal government was actively fighting such efforts prior to the Trump administration. That’s a stretch.

Instead, the prior administration was too often dismissive of Russian aggression, in stark contrast to the portrayal now proclaimed by its partisans.

The most infamous example occurred in the 2012 presidential race when GOP nominee Mitt Romney referred to Russia as the biggest geopolitical threat facing America. In a debate, President Obama responded, “The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back, because the Cold War’s been over for 20 years.”

Time has proven that Romney understood geopolitical reality better than the sitting president. And there’s not much evidence the Obama administration subsequently took Russia seriously.

In a recent floor speech, Sen. James Lankford, R-Oklahoma City, noted that the FBI became aware of efforts to interfere with our elections in June 2016. By August 2016, Lankford noted, the FBI issued a nationwide “flash alert” to every state that mentioned a threat from a “bad actor.”

“The Oklahoma state cyber command director received that warning, as did everyone else, but at that time the FBI didn’t share any details because no one in my state was given security clearance to be able to have that kind of classified conversation with the FBI,” Lankford said. “It wasn’t until September 22, 2017, a year and little bit later, that DHS (Department of Homeland Security) actually notified my state and our state election authorities that we hadn’t just been targeted by a ‘bad actor,’ we had been targeted by the Russians.”

In other words, the federal government failed to identify the Russians as a specific election threat until after the elections. Fortunately, officials concluded that Russian officials failed to penetrate Oklahoma’s election system.

Republicans have criticized the Obama administration’s response (or lack of response) in 2016. In an interview, NPR’s national security editor Phil Ewing cited some actions taken by the Obama administration to address Russian election meddling, but that defense was hardly inspiring.

At a summit in 2016, Ewing said Obama took Russian President Vladimir Putin aside “and said, please stop interfering in our election — to no effect.” The administration also asked Congress to pass “a statement condemning these foreign efforts.”

It was only after the election that the Obama administration appeared to engage in much beyond empty rhetorical gestures. This included ejecting some Russian diplomats from the United States and imposing economic measures in retaliation for the election interference.

Trump’s comments in Helsinki, which suggested he questioned whether Russians attempted to interfere in U.S. elections, were alarming for many reasons, not least that his statement indicated the weak response of the Obama administration would continue.

Trump’s critics are right to insist he take a hard stance with Russia. The actions of the Obama administration only encouraged Russian intransigence. We don’t need to continue down that path in 2018.