President Trump’s advisers don’t share his Putin infatuation

Several theories have been floating around to explain President Donald Trump’s reverence for Russian President Vladimir Putin. Perhaps Putin has incriminating information on Trump, or maybe Trump owes millions to Russian oligarchs.

Then again, Trump might have been trying to butter up Putin during the campaign, thinking that he could finally make some of the big deals he had been pining for -- once he lost the election, as he expected. Well, as a world-class narcissist, Trump may have simply been smitten with a dictator who knew how to publicly stroke Trump’s ego. Alternatively, Trump may simply be enamored of a brutal anti-democratic kleptocrat who figured out how to make money off the state. Now, of course, he might fear revelations about the extent of Russian assistance in the election -- which he might reasonably expect would delegitimize his victory.

Whatever the explanation, even after the most recent chemical attack in Syria and Trump’s retaliatory strikes, he still does not utter a harsh word about Putin’s support for Syrian President Bashar Assad. He does not excoriate Russia for failure to enforce the chemicalweapons deal that Putin brokered. Trump’s advisers, however, are a different matter altogether. The Post reports: Signaling the focus of talks that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is set to have in Moscow this week, officials said that Russia, in propping up Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, bears at least partial responsibility for Wednesday’s chemical attack on villagers in Idlib province.

“I hope Russia is thinking carefully about its continued alliance with Bashar al-Assad, because every time one of these horrific attacks occurs, it draws Russia closer into some level of responsibility,” Tillerson said on ABC’s “This Week.” . . .

“I think what we should do is ask Russia, how could it be, if you have advisers at that airfield, that you didn’t know that the Syrian air force was preparing and executing a mass murder attack with chemical weapons?” [H.R.] McMaster said on Fox News.

Nikki Haley, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, has been the most forceful and effective in denouncing Russia both for propping up the Assad regime and failing to guarantee the removal of Syria’s chemical weapons:

Russia is supposed to have removed all the chemical weapons from Syria, but obviously that has not happened, as innocent Syrians continue to be murdered in chemical attacks. Let’s think about the possible reasons for Russia’s failure. It could be that Russia is knowingly allowing chemical weapons to remain in Syria. It could be that Russia has been incompetent in its efforts to remove the chemical weapons. Or, it could be that the Assad regime is playing the Russians for fools, telling them that there are no chemical weapons, all the while stockpiling them on their bases. The world is waiting for the Russian government to act responsibly in Syria. The world is waiting for Russia to reconsider its misplaced alliance with Assad.

We don’t know how this dichotomy is supposed to work going forward. Will Trump continue to ignore Russia’s role in Syria -- not to mention its occupation of Ukraine, human rights abuses and support for Iran -- while his advisers bash Russia and advocate enforcement of sanctions so long as Russia remains in Ukraine? By Trump’s own silence, isn’t he undercutting the effectiveness of his own advisers’ warnings -or is that an intentional choice?

At this stage, definitive answers are hard to come by. Two things, however, are clear. First, we cannot, in fact, “get along” with Russia, because its conduct is abhorrent to us and contrary to our national interests. If you want “America First” or “Western Civilization First,” Putin becomes your adversary. Second, Putin succeeded in getting the less serious, wily and sane candidate elected to the U.S. presidency, but in the end, that may mean far less than he hoped. Like Trump, Putin is sadly mistaken if he thinks he can “get along” with the United States -- or at least, that’s true if Trump’s advisers, Congress and the American people insist we stand up for our own national interests and values.