Trump is all quiet on the Russian front
U.S. government forges ahead with a hard-line approach, leaving president isolated
WASHINGTON— U.S. President Donald Trump has fallen over himself to defend Russia from allegations of criminal hacking, military mischief and general malevolence.
The rest of the U.S. government has carried on as if he wasn’t around.
As Trump makes an effort to improve relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin, everyone from congressional Republicans to federal legal authorities to top members of his own administration have taken the kind of hard line that had been foreseen under a Hillary Clinton presidency — leaving Trump isolated and the world struggling to figure out where America actually stands.
“In the absence of a clear Russia policy from the executive branch, our domestic political processes are effectively becoming our Russia policy. That is not how you want to manage relations with the world’s second-largest nuclear power. This could get dangerous,” said Matthew Rojansky, a Russia expert and director of the Kennan Institute at the Woodrow Wilson Center think tank in Washington.
The Department of Justice decision to charge two Russian intelligence officers for a massive hack of 500 million Yahoo accounts came as a result of an FBI investigation. The charges were announced the same day FBI director James Comey briefed top senators on a separate FBI probe into possible links between Russia and associates of the Trump campaign.
Those possible links, and Trump’s effusive praise of Putin, have raised bipartisan fears that the president might reorient American policy for personal reasons — perhaps because Putin allegedly ordered a hacking campaign to help get him elected, perhaps something more nefarious.
But “there’s growing signs that, in fact, there isn’t going to be some huge new thaw,” said Mark Galeotti, a Russia security expert at the Institute of International Relations Prague. “Whatever Trump may be doing, it’s clear that, on the whole, the American national security establishment is frankly going ahead with its own policy.”
The charges are in line with an Obama-era policy of deploying the criminal justice system against state cybercriminals. They demonstrate, Galeotti said, “that whatever the onagain, off-again Trump-Putin bromance, the underlying reality is that Russia still regards the United States as its primary antagonist, and indeed, this is reciprocated.”
The charges may increase the mistrust between the countries; the two intelligence officers charged were allegedly from the very unit with which the FBI discusses cybercrime issues. But it was not as if there was evidence of a real reset under Trump.
At the UN, Ambassador Nikki Haley has denounced Russian aggression in Ukraine.
In visits to Europe, Defence Secretary James Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, the recipient of Russia’s Order of Friendship, have expressed a deep commitment to NATO and pledged to stand with Ukraine. Trump has mostly stayed quiet.
Michael McFaul, a U.S. ambassador to Russia during the Barack Obama presidency, said the hack demands a “vigorous response” from the White House, noting on MSNBC that the Obama administration sanctioned Russian officials for the election hacking. Obama also sanctioned North Korea for its alleged role in a 2014 hacking of Sony, which was making a comedy about the assassination of Kim Jong Un, and indicted five members of China’s military for a hacking of major companies.