Politics cloud approach to Russia

It is regrettable but unsurprising that domestic politics clouds clear thinking about relations between the United States and Russia.

Any doubt there is a political component to the special counsel’s investigation into collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia should have been extinguished by the extraordinary timing of the indictment of the Russian government hackers allegedly involved.

This indictment provided the specifics behind the conclusion announced by American intelligence agencies about Russian involvement toward the end of the Obama presidency. Presumably, much of the evidence cited in the indictment was in hand when that conclusion was made.

This indictment probably could have come down months ago. It certainly could have been made public weeks from now. There was no urgency involved.

The release of the indictment just three days before President Donald Trump was scheduled to meet with Russian strongman Vladimir Putin has to be interpreted as an attempt to disrupt or influence that meeting. And it succeeded.

Trump regards any discussion of Russian involvement in the 2016 campaign as an attempt to delegitimize his victory. And much of it is.

It is possible to accept that Russia attempted to influence the election while maintaining that its effect was negligible. And to accept Russian involvement while regarding the investigation into collusion by the Trump campaign as a witch hunt.

But Trump is incapable of walking such a rhetorical tightrope. And so he reacted as he did during the press conference with Putin, which in turn triggered a domestic political eruption.

Arizona Sen. John McCain issued a press release asserting that “no prior president has ever abased himself more abjectly before a tyrant.”

That should put an end to the complaints by the McCain family and friends about the political potshots taken at McCain while he is attempting to recover from a serious illness. You are either in the fray or you are not. If you are in the fray, you are fair game. And McCain, despite his illness, remains very much in the fray.

Meanwhile, there is Russia. And there is the United States. And there is the question of what their relationship should be.

Our relationship with Russia should be grounded in three realities.

The first is that Russia retains sufficient nuclear firepower to blow the entire planet to smithereens. The United States should have a relationship with such a country, including at the presidential level.

Hard as it might be for some to come to grips with it, Trump is the president of the United States. And Putin rules Russia. There cannot be a relationship at the presidential level that does not involve the two of them.

There is more than a little inconsistency among those who say that Trump shouldn’t meet with Putin, or even that no American president should meet with Putin.

McCain, and those who share his foreign-policy views, have no problems with an American president, even Trump, cavorting with the monarchs who run Saudi Arabia and are far more tyrannical than Putin. And whose funding of radical madrassas around the globe contributed to the chief security threat the United States has faced this century, Islamic terrorism.

The second reality is that the United States and Russia have an insuperable conflict over the issue of legitimacy.

The view of the world’s democracies is that the legitimacy of a government rests upon the consent of the governed, freely given by a people whose liberty is secure. The world’s autocrats, including Putin, consider this a threatening proposition, which it is — and should be.

The third reality is that apart from having nuclear weapons, Russia is a second-tier country that doesn’t really pose a security threat to the United States. Russia ranks first or second among nations when it comes to nuclear weapons, but only 72nd when it comes to gross national product per capita.

To the extent Russia’s revanchist urges need to be contained, that should be the job of European democracies, not the United States.

The Russian hacks, leaks and phony social-media adverts during the 2016 campaign were intended to exacerbate social tensions and erode confidence in our democracy and democratic institutions. Our reaction to the Russian intervention has advanced that cause far more than the intervention itself.