Blog No. 184. Donald Trump Has Stepped Down…As Leader of the Free World (and Neville Chamberlain Redux)

As we approach the summit between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, it must be noted that the President of the United States is no longer the Leader of the Free World.

The practice of referring to the American President as “Leader of the Free World” began in the early days of the Cold War. With the end of that conflict, use of the term became less frequent, though it has remained in the lexicon. A year-and-a-half into the presidency of Donald Trump, it is clear that Trump has neither taste nor talent to assume that role and the title should be retired, perhaps forever.

To be fair, the term Leader of the Free World always had problematic aspects. It had a grandiose quality that some found discomforting and that could sometimes have unfortunate consequences. When presidential aides invoked the term it often implied that criticism of the Leader of the Free World was inappropriate or even disloyal. Nevertheless, there was a point: The United States was the most powerful country in the world and, despite serious missteps, it did lead an alliance in resisting communist aggression, promoting democracy and creating a world economic order that brought prosperity to ourselves and our allies.

Even after the end of the Cold War, the “Free World” was generally thought to include the United States, Canada, the countries in NATO and the European Union. Yet Trump has often regarded those countries and our ties to them with resentment or indifference. The fractious quality of Trump’s relations with our long-time allies would be troubling by itself, but it is even more so when taken with his affinity for Vladimir Putin. When Trump meets with Putin in Helsinki on July 16, he will be arriving directly (after only an interlude for golf) from a NATO meeting. Perhaps Trump will conduct himself with some decorum at that event, but it is apt to be painfully obvious that he will not land in Helsinki as the leader of an alliance. Moreover, he will not even be arriving to advance a policy or agenda that his own country understands and supports.

On June 4, in Blog No 180, RINOcracy.com gave its tentative support to Trump’s prospective meeting with Kim Jong-un, but cautioned against a reported plan for a summit between Trump and Putin: “There is no urgent need for such a meeting and, given Trump’s peculiar affection for the Russian leader, any such meeting would be likely to produce more mischief than anything else.” Subsequent events have confirmed and underscored reasons for that concern. Trump startled and dismayed the other participants at the G-7 conference by saying that “NATO is as bad as NAFTA,” suggesting that Russia be readmitted to the G-7 group, launching a twitter assault against the Canadian Prime Minister, and refusing in a fit of pique even to sign the joint communique to which he had just agreed. Those were hardly the actions of a stable ally, let alone a leader of allies. It is small wonder that European leaders view the prospect of the Trump-Putin summit with misgivings ranging from unease to quiet alarm.

The discomfort of European leaders is heightened by the fact that they, like the American public, have no idea of what it is that Trump hopes to gain from the event or what price he is prepared to pay for whatever “it” might be. Possibly, all Trump wants is the kind of photo opportunity and show of mutual cordiality on display in Singapore. If so, that would be distasteful but relatively harmless–though why Trump would consider such imagery to his advantage is hard to grasp given the unseemly coziness of his presidential campaign with Russia which is the focus of Robert Mueller’s investigation. On the other hand, perhaps something more substantive is in the offing.

National Security Adviser John Bolton provided little illumination when he was interviewed on Sunday on Face the Nation. On the contrary, Bolton, known until recently as a blunt speaker, responded to questions with notable squishiness. Bolton had just returned from Moscow where he had met with Putin and other top Russian officials but he had hardly anything specific to say. At the outset, Margaret Brennan asked Bolton what changes in Russian foreign policy Trump would ask Putin for: “What is the goal?” Bolton replied:

Well the goal of this meeting really is for the two leaders to have a chance to sit down not in the context of some larger multilateral meeting but just the two of them to go over what’s on their mind about a whole range of issues. President Trump has just said in the past week he’s going to raise things like Syria, like Ukraine, like the election meddling issue really the whole range of issues between us. And I think that in the president’s mind this is very important because it gives him an opportunity to size up Vladimir Putin to see where there are areas where we might make progress together and where there are areas where we may not.

One conspicuous absence from Bolton’s short menu was any reference to nuclear arms control. Arms control is a subject on which Russia (or the Soviet Union) have been able to cooperate in the past and its current importance was explained by Steven Piper in Brookings in a July 2 article:

One area to prioritize is nuclear arms control. The 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty and 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) put bounds on the U.S.-Russian nuclear competition. Unfortunately, the nuclear arms control regime today faces serious problems.

Piper outlined the problems and possible solutions, but Trump has shown little interest in mastering the complexities of arms control and he may feel that this is not the occasion to try to do so.

Turning to the specific areas that Bolton did mention, Brennan focused first on Syria: “But right now Russia is blanket bombing southern Syria. That violates the last agreement Vladimir Putin made with President Trump. Why would [Trump] believe that [Putin is] in any way trustworthy?” Bolton replied with one of Trump’s favorite evasions, “We’ll see what happens”:

Well we’ll see what happens when the two of them get together. There are possibilities for doing a larger negotiation on helping to get Iranian forces out of Syria and back into Iran which would be a significant step forward.

At the same time, Bolton did allow that the administration no longer had any interest in reining in the murderous campaigns of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. (“Well I don’t think Assad is the strategic issue.”)

The possible “deal” hinted at by Bolton had been outlined three days before by a David Ignatius piece in the Washington Post, “Is Trump handing Putin a victory in Syria?” According to Ignatius, the “deal,” would “preserve power for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in exchange for Russian pledges to restrain Iranian influence.” As Ignatius explained:

Checking Iranian power has become the only major Trump administration goal in Syria, now that the Islamic State is nearly vanquished. President Trump appears ready to embrace a policy that will validate Assad, an authoritarian leader who has gassed his own people, and abandon a Syrian opposition that was partly trained and supplied by the United States.

Any Russian “pledges” to restrain Iran would be no more bankable than Kim Jong-un’s dubious promises to give up his nuclear arsenal. Indeed, British and European allies are skeptical that Russia has the capacity to expel Iran from areas they dominate. Moreover, a deal to preserve Assad would be seen as a betrayal by our former allies in the Syrian opposition, one of whom warned Ignatius that the betrayal might lead to future jihadist uprisings. From Trump’s perspective, however, any sort of deal may give him a fig leaf to cover the withdrawal of American troops from Syria as he plainly wishes.

Turning to Ukraine, Margaret Brennan asked Bolton about comments from Trump appearing to indicate that the United States was open to recognizing Russia’s annexation of Crimea and to lifting sanctions. Here again, Bolton lamely echoed his boss’s response by saying “We’ll see.” He said that was not United States policy but then emphasized that he did not make policy. Equally interesting is the fact that Bolton made no mention of what, if anything, the United States might ask of Russia concerning Ukraine, such as withdrawing support from rebels holding territory in eastern Ukraine. Thus, Bolton might well have been asked what exactly the point was, from the perspective of the United States, in discussing Ukraine at all.

Ironically, Bolton then took the opportunity to reiterate the familiar complaint that many of our NATO allies are not meeting a commitment to spend 2% of their GDP on defense. Two days later, on Tuesday, the New York Times reported that in June Trump had made the complaint in letters to several NATO allies:

President Trump has written sharply worded letters to the leaders of several NATO allies — including Germany, Belgium, Norway and Canada — taking them to task for spending too little on their own defense and warning that the United States is losing patience with what he said was their failure to meet security obligations shared by the alliance.

It seems not to have occurred to Messrs. Trump and Bolton that Trump’s campaign to increase defense spending by NATO countries is hardly aided by his simultaneous campaign of making nice to NATO’s principal adversary.

The most embarrassing aspect of the interview may have been the portion dealing with Russia’s intrusion in the 2016 election and the evidence that it will do so again this year. On Thursday,Trump had tweeted “Russia continues to say they had nothing to do with Meddling in our Election!” Brennan was too kind to ask Bolton what on earth Trump had meant by that tweet. Bolton gamely insisted that he had raised the subject of Russian meddling with Putin, and then he proudly took great satisfaction in reporting that Putin had only denied meddling by the “Russian state,” leaving open the possibility, Bolton seemed to think, that Putin might admit to meddling by Russian non-state actors. Of course, a suggestion that anyone in Russia would meddle in the United States election without the clear approval of Vladimir Putin, is absurd.

Trump himself said on Fox News on Sunday that he was “going to mention” Russian meddling to Putin, but it was obvious that his heart was not in it. If Trump does bring himself “mention” it, it will plainly be with a wink and a nod that say “Sorry, Vlad, but you know I have to be able to say that I mentioned this.”

There is nothing on which Trump places more value on than being, or appearing to be, strong. In this case, however, feebleness of Trump’s posture recalls Neville Chamberlain’s mission to Munich to meet Herr Hitler and seek “peace for our time.” In fact, the comparison would be unfair to Chamberlain who at least had a clearer idea of what he hoped to accomplish in Munich than Trump apparently does for his mission of appeasement to Helsinki. Nevertheless, it would be fitting for Trump to carry on his Helsinki visit a replica of Chamberlain’s famous umbrella.