Vladimir Putin's Pet President
The Manchurian candidate lashes out at NATO, and sends a signal to his benefactor in Moscow
Right-wing propagandist Tucker Carlson aired a fawning two-hour “interview” with Vladimir Putin on X, during which the Russian dictator spewed a litany of ahistorical nonsense that supposedly explained why Ukraine wasn’t a real country (including the gem that Poland started World War II by cooperating with Hitler, instead of Stalin’s Russia), and urged the U.S. to cut a deal with Moscow to end the war in Ukraine. Days later, the GOP’s presumptive nominee, Donald Trump, sent his own message to his ally in the Kremlin.
At a campaign rally in South Carolina, Trump told one of his “yes, sir” stories allegedly describing an encounter between himself and the leader of a large European country during his presidency, perhaps Germany, France, or Poland. He left it unnamed.
“One of the presidents of a big country stood up and said, “well, sir, if we don’t pay and we’re attacked by Russia, will you protect us?” I said, “You didn’t pay, you’re delinquent?” He said, “Yes, let’s say that happened.”
“No, I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want. You gotta pay your bills.”
His former top aides said no such conversation ever occurred, though that hardly matters, particularly with a pathological fabulist like Trump. Rather, the point was clear: Trump is ready to serve NATO up on a silver platter to the Kremlin, an idea he’s long flirted with. The intended recipient of his message was not the voters of South Carolina, but the dictator in Moscow.
Nevertheless, the raucous MAGA crowd bayed and cheered, excited at the prospect of Trump strong-arming some pampered European globalist prime minister like some kind of spray-tanned mafia don. They love this stuff, to the extent that people who attend Trump rallies can comprehend the intricacies of U.S. foreign policy, or discern Trump’s actual underlying motives.
Hint: they can’t.
In any case, the former KGB officer in the Kremlin surely took the hint, absorbing the unsubtle signal sent by the former and perhaps future leader of the free world, and his own longtime junior partner. This was the reestablishment of a crucial dialogue between the two men, one that will continue in the run-up to the election. The former KGB case officer must have been pleased with his prized asset, though also slightly concerned that Trump was giving away the game a bit too flagrantly.
After all, it’s not every day that a former American president gives the Kremlin carte blanche to swallow Europe. In his little story, Trump was offering to give away an allied European nation to Putin, even as Russian soldiers continue to wage a murderous war of aggression in Ukraine, at the cost of half a million lives and counting, in what is the deadliest conflict since the Second World War. The idea that Trump would encourage still more aggression from Russia is really quite astonishing, almost unbelievable.
Indeed, it’s insane.
The reaction to Trump’s fictitious anecdote was swift, as one more brick in the wall that is America’s network of allies and partners crumbled. The vast majority of Republicans did their usual dance of denial, claiming that his story merely meant that Trump was pressing European allies to pay more for their own defense, insisting that this was merely an unorthodox negotiating tactic.
Of course, they know better than that.
Meanwhile, the Senate suddenly passed $95 billion in new security assistance for Ukraine and Israel, under Mitch McConnell’s aegis, bucking Trump, and sending the bill to the house, where it faces an uncertain future under Speaker Mike Johnson, who’s clearly determined to block aid to Ukraine by any means necessary, in his own quid pro quo with Trump.
However, there’s been a fierce backlash from what little remains of the “establishment” GOP, and from Democrats, predictably.
Liz Cheney said “no sane American president would encourage” Russia to invade a NATO ally. Chris Christie reiterated that Trump was “unfit to be president of the United States.” The White House called his comments “appalling and unhinged.” President Biden gave Trump a further tongue-lashing on live television, while urging Congress to send Ukraine aid.
“Can you imagine? A former president of the United States saying that? The whole world heard it. And the worst thing is he means it. No other president in our history has ever bowed down to a Russian dictator.Let me say this as clearly as I can — I never will. For God’s sake, it’s dumb, it’s shameful, it’s dangerous, it’s un-American.”
National suicide
The alliance between Western Europe and the United States was constructed after World War II by the U.S. to maintain global stability and trade, and protect America’s own national security at home. In the aftermath of WWII, there was widespread recognition in Washington that America had been unable to stay out of the two world wars that originated in Europe despite wanting to, and thus American policymakers understood that European security was inextricably tied to America’s own national security.
After winning World War II, America’s global leadership was a fact, for better or worse, and President Harry Truman grasped this, when he brought NATO into being. If Americans didn’t want Joseph Stalin’s troops marching into Western Europe, and spitting out communist satellites, NATO was a necessity.
Likewise, if Americans didn’t want countries like Germany and Italy eventually possessing nuclear weapons, and perhaps one day becoming American adversaries again, this was the mechanism to prevent that. NATO exists for the sake of nuclear nonproliferation, and to safeguard America’s own national security. It exists to prevent a global nuclear conflagration.
Of course, Beijing and Moscow would kill for a network of voluntary alliances like NATO. Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin must be thoroughly enjoying watching Trump tear apart this precious system, like a sadistic child ripping the wings off a butterfly, enjoying the destruction.
Despite the fact that Trump’s rhetoric aims to reduce the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to a cheap protection racket, NATO effectively won the Cold War, and has thus far prevented the outbreak of World War III. The only time its vaunted Article 5 collective security clause has been invoked was after 9/11, and on behalf of the United States, with numerous NATO nations sending their own troops to Afghanistan and Iraq.
In other words, NATO exists for America’s benefit, first and foremost. NATO is easily history’s most successful military alliance, which explains the stunned disbelief in European capitals that a populist American president would use it to gouge America’s own allies, and to prop up a long political romance between himself and Vladimir Putin.
It just makes no sense.
Unless, of course, you’re Donald Trump, and you’re angling to send a message of friendship and reliability to the man in the Kremlin, perhaps in return for another FSB/GRU campaign of “active measures” designed to swing the upcoming election, similar to what the Kremlin employed in 2016 against Hillary Clinton, successfully, I might add.
For his part, Trump intuitively understands that Putin’s friendship isn’t free, and so he’s making a down payment, pressing Republicans to cut off aid to Ukraine, and teasing the destruction of NATO that he’ll pursue if reelected. NATO isn’t a millitary alliance to Trump; it’s something he can use to purchase Putin’s loyalty, and buy himself another round of election interference.
It really is just that simple, and that ugly. Beyond Trump’s own natural preference for dictators, NATO is something he can offer in a quid pro quo to the Kremlin. And why not? Trump doesn’t give a damn about American security, European security, Ukraine, Taiwan, or anything else.
He cares only about Trump.
Cui bono?
Donald Trump operates from a place designed to secure his own personal fortune, rather than, say, the welfare of the United States. This is the key feature of autocrats; they work for their own personal benefit, as opposed to working for the nation they govern. The idea that an American president would voluntarily torch America’s postwar system of alliances can only be understood in this context.
Tragically, the Republican Party has been remade in this authoritarian image, and the vast majority of elected Republicans have gone along with Trump’s hostile takeover, for reasons of political opportunism and survival. Their cowardice and venality are what defines them now, and together they place Trump’s interests above the country’s, again and again and again.
This is merely the latest chapter in that long and painful saga.
Notably, Trump’s found a way to make the annihilation of NATO and, what would almost certainly be more war in Europe, sound palatable to his voters, by characterizing these European nations as somehow cheating the United States, and owing us money. Of course, this isn’t true, but it hardly matters, when Trump himself constructs his own reality out of whole cloth.
They don’t pay us to be our allies. They pay for their own national defense, at levels which have often been lower than Washington would have liked, for reasons of deterrence. Thus, NATO established alliance-wide goals of devoting 2 percent of GDP on defense, a goal many members have now reached, particularly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Obviously, Trump could care less about increasing our allies’ defense spending for reasons of deterrence, when he’s inviting a revanchist, aggressive Russia to “do whatever the hell they want.”
This isn’t about defense spending. It’s about Trump offering a gift to his benefactor in the Kremlin, something of immense geopolitical value to the American nation, but that is meaningless to himself. NATO is that shiny object, along with American democracy.
Vladimir Putin’s killing two birds with one stone, as it were. He’s surely glad to see those two things collapse in flames, and it must be even sweeter knowing that it’s an American responsible for their destruction, compromised as he is. Even if it makes a thermonuclear World War III far more likely, Trump’s clearly ready to mortgage American and European security in his bid to retake the White House.
God forbid he succeeds.