As a presidential candidate, Donald Trump
promised to ban Muslims from the entering the country and to
make Mexico pay for a border wall. He pledged to level the
economic playing field with China and to renegotiate the “very
bad” Iran deal. These policies were red meat for his political
base, even if he served them a bit on the rare side compared to
his Republican predecessors.
Trump’s Russia policy is different. His admiration of Vladimir
Putin, his promise that “we will be looking at the annexation of
Crimea” — presumably in a more favorable light than Barack Obama
did — and his skepticism toward NATO put the incoming president
at odds with his party. Establishment Republican elites
(including Vice President-elect Mike Pence) have been skeptical
of these arguments, and these policy pledges brought Trump few
political benefits at the ballot box. Of course there was much
happy talk about Putin among Trump supporters late in the
campaign, but this was likely more an anti-Obama and
anti-Clinton message than a pro-Putin one. A December poll found
that even among Trump supporters only 35 percent had a favorable
view of Vladimir Putin, while 51 percent had an unfavorable
view.
Since winning the election, Trump has doubled down on his Russia
policy by dismissing claims that the Kremlin hacked the U.S.
political system and continuing to praise President Putin. This
stance is even more puzzling given that in 2014 Trump called
Russia a geopolitical foe and “our biggest problem.” Why has
President-elect Trump’s Russia policy become so friendly to the
Kremlin?
The argument du jour, of course, is that Trump has been
compromised by Russian intelligence in one or several ways. We
have suddenly learned the word kompromat, meaning compromising
material used to wield power over supporters and rivals alike,
which is a bread-and-butter tactic in Russian politics.
Unverified documents behind CNN’s stunning report that U.S.
intelligence agencies had briefed both Obama and Trump about a
dossier of compromising material about Trump gathered by Russian
intelligence suggest a range of possibilities. There could be a
video of lewd behavior, perhaps shot during Trump’s hosting of
the Miss Universe contest in Moscow in 2013. There could be
hacked emails — perhaps about Russia’s involvement in the
election — that have not yet been released. There could be
direct payments from the Kremlin that Trump would prefer not to
make public.
To no one’s surprise, on Tuesday Putin denied Russia’s
involvement in the hacking scheme and charged that those who
spread false reports such as this are “worse than prostitutes.”
A top Russian analyst of cyber-espionage, Andrei Soldatov, had a
more mixed assessment of the Trump dossier, noting that while
there are certainly errors of fact and interpretation in the
document, “it is a good reflection of how things are run in the
Kremlin.”
Claims that the president-elect has been seriously compromised
in some unknown fashion are certainly plausible and have been
making the rounds for some time. Well before CNN took the story
public, Tom Graham, a longtime Russia hand currently at
Kissinger Associates, noted: “I think they [the Kremlin] most
certainly have something on Trump … I don’t know what it is but
I think certainly more is going to be leaked and made public in
the months ahead. There’s got to be a dossier on Trump.”
Kompromat could account for Trump’s surprising turn to pro-Putin
policies and there is still much more to learn. But the evidence
to date needs further vetting. The now-infamous Trump dossier
published by BuzzFeed is largely based on as-yet-unverified
claims from a single former British intelligence agent. While
the U.S. and U.K. intelligence communities finds this officer to
be a credible source, the information he has provided has not
been checked out thoroughly. There may be a smoking gun linking
the Kremlin and Trump, but we haven’t seen it. At least not yet.
A second and not unrelated argument is that Trump’s business and
financial interests are behind this policy shift. Trump has a
long and unsuccessful history of trying to enter first the
Soviet and then the Russian hotel and real estate market.
Currying favor with the Kremlin would reverse this history of
failure. Perhaps more importantly, Trump’s business operations
in the U.S. have benefited from deals made with Kremlin-friendly
oligarchs in Russia and neighboring countries. In 2008, during a
rough economic patch for the company, Donald Trump Jr. told
investors that on a range of project from Dubai to New York: “We
see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.” Adding to the
speculation is Trump’s continued refusal to release tax and
other financial information that could address these concerns.
There is much unknown about links between Trump and Russian
financiers. But if Trump was looking for a moneymaking operation
for the Trump Organization, wouldn’t he be better off cozying up
to China, where economic prospects are far better than in
Russia? In addition, aren’t there easier ways to pad the Trump
family bottom line than relying on capital from the
rough-and-tumble market of Russia?
A number of commentators have noted that Trump’s budding
bromance with Putin might be at the root of his Moscow-friendly
policies. Trump has been quick to compliment Putin’s leadership
style and it is easy to speculate that Putin is the type of
strong leader that Mr. Trump aspires to be. Whether Mr. Putin is
actually a “strong” leader is an open question, but Trump
certainly seems to see him that way.
This fails to explain, however, why Trump’s foreign policy is so
consistent with the goals of the Kremlin. Admiration of Putin’s
leadership style doesn’t require the president-elect to adopt
pro-Kremlin policies. Indeed, this “strong-man wannabe”
explanation could just as easily predict that Trump would pursue
a hawkish rather than dovish stance toward Russia. One can
imagine Trump pumping up his macho image by taking a hardline
position against Russian expansion. (Please keep your shirt on,
Mr. President-elect.) If that happened, pundits would surely
argue that he was trying to out-Putin Putin.
The most charitable interpretation of this matter is that Trump
sees Russia as a bulwark against what he calls “radical Islam”
and a rising China. One could argue (although I would not) that
a budding strategic alliance between Russia, Israel and the U.S.
makes some strategic sense. Russian policy in Syria, however,
seems more aimed at driving out U.S. influence than at defeating
ISIS. And the Kremlin seems far more keen on allying with
Beijing against the U.S. than the other way around. In Europe
too, Russia’s actions hardly seem aimed at promoting better
relations with the U.S.
Further undermining that argument is that Trump and his inner
circle have not advanced the case for a new détente with Russia
with any level of sophistication. Indeed, one of the most
striking things about Trump’s Russian policy is the lack of any
serious rationale to back it up beyond his wistful question:
“Wouldn’t it be nice if we got together with Russia and knocked
the hell out of ISIS?” Trump’s offer over the weekend to trade
nuclear arms cuts for removing economic sanctions on Russia
seemed equally improvised.
The lack of any credible explanation from Trump about his sharp
break with Republican orthodoxy (and, increasingly, Democratic
orthodoxy as well) and the continued opacity of Trump’s finances
is enough to raise serious doubts about the goals and intentions
of American policy toward Moscow. If we don’t have any clear
sense of why Trump is sidling up to the Kremlin, neither do our
allies around the globe. Therein lies the danger. Wars often
start not from any particular country’s desire for conflict, but
because of misperceptions and miscommunication about the
intentions and capacities of others. In this sense, Trump’s
inscrutable Russia policy has put the world at risk.
Timothy Frye is chair of the political science department at
Columbia University and writes on politics, economics and
Russia. |