Independent counsel Robert Mueller has indicted 13 Russians for waging
information warfare against the United States by tampering with the
American electoral process in 2016. Sadly but predictably, America’s
commander-in-chief did not respond by rallying his country to meet the
threat. Rather, President Donald Trump went out of his way to dodge the
question of Russian interference, while publicly attacking the officials
and institutions that have had the temerity to confront that issue
head-on.
Observers from both sides of the political spectrum, appropriately,
deplored Trump’s abdication of his duty to defend the nation. Yet this
episode also has a broader significance: It gives the lie to the idea
that the U.S. can have a constructive foreign policy while a profoundly
destructive individual is president.
This idea has commanded a respectable following since Trump took office.
The fact that Trump appointed mostly mainstream figures to key
positions, and that his “America first” agenda has been considerably
watered down in practice, has led a number of Republican policy hands to
argue that the administration’s actions have been broadly praiseworthy
even if the president’s rhetoric has not. Elliott Abrams, who worked for
Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, has argued that Trump has
adopted a “fairly familiar Republican approach to foreign policy.”
Matthew Kroenig, who advised the Mitt Romney and Marco Rubio
presidential campaigns, contends that the administration has “the right
people” and “the right positions.”
As I point out in my new book, “American Grand Strategy in the Age of
Trump,” these arguments are not entirely wrong. Despite his campaign
promises, Trump has not (yet) launched an all-out trade war with China,
torn up U.S. alliances, or quit the North American Free Trade Agreement
and the World Trade Organization. In these and other cases, his advisers
have persuaded him to take a more moderate course.
Even with respect to Russia, a similar pattern has prevailed. Trump
continues to talk up the dangerous fantasy of a rapprochement with
Putin, yet his administration has increased funding for forward defense
in Eastern Europe, resolved to provide lethal weaponry to Ukraine, and
pursued other policies that Russia hawks should welcome.
It is thus true that there are pockets of normality in U.S. policy, even
in the age of Trump. What this most recent manifestation of Trump’s
bizarre stance toward Russia demonstrates, though, is that there is only
so much containing, circumventing and moderating of a president who
refuses to take his duties seriously.
It is important to stipulate here that we don’t know precisely why Trump
is so reflexively dismissive of the mountains of concrete evidence
documenting a deliberate Russian campaign to suborn American democracy.
It could be that Moscow possess some compromising information on him or
his prior business dealings. It could be that he genuinely believes he
is a diplomatic genius who can strike a grand bargain with Russian
President Vladimir Putin. It could be that Trump perceives any
discussion of Russian electoral interference as an assault on his
presidential legitimacy, and that he is simply too narcissistic to
separate that issue from the broader national wellbeing.
Whatever the answer, Trump’s refusal to personally take on the
information-warfare threat from the Kremlin is crippling U.S. policy in
several ways.
First, it is discouraging concrete — and badly needed — responses to the
threat. If, as seems likely, there are covert efforts that the
intelligence community might undertake either to strengthen U.S.
defenses or retaliate against Russian attacks, they would likely require
additional legal authorities or presidential findings — neither of
which this president is likely to support.
In the same vein, European officials have privately advocated greater
trans-Atlantic cooperation to address the common danger posed by Russian
meddling, but Trump’s indifference to that danger has limited the
possibilities for such collaboration. Within the U.S. government, too,
Trump’s attitude is raising the political costs and risks for advisers
who seek to counter Russian measures. It is hardly surprising, then,
that the Department of Homeland Security and other government agencies
have made so little progress in hardening American defenses, even as
intelligence officials have warned in increasingly dire tones that the
Russians will seek to re-run the 2016 playbook in 2018. In the American
system, decisive action generally requires presidential buy-in, and that
has been sorely lacking.
Second, Trump is making it impossible for the U.S. to issue clear and
believable deterrent threats. Information warfare and cyberattacks are
inherently difficult to prevent, and so a better approach may be to go
on the offensive, by threatening sharp retaliation through reciprocal
cyberattacks or other measures. But such threats only work if they are
seen to be credible, and why would anyone believe that Washington would
inflict significant costs on Russia — and risk significant escalation of
bilateral tensions — when Trump declines even to acknowledge that a
threat exists?
Third, the president’s position is not just having pernicious effects
within the executive branch; it is undercutting the broader national
will and consensus needed to meet a grave security challenge. The genius
of the Russian meddling in 2016 was that it avoided the normal “rally
around the flag” effect that often occurs in the wake of a foreign
attack. Instead, it pitted Americans against one another — Republicans
against Democrats, state authorities against the federal government.
Another president would surely see it as his or her duty to surmount
such divisions by issuing a broad, nonpartisan call to arms. Yet Trump
is aggressively politicizing the issue, impugning the reputations of the
agencies that are striving to defend U.S. democracy, and thus making it
far less likely that the country will achieve unity in the face of
danger.
Finally, Trump’s performance is reminding us of the critical role the
American president plays in leading not just his own country but the
larger “free world,” and how powerfully the absence of that leadership
is felt at times of crisis. The liberal international order America has
anchored for generations is facing an array of challenges from
authoritarian, revisionist powers, namely Russia and China. Yet rather
than placing himself at the vanguard of the international response,
Trump is shirking that obligation. And in doing so, he is exacerbating
the demoralization and division that is weakening the liberal West just
as the dangers are mounting.
To borrow from former French President Jacques Chirac, the position of
leader of the free world is indeed vacant today — no matter how hard
Trump’s advisers labor to make it seem otherwise.
Read more: The end of America's leaderless foreign policy | The Japan Times
