Advice to Democratic Doves: Don't Troll Trump regarding Putin

Again on SNL: Putin as Trump's handler

A meme is getting popularity: Trump is a Putin Puppet.   It is fun for progressives, it is payback, it is just the kind of thing Trump would do.  

That is the problem.   In the effort to de-legitimize Trump it legitimizes Trump tactics and could cause Trump to do foolish and impulsive things.

It can lead to war.

Seventy Year policy: Containment

Contain the USSR and now Russia.  America faces a real policy debate over how to handle a resurgent Russia.  The position of the United States has been that Europe must never have a single expansionist power, not Nazi Germany and in the post WW2 period, not the USSR.  After the disintegration of the USSR the West moved to put the Baltic states into Nato and  worked to fully westernize Ukraine and Georgia.  Russia, empowered by high oil prices and unified under Putin, squashed Georgian talk of joining NATO.  I am a Mentor to a student at a local college who is from Ukraine.  He says that the Russians have occupied eastern Ukraine, in uniforms, but unmarked by Russia.  Russia is reclaiming at least part of Ukraine. The official Russian position is that these are local people who have taken arms against Ukraine, not an invasion.  It is obvious that they are Russian troops, but it is simply denied.  

Russia wants to reclaim its influence over its borders.  The one policy change pushed by Trump at the Republican Platform was to weaken talk of opposition to Russia in the Ukraine.  Trump is attempting to re-set American policy.  Maybe we give Russia some of what it wants.  Maybe Russia is an enemy of our enemy, Islamic terrorism against the West, a reprise of Soviet alliance against Nazi Germany.

American leadership is conflicted on what to do.  Trump appears to want reset.  Trump's own nominees for Secretary of States and Defense both voice assurances to the Senate that they consider Russia a danger and they oppose lifting sanctions.  There will be debate within the new Administration.

Click Here: Superb Stratfor article on US-Russia policy

A serious debate over the US and Russia is taking place outside the administration as well.  Progressives hoping to weaken Trump's general influence by teasing him about being the lapdog of Putin in fact may be influencing American policy in a dangerous way.   Trump is thin skinned.  He hates being teased.

Teasing Trump may bring out his worst qualities and  Americans need Trump at his best when we evaluate Russia policy.  Trump at his worst does self-destructive things to save face, to avoid humiliation, and to counterpunch.   He lashes out.  He is intemperate.  Democrats are playing with fire here and Trump has shown himself to be a firecracker with a short fuse.   

It has been seven decades since America was in a total, global war, but we have been at actual regional wars nearly constantly during that period.  This blog's observations about the cost of war lead frequent guest post writer Thad Guyer to share his own observations and warnings to Democrats.  He served in Vietnam, which was an American war against China and Russia, played out as a war against Vietnam.  America had convinced itself that we were "containing communism", not that we were continuing French colonialism.   

The idea of "containment" is not just some words in a book or a policy sheet.  Fifty thousand Americans died because of that idea.

At the time of war the issues seem so important and worth killing for.  The leaders back in their Situation Rooms do not personally plan to die for these ideas, but they send young men to do so.  Then, some years later, the survivors of those wars return to the scene and reflect on the meaning of things.   My father wrote his memoirs, Memories of a Table Rock Boy, much of it involving his war years.   He returned to Germany 47 years later to see again the places where he fought and survived.   Thad Guyer is back in Vietnam, looking at what he did and writing about his experiences, both here in this blog, and elsewhere.  

He shares a warning.   It is not in the interests of world peace to make Trump look like a weakling.

Thad Guyer guest post:   “Donald Trump, Our Commander in Chief”

Thad Guyer 1971

America does the heavy lifting in war, and most of the fighting. I was around as Peter’s father, Bob Sage, wrote his war memoir. At 67, I better appreciate his effort than when Peter for months took dictation, sometimes as Bob wept. His anguish was not for himself, but fallen friends. Just as the elder Sage recalled deaths in war, I’ve done it for two years in Saigon.  The locations of mountains, rivers and villages recorded in my war journal enable me revisit my own battlegrounds from 1970. Randy Rankin’s eyes glazing over in death, the young Viet Cong woman with a hole in her forehead, the father with his 12 year old son killed in the crossfire while doing their laundry creekside. 

Clear out a landing spot

Every president has two constitutionally independent roles: (1) executing the laws passed by Congress; and (2) serving as commander in the chief, not just for the military, but for our intelligence services and diplomatic corp. The latter is the more life and death role, and ironically the one over which the people have the least say.  While Congress has the exclusive power to declare war, under the War Powers Act a president can unilaterally wage or respond to military conflict amounting to war.  

Trump is commander in chief and our regrets won’t change that, nor can Congress limit those constitutional powers. In think Americans are largely ignoring that reality.  We are foolishly baiting Trump toward bellicosity with Russia, a fierce militarized state of a stoic people who endured incomprehensible war horrors with millions killed. Agreed, we should not have a commander in chief who can be baited, but we do. 

We should be careful. 

Robert Sage, 1944

Both world wars originated in Europe, as any third likely will. Even Vietnam originated with the French, U.S. Marines taking over after the French were wiped out by Ho Chi Minh at Dien Bien Phu.  How wisely and responsibly Europe conducts itself historically has profound effects on where Americans bleed.  Trump is right that the E.U. has become militarily weak, and politically destabilized from its narcissistic liberalism in failing to defend its borders from uncontrolled mass migration.  A welcoming immigration policy that topples liberal governments in backlash is reckless.  Replacements like Trump appear. 

It was U.K. sacrifice that forestalled the European collapse in WWII until the U.S. could fight beyond the bloody beaches of Normandy.  Yet now Britain is quitting the E.U. largely because immigration destabilized British political order, as it did in Italy, and is doing in France, Germany and Greece. As E.U. immigration resentment grew to a head in the U.K. in 2013, in early 2014 Russia seized Crimea followed by eastern Ukraine. With the E.U. in political turmoil, Russia militarized the Polish border, muscled the U.S. aside in Syria, while China militarized the South China Sea and challenged U.S. use of international shipping lanes.

 87th Division crossed 47 years prior

The left media, with their correspondent reports from Frankfurt, Paris, Athens and Beijing buried deep, sneer at Trump’s warnings that peace won’t be preserved without a strengthened military, less bellicose relations with Russia, and a firmer stance with China.   My frequent work trips to China and Europe maybe enhance my perceptions, but definitely my anxiety. You can feel the currents in the streets. 

We who have witnessed our friends, enemies and villagers bleed, relate to war differently. It gives me no superior knowledge of war politics, but it does of war reality.  These experience compel me to squeeze out of myself as much legitimization and support for our commander in chief as I can, and to say he’s right whenever possible. 

Guyer: 44 years after a riverside ambush

Everybody I care about does a great job in highlighting Trump’s innumerable faults. But I think he’s right on the E.U. needing quick reform, and a new approach to dealing with Russia and China.  Baiting him is dangerous.