Is Trump the Peace President?

Democratic Doves have a Dilemma

Peace-Democrats need to decide whether to praise Trump for re-setting American policy toward Russia or to deride Trump for being a puppet and patsy.

They cannot do both.

An astute reader of this blog, Herb Rothschild, a Democrat and long time peace activist, noted that this blog looks at political messaging and positioning and has written that Trump has made himself vulnerable to criticism that he is too "soft" on Putin.   This writer observed that it is high time that America re-evaluate its policy toward Russia, that reducing friction with Russia was in our interest, and that the greatest risk of devastating nuclear exchange would come from mis-steps that led to confrontation with Russia.  So Democrats should lay off the Trump-the-puppet talk.

I do believe Trump has made himself vulnerable to criticism from Russia-phobes from the national security right (McCain, Graham, Weekly Standard, National Review), from anti-Russia Israeli partisans, and from Democrats who have taken political refuge in anti-Russian policy because anything else would make them targets of being "soft on communism/Russia."   People opposed to Trump generally are looking for weak spots.

Herb Rothschild, who I quote at length below, and frequent guest blogger Thad Guyer, both consider rapprochement with Russia good policy. Guyer has written that it would be the single biggest policy achievement of a Trump presidency.   

 

Meanwhile, Democrats are choosing a new leader of the DNC and it is revealing that Democrats are not yet clear on which approach to take toward Trump.  Labor Secretary Tom Perez suggest the McConnell approach: relentless opposition, which makes it harder for Trump to govern and makes clear and evident that the inability of Trump to solve the problems of health care, lower taxes while shrinking the deficit, job growth, racial harmony, ending crime, etc. are the fault of the GOP.  

The Republicans have the levers of power, he says, make certain the public understands that.  Deny him bi-partisan anything exactly like the way Republicans were unified in opposing everything-Obama.  Politically it worked.  It was a clear message.   Meanwhile, Chuck Schumer takes a different approach: work with Trump when he acts like a NY liberal and oppose him when he acts like a Bible Belt conservative.  Be practical.  Act like legislators.  Be the grown up.  Show the difference between Democrats and Republicans by being the party of reason.

Peace-Democrats are in a bind.  Which way to go?  The first thing they might consider is stopping fellow Democrats from the current line of attacking Trump for being a Putin puppet. For one thing, it may not work.  Trump may be too bellicose in language to look like a puppet.  The theory is that one cannot sell something that is implausible on its face--and yet Trump sold Republicans on the idea that the official Hawaii birth records for Obama were fraudulent, that two newspapers were in on the conspiracy 50 years ago, and that Obama is a Kenyan.  This suggests that the attack only needs to be interesting and ugly, not plausible.

Maybe the wrong point of attack

It is a temptation for Democrats to attack Trump's Russia policy.  Trump haters and trollers like baiting Trump any place he is vulnerable.  The meme is out there and circulating. Saturday Night Live puts a bare chested "Putin" on with an Alex Baldwin "Trump" nearly every week. 

Click Here: SNL clip

But this could be a victory not worth having because the Trump-as-puppet meme is counterproductive to peace-Democrat's preferred policy.   Moreover, it is a loser politically since it divides the party between hawk and dove Democrats, and the elections of 1968 and 1972 stand as examples of the peril of that.

Napoleon's army stopped by blood and miles.

Many foreign policy realists, e.g. Stratfor, consider American policy in eastern Europe to have been provocative for Russia, believing we overreached by putting the Balkan states into NATO and acting as if Russia had no deep genuine interest in Ukraine or Crimea, where they have long housed the Russian warm water fleet.   We armed historically hostile nations on their doorstep.  Russia has memories of Napoleon sending an army east in June of 1812 and Hitler sending one east in June of 1941.  Russia's great asset was strategic depth and America and its allies were pressing to take it away by westernizing Poland and the Balkan states and now Ukraine.  

Russia thinks we picked the fight and Russian citizens support Putin. Russia-phobes applaud this push onto Russia's doorstep as a victory.   Peace-Democrats think we are making trouble.

The peace-Democrat strategy probably needs to abandon the "anti-Trump all the time" approach and work to persuade the anti-Trump trollers and baiters to criticize Trump for his many other weaknesses, but not the Putin one.   It is not the nature of the current Democratic party to be unified in its message, but over the next year a leader or two will emerge and they will calibrate an approach: either Trump is a fool and a patsy for Putin, or this is one of the few good things Trump is doing.   Ultimately the choice may be made by Putin, not the Democrats themselves, because Putin's behavior will determine whether Russia is seen as an expansionist evil empire or a country America can work with.

Meanwhile, Herb Rothschild, whom I consider a "Peace Democrat", writes cogently and I am presenting excerpts from a talk he will give to a local political organization this week.  This is an example of the new direction that Democrats may point: solidify their support of the dove Democrats and break free from the McCain/Graham crowd, people who are intractably Republican.

During one of the debates between Clinton and Trump, she was trying to score points by tarring him with a Putin brush. His response was that it would be a good thing if the US had improved relations with Russia. Now perhaps some of us were listening with so partisan a mindset that we didn’t note the irony of witnessing a Democrat talking like a hawk about U.S.-Russian relations and a Republican talking like a dove. Or perhaps we believed Clinton was justified because Putin is a bad guy and we good guys shouldn’t have relationships with bad guys. But isn’t this exactly the kind of objection we had to overcome when we were trying to end the U.S.-Soviet arms race in the 70s and 80s? Didn’t we keep arguing that it’s not about whitewashing Russia and its leaders or about trusting them, but rather about easing hostilities and negotiating verifiable arms reductions?

The US-Russian relationship must be reset. Since the break-up of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, every US administration has pursued policies highly provocative of Russian resentment and push-back. And Hillary Clinton was a proponent of such policies. I voted for her knowing that, were she to win, I would have to oppose this aspect of her foreign policy—among many others—tooth and nail. One bright spot of Trump’s victory is that at last we have a chance to set a new course.

Time doesn’t permit me to develop extensively my assertion about our provocative actions toward Russia. The main one has been our expansion of NATO up to the Western border of Russia and our attempt to bring both the Ukraine and Georgia into NATO. It’s impossible to understand Putin’s interventions in those two former Soviet republics and his reclaiming the Crimea for Russia without acknowledging our drive to encircle his country militarily. And note I said “reclaiming Crimea,” not “annexing” it—which is what the US media always say—because the Crimea was part of Russia from the time the Ottoman Empire ceded it to Catherine the Great in 1783 until 1954, when Krushchev capriciously transferred the Crimea, site of Russia’s sole warm water naval base, to the Ukraine.

More about NATO. At one point Trump called NATO “obsolete.” In an interview with the Times of London last Sunday, he said he caught a lot of flak for that, and he backtracked somewhat. But I for one believe that NATO should have been disbanded after the end of the Cold War, when the threat of a Soviet invasion of western Europe ended. Again we're hearing warnings about a Russian invasion, but who now has troops and weapons stationed in the Baltic states and other former Warsaw Pact nations? NATO, not Russia.