A series of events of the past week confirmed that Donald Trump is a Russian asset and provided a glimpse of how the post-American World Order will work. After Trump betrayed America’s allies the Kurds in such a spectacular fashion, we will see Vladimir Putin ascendant around the world. In the Middle East, where people are more savvy about power and don’t pussyfoot around Robert Mueller-style, leaders already know that they should ignore Trump and turn to Putin to solve their problems.
Ukraine, in particular, should take note: smaller or weaker nations will be betrayed in a similar way — in late-night calls between strongmen and announced on Twitter. And, when Ukraine is surrendered to Putin, watch Trump explain that it was Ukraine’s own fault.
In the triumphalist climate after the collapse of the Soviet Union, then U.S. President George Bush Sr. declared a New World Order. The United States will be the only global superpower and it will extend the peace, prosperity and democracy it had brought to its Western allies to nations around the globe.
Americans of all political beliefs, left and right, tended to concur. My boss at the time, a guy who headed the international credit ratings department at Standard & Poor’s, expressed regret that Ronald Reagan, whom he loathed, would enter history as the one who won the Cold War.
There is no danger of that now. The Cold War is by no means over. Just as historians now tend to regard the period between the two world wars as merely a 2o-year truce, so the 1991-2016 period might be eventually seen as an interlude. The world wars were a single conflict to contain Germany — a task that seems to have been accomplished. The Cold War is a battle to contain Russia. The outcome of that war is still very much in doubt.
Or it may be viewed in a different way. World War II was a conflict to contain fascist/authoritarian regimes that arose out of the massive tragedy of World War I. It was therefore inevitable that after defeating Germany and its allies, Western democracies would engage Stalin’s Soviet Union, their ally of convenience against Hitler. The West came out victorious in 1991, but if we look around today we see fascist authoritarianism resurgent around the world.
True, it has now assumed a different guise and has been stripped of its ideological content. But it has been a mutation, like that of the HIV virus, rather than a change in substance. If Hitler or Stalin could observe us from wherever in Hell they are being punished, they would approve of both Putin and Trump.
Last week, Trump, who can never keep his mouth shut, has definitively blown his cover. Whatever the reason — his little-boy admiration for a real strongman (as opposed to the one Trump has been playing on TV), the notorious pee tape, the Russian money in his elusive income tax returns or an outright recruitment by the KGB-FSB, Trump has been doing Putin’s work.
Look at the facts that have recently emerged. One day after firing FBI Director James Comey, Trump invited the Russian foreign minister and the Russian ambassador to the White House and told them that he feels liberated. It now turns out he also assured them that he is not concerned about their election interference.
It also turns out that his lawyer Rudy Giuliani was originally looking for evidence that Ukrainians, not Russians, had interfered in the 2016 US election.
Trump’s attorney general, meanwhile, is looking into the origins of the Russian interference probe by Robert Mueller — once again in order to exonerate Putin.
Another damning revelation: Trump told U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May that he didn’t believe that Russia had been behind the attempted poisoning of former KGB agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury.
The ongoing Ukrainegate scandal focuses on Trump’s efforts to dig up dirt on his political rival. The fact that the tit-for-tat blackmail involved hundreds of billions of US military aid to Ukraine, including defensive weapons, is somehow secondary. But withholding of military aid has to be seen in the context of Trump’s habitual sycophancy to Putin, efforts to discredit U.S. intelligence and national security agencies and weaken the Western alliance. As recently released documents revealed, Russian agents uncorked champagne after Trump’s election victory, declaring sarcastically that they had made America great.
Trump’s decision to let Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan deal with Kurdish fighters in Syria is another move that benefits Putin — and not only because it yet again shows the United States as a colossus with feet of clay. Look at how much better positioned Moscow. In the 1970s, it had only Syria and Egypt as its allies, and they were both soundly walloped by Israel in the 1973 war. Worse, after the Camp David Accord, Egypt made peace with Israel and became an American client, while the blunder of invading Afghanistan made the USSR the enemy to all Muslims.
Now Putin gets credit for propping up his client in Syria, and the US withdrawal from Syria likely means that Bashar al-Assad will soon consolidate control over all of Syrian territory. Russia has a variety of transactional alliances in the region, which now include Iran and Saudi Arabia (where Putin is paying an unprecedented visit), as well as Israel (where he has a strong Russian-speaking base of support). And he’s even on good terms with NATO member Turkey, which has become alienated from the West despite Trump’s sellout.
Americans dither about the true nature of Trump’s relationship with Putin: no evidence of collusion, no conspiracy, etc. The feckless Democrats have allowed him to turn the tables on them, accusing them of treason and even collusion with Russia. In the Middle East, people can clearly see that Putin is Trump’s spymaster. They’re falling over themselves to curry his favor.
But the betrayal of the Kurds will have an even greater impact on the nascent World Order. The Ukrainians and the Kurds have a lot in common. Not as much as the Ukrainians and the Irish, but still plenty. They are nations whose national aspirations were repeatedly frustrated and betrayed, who were dominated by their more powerful co-religionists and whose existence as separate nations was repeatedly denied.
Ukraine has had two periods of national independence over the past 1oo years, one short-lived and another that has lasted nearly three decades. Now the country’s existence is being threatened by Russian aggression.
Ukrainians should keep a close look at what is happening to Syrian Kurds — and how it may later work out with Iraqi Kurds as well. They will do well to remember also how Chamberlain and Deladier betrayed Czechoslovakia — while blaming Prague for being uncooperative and antagonizing the Fuehrer.
But also look at Brexit as a quaint reminder of what the American-built old world order used to be. Boris Johnson wouldn’t have minded to run roughshod over Ireland. It’s a small economy heavily reliant on the U.K. for its well-being. Had it been up to him he would’ve told the Irish to go to hell and reinstated the internal Irish border. Or, depending on his political calculations of the moment, thrown his Northern Irish allies under the bus.
But he can’t do it because the European Union is old school, and by protecting Ireland it stands up to the Putins, Trumps, Erdogans, Netanyahus and others of their ilk. It also gives a glimmer of hope to Ukraine.
