In Dissing Angela Merkel and NATO, What Was Trump Telling Putin?

Even more than with most subjects, when Trump brings up Russia he seems to be speaking of something that is defined less by reality than by what he needs it to be.

.. One of the harder points to sort out, when President Donald Trump launches into a tirade, is whom his angry words are actually targeting, and why.

.. The trouble there started on Wednesday, with a breakfast at which Trump announced that Germany is now “totally controlled by Russia”—that it is a “captive” state.

This in itself was a wild claim, given that Trump’s only evidence of Germany’s subjugation was that Chancellor Angela Merkel was allowing Gazprom, the Russian energy giant, to construct a natural-gas pipeline to her nation. But it was an especially odd outburst in view of the context and the timing. Trump, after a stop in the United Kingdom, was headed to Helsinki for a summit with Vladimir Putin that will begin with a one-on-one meeting in which Trump will be unconstrained even by his own team. Last week, he described the agenda for that meeting, alarmingly, as “loose.”

.. Even more than with most subjects, when Trump brings up Russia he seems to be speaking of something that is defined less by reality than by what he needs or wants it to be at the moment. Indeed, almost every mention of Putin in the course of Trump’s trip was disorienting, as he skittered from saying that the Russian President was “nice to me” to warning that nato was selling itself into Russian slavery. So what was Trump really worked up about last week, when he spoke about enemies, allies, and Russia?

.. One possibility, as always with this President, is money. “They pay billions of dollars to Russia, and now we have to defend them against Russia?”

.. Trump, however, seems to reject the entire premise of a mutual defense, viewing nato as a kind of bizarro protection racket, in which the Mob boss hands out envelopes of cash to the shopkeepers.

.. “We’re the schmucks paying for the whole thing.”) On Thursday, Trump proclaimed,

“I believe in nato,” then immediately undermined the sentiment by complaining that Europe was unfair to American farmers.

.. Another likely explanation for this performance is that the nato members were simply being subjected to the phenomenon of one bully showing off to another. “He’s a competitor,” Trump said of Putin. “Somebody was saying, Is he an enemy? Mmm, no, he’s not my enemy. Is he a friend? No, I don’t know him well enough.” Trump, by that measure, isn’t interested in anyone’s relationship with Putin except his—not Europe’s, not America’s. The policy contents of his demands were hardly relevant; his message to Putin was that he had yelled at nato.

.. Trump’s European tantrum was also, no doubt, intended for the home audience.

.. Russia, in this sense, becomes shorthand for all “those things”—the fakery and dodgy promises and money—that are just a part of the daily life of an American political candidate.

.. he said that May had “wrecked” Brexit, because “she didn’t listen to me.” He then proceeded to endorse, as a future Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, May’s freshly departed, self-indulgently destructive Foreign Secretary, largely on the ground that “he obviously likes me.” With that, and a swipe at immigration in Europe (“You are losing your culture”)

Is Putin the ‘Preeminent Statesman’ of Our Times?

Putin stands against the Western progressive vision of what mankind’s future ought to be. Years ago, he aligned himself with traditionalists, nationalists, and populists of the West, and against what they had come to despise in their own decadent civilization.

What they abhorred, Putin abhorred. He is a God-and-country Russian patriot. He rejects the New World Order established at the Cold War’s end by the United States. Putin puts Russia first.

.. And in defying the Americans he speaks for those millions of Europeans who wish to restore their national identities and recapture their lost sovereignty from the supranational European Union. Putin also stands against the progressive moral relativism of a Western elite that has cut its Christian roots to embrace secularism and hedonism.

.. what has Putin done to his domestic enemies to rival what our Arab ally Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi has done to the Muslim Brotherhood he overthrew in a military coup in Egypt?

.. What has Putin done to rival what our NATO ally President Erdogan has done in Turkey, jailing 40,000 people since last July’s coup—or our Philippine ally Rodrigo Duterte, who has presided over the extrajudicial killing of thousands of drug dealers?

.. Much of the hostility toward Putin stems from the fact that he not only defies the West, when standing up for Russia’s interests, he often succeeds in his defiance and goes unpunished and unrepentant.

.. There is another reason Putin is viewed favorably. Millions of ethnonationalists who wish to see their nations secede from the EU see him as an ally. While Putin has openly welcomed many of these movements, America’s elite do not take even a neutral stance.

Putin has read the new century better than his rivals. While the 20th century saw the world divided between a communist East and a free and democratic West, new and different struggles define the 21st.

.. The new dividing lines are between social conservatism and self-indulgent secularism, between tribalism and transnationalism, between the nation-state and the New World Order.