Originally Posted by Pete F.
For decades, if not centuries, scholars have debated which matters more in international affairs: structural forces, such as the relative power between states, or the ideas and decisions of individual leaders. But at least as far as the United States is concerned, President Donald Trump may put the debate to rest.
Another admission that he must be a stable genius.
THE DAMAGE DONE
That fact was most glaringly and disturbingly on display during the president’s call with Zelensky in July, during which Trump offered to lift the freeze on military assistance to Ukraine and meet the newly elected Zelensky in the Oval Office.
The transcript doesn't show him mentioning the freeze.
In return, Trump asked that Zelensky open new investigations into unsubstantiated allegations of corruption by Hunter Biden, former Vice President Joe Biden’s son, and purported Ukrainian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. (That account, originally based on a reconstructed transcript of the call, has since been bolstered by further evidence in text messages between State Department diplomats and Ukrainian officials and testimony from U.S. officials involved in U.S.-Ukrainian relations.)
Investigations, such as was done to Trump, are about looking into unsubstantiated allegations.
Trump has placed his private interests and ill-informed personal theories above all else.
That has as not yet been substantiated. Isn't that what's being investigated?
By not even mentioning Russia’s military interventions in Crimea and the Donbas during his call with Zelensky, Trump made clear his indifference to Ukraine’s sovereignty and democratic consolidation. That’s a win for Putin.
That "indifference" by U.S. policy was already made clear when the Obama administration forced the previous Ukraine president against his own sovereign will to fire his prosecutor.
Trump’s politicization of military assistance weakened the United States’ previously rock-solid commitment to Ukraine’s defense—another gift to Putin.
The assistance was given. Was that a gift to Putin.
By recording and publishing Zelensky’s obsequiousness and flattery of Trump in the call memo, he made the new Ukrainian leader look weak—yet another deliverable for Putin.
When the Obama administration made the previous Ukraine president look weak, was that a gift for Putin?
Trump’s subsequent repeated references to Ukraine as corrupt have likewise damaged the country’s reputation precisely at the moment when a newly elected president and parliament have an opportunity to break with the corruption of the past. Score one more victory for Putin.
By this reasoning, Obama and Biden damaged Ukraine's reputation with repeated references to Ukraine corruption. Trump claims that he was requesting an investigation that would, in effect, show that the Ukraine was no longer corrupt by exposing and clearing up the corruption that the previous U.S. administration kept repeating.
And this list doesn’t include the damage to the United States itself: Trump’s attempt to use taxpayer money in pursuit of private goals tarnishes the United States’ reputation as the leader of the free world.
Trump was pursuing the interests of the United States.
Impeachment proceedings set off by the call will distract his administration from engaging in critical foreign policy issues involving China, Iran, North Korea, and Venezuela.
No doubt, that is one of the reasons the proceedings are intended to do, as well as distracting our government from attending to internal matters, i.e. drug price reform, immigration problems, military funding, etc.
Trump’s misguided unilateral decisions in Syria also have played into Putin’s hands: Moscow benefits from the tensions that the Turkish offensive against the Kurds has caused within NATO.
Yeah, US pullouts of troops should be about US interests ("unilateral") not "guided" by opposing concerns of others. The "tensions" in NATO are being caused by Turkey, not the US. Turkey did not have to attack the Kurds. And if NATO was concerned about one of its members needing to be obstructed from such an attack, it should have posted NATO forces, imposed NATO pressure against Turkey's desires, and imposed NATO sanctions against Turkey or kicked Turkey out of NATO. NATO using U.S. force as the tip of its weak spear is getting old.
The Kurds, for their part, are turning to Syrian autocrat Bashar al-Assad and Putin in their desperate search for a new protector. More generally, the U.S. retreat in Syria has strengthened other U.S. foes—Assad, Hezbollah, Iran, and the Islamic State (or ISIS)—and unnerved the United States’ closest allies in the region. Washington now looks unreliable at a time when Moscow is positioning itself as an alternative power broker in the region—not only to the Kurds but to the Saudis, the Turks, and the Israelis.
Wow, Russia will be the power broker in the region. So Russia will be able to do what the U.S. couldn't. It will be able to maintain peace and stability and cooperation there with Russian power. Good luck to it being able to stretch its meager resources into such an endeavor. And if it were successful, would that be a bad thing? Would Russia have to give foreign aid to all those countries? Stretch its military and non-existent financial resources to pay for the mission? Would it have to become a more cooperative power in the world community rather than an opposing one?
A standard process for formulating and executing U.S. foreign policy would have foreseen these dangers and worked to counteract them. Such a process no longer exists, allowing one individual to let his personal interests and misguided intuitions radically reshape U.S. foreign policy. In the two biggest arenas of U.S.-Russian conflict over the last decade—Ukraine and Syria—Trump has just handed Putin and his allies major victories, without a fight and without receiving anything in return.
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