Claudia Rosset, The Hill: If Russian claws dug into US politics, Obama — not Trump — let it happen
Neo-conservatives cannot fail; they can only be failed.
“Claudia Rosett is Foreign Policy Fellow with the Independent Women’s Forum, and blogs at PJMedia.com.”
That same day, in New York, Secretary of State John Kerry meekly told a Russian-chaired meeting of the U.N. Security Council that the U.S. was prepared to “welcome” Russia’s “action,” unless Russia’s aim was to protect Syria’s President Bashar Assad, in which case, “we would have grave concerns.”
It seems Putin was unimpressed. The Russians, and Assad, are still there.
Now there’s a secret CIA assessment on Russian meddling in America’s election, which reportedly makes the controversial inference that Russia meant to help the wrong candidate win. And suddenly, just weeks before Trump is due to take office, Obama sees that Russia is a very great foe indeed, and before leaving office he must get to the bottom of it.
Obama’s policy has walked the conciliatory edge of neo-conservative prodding–with McCain and Grahams continuing as anti-Russian scolds. Someone had covert actions that tried to throw Russia’s election away from Putin, or at least Putin thinks so. Someone imposed severe economic sanctions on Russia for what? Is it clear? And someone allowed Syria to get rid of its chemical weapons and negotiated a multi-power agreement with Iran that was in Russia’s interest as well.
I’ve really not caught up with the internal intrigue that is going on relative to Russian hacks, but the public demeanor of the President is that it does not invalidate the election (an institutional necessity) and the private actions so far are not to declassify information that would make a strong case for Russian interference.
And of course, that provides the perfect whipsaw for PJMedia’s “damned if you do; damned if you don’t; double-damned if you’re black” blast propagated by The Hill.
On some things that conservative want, both Obama and Kerry have been going through the motions. They both understand that restabilizing Assad is the quicker way to destroying Daesh/ISIS/ISIL than allowing the Assad regime’s weakness to permit spaces to be open for Daesh movement into a whack-a-mole war. Too bad that McCain, Graham, and all the cheerleaders for the “moderate rebels” have not concluded that a return to normal politics is in order if you want to destroy terrorist politics.
The conservatives are as (more?) divided than the liberals and lefties on Trump’s major pivot in US foreign policy.
A first reading is that Russia (and possibly China havewell) have joined the Empire as co-equal senior partners–or the Empire has joined them. Interesting that Trump is punching up military-industrial-complex companies for cost overruns. Reckon that the US military might buy some off the shelf Russian or Chinese fighters that outperform the F-35? Or is Trump trying to normalize his administration with peaceniks?
All the unserious talk and the strange and contradictory appointments in the Team of Billionaires give Trump a freedom of making quick, arbitrary, and “madman” decisions in a world that likes predictability in diplomacy.
And PJMedia is looking backward, not forward while the American Conservative is looking forward. And The Hill is being its totally compromised media self.