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Frederic B. Hill, a part-time resident of Maine, was a foreign correspondent for The Baltimore Sun, foreign affairs director to U.S. Sen. Charles Mathias Jr. of Maryland, and a senior State Department official.
A perfect gift on President’s Day for most Republican senators and representatives is the good old white, blue and red.
Not the red, white and blue flag of the United States of America, but the tricolor of the Russian Federation. Given their meek reaction to the former president’s insulting and un-American invitation to Vladimir Putin to essentially invade NATO countries, his congressional acolytes, mainly in the U.S. House, should hang the Russian flag in their offices in Washington.
That would be the most fitting salute to Donald Trump, who offered an outrageous invitation to Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” to our NATO allies if they do not pay more for their own defense.
The NATO alliance has proved to be the linchpin of the defense and democracies of the West since its founding in 1949, deterring Soviet and Russian aggression. Article 5 — which Trump would ignore — commits all members to come to the defense of its allies in the event of an attack. In 2006, NATO members agreed to commit 2 percent of their gross domestic product on defense. For the record, 11 of NATO’s 31 members meet the 2 percent mark, and seven more are expected to meet that goal this year.
Trump’s comment at a rally last weekend should not surprise any sensible American since he has long shown his love for Russia and appreciation for Putin’s support for his presidential campaigns in 2016 and 2020.
For months now, Trump has sought to undermine U.S. assistance to Ukraine in its struggle to defend itself against Russia’s brutal invasion, which began two years ago next week — the largest major military aggression in Europe since World War II. He has repeatedly praised Putin; he has moved to encourage Republicans to block further assistance to Ukraine.
Trump’s invitation to Putin to invade NATO countries is little different than the disastrous decision of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain to appease Adolf Hitler in 1938, granting the German dictator most of his demands to take over Czechoslovakia, precipitating World War II.
Long before his first campaign for the presidency and ever since, Trump has shown great admiration for Russia — and it is not just an avowed liking for “strongmen” or Russian culture.
Trump has benefited immensely from Russian financial investments. His once struggling hotel empire gained financially from purchases by Russian oligarchs. His son, Eric Trump, when asked a few years ago how the hotel business was faring without major support from U.S. banks, reportedly bragged: “We have all the funding we need out of Russia.”
Against his own advisers’ wishes, Trump sought to invite Russia back into the G-7, from which Russia had been expelled after Putin’s seizure of Crimea and eastern Ukraine in 2014.
After the 2018 Helsinki summit, he dismissed the conclusions of American intelligence agencies and embraced the word of Putin that Russia did not intervene in the 2016 U.S. election.
The Mueller investigation, which found that “sweeping and systemic” interference by Russia in the 2016 election and found links between the Trump campaign and the Russian government, did not exonerate Trump. Further, the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee, including all Republican members, concluded that Russia did undertake a massive effort to intervene in the election.
A Senate report documented a wholesale attack by Russia’s Internet Research Agency, ranging from full-throated support for Trump to distorted information on Democrats.
Russia’s strategy, basically to weaken the United States by exploiting internal tensions, reverses the old Soviet-era strategy to seek support within America through the left wing, partly through unions that tended to support socialist policies. For the last decade, the Russian government has focused all its efforts on the right wing — once the most virulently anti-Russian of Americans.
Trump and his GOP tribesmen have turned the tables on historic Republican leaders such as former President Ronald Reagan — who predicted accurately that the Soviet Union would end up “on the ash heap of history,” a fate Putin bitterly resents — and the late U.S. Sen. John McCain, who called the Russian leader a thug and a murderer.
Republicans afraid to criticize Trump’s love affair with Russia need to read Alexander Hamilton’s essay in the 1787 Federalist Papers 22: “One of the weak sides of republics … is that they afford too easy an inlet to foreign corruption.” He added: It is “much easier for a foreign power … to perplex our councils and embarrass our exertions.”
