Trump\’s Love of Putin Looking Worse and Worse with Every Passing Day
Trump\’s slavering over Putin was repulsive enough in light of Putin\’s long criminal history. It looks much worse in light of the events currently unfolding in Ukraine. But imagine how it will be seen, should Putin\’s army unleash a brutal new attack on its innocent neighbor.
Imagine how historians will view the sequence of events, from Russia\’s support of Trump in 2016 to Trump\’s defense of Putin’s seizure of Crimea to the Helsinki meeting where Trump embraced Putin\’s word over his own intelligence community to Trump\’s attacks on NATO and Trump\’s efforts to draw down NATO forces in Europe to Trump\’s withholding vital aid from Ukraine leading to his first impeachment. Imagine how it will look if Putin\’s 140,000 troops roll into Ukraine killing innocent Ukrainians and violating Ukraine sovereignty.
It is almost all too recent for us to see it as those in the future certainly will. Even now we can barely make clear how Trump helped Putin set the stage for this event, how he may have helped convince America would look away or be too weakened to respond.
Putin is the one responsible for what his army will or will not do. But Trump\’s stunning lack of judgment and character, his unprecedented incompetence and complete failure to understand geopolitics, and his disloyalty to his country and its allies, helped set the stage for all this.
As in so many other areas, as bad as the Trump era looked as it was unfolding, in this instance it will certainly look much, much worse with the benefit of hindsight. Fortunately, Trump was so bad he inadvertently helped set the stage for what will be Putin\’s comeuppance.
Putin surely saw Trump\’s rise as a sign of America\’s decline. He saw a country in retreat since the Bush fiascos in Iraq and Afghanistan. And so he did not count on the competence, leadership, experience, diplomatic skill or strength of the Biden Administration.
Trump helped create an image for the Russians of a NATO in disarray. So as the leaders of NATO have shown such unity and resolve, he has to have been taken aback. Now, he faces only bad choices.
Putin can pull back and admit his gambit failed. He can proceed and be hit with massive sanctions and possibly become bogged down in a long, costly, bloody conflict that cements his recognition on the world stage as a thug and, likely, a war criminal. (Should he proceed, he can no longer count on the boost in popular opinion at home he once got for his adventures in Georgia or Crimea. In fact, he is seeing unprecedented public challenges to his Ukraine strategy from top military leaders.)
As it happens, as bad as what is happening in Ukraine makes Trump look, it will ultimately make his hero and benefactor Putin look even worse. The toll that will be taken in the interim could be horrific. Innocents will tragically suffer.
But the likelihood of positive outcomes to the current Russian threat for its author or his Mar-a-Lago fanboy are very very low.
