US domestic policy sabotages détente with Russia

The fact that those accused of spying cannot be arrested in the US makes the process risk-free for Mueller. Without arrests, no statements, without statements, no scrutinising of the quite substanceless allegations.

After Trump had said in Helsinki, in front of the assembled world press, that Putin’s disclaimer concerning Russian interference had been “strong and powerful,” and had added in a manner typical of him that he trusted both sides – the US intelligence agencies and Putin – the Establishment ran amuck and called him weakling, liar, traitor.

The perfidy of media reactions to Trump’s behaviour in Helsinki are a hard act to follow. The US president was elected according to the rules, but is accused by his own elites in his own country of winning the presidential campaign against Hillary Clinton almost two years ago only with Russian help. Now this US president met with the Russian president, who had been elected according to the rules of his own country. Trump’s “own” ranks accuse him of adhering to his election having been legitimate.

What else should he have done? Should he have joined the chorus of those who interpret Clinton’s electoral defeat not as her weakness but as Russian manipulation? In this way, Trump would have

1.  disavowed his electoral victory and delegitimised himself as president of the US;

2.  conceded that the Kremlin had so much influence in the world that it could at will pull political strings beyond the borders of Russia, and even in the strongest military power in the world, the US; and

3.  made out that the US electorate was stupid because it would have voted according to Russian standards and not at its own discretion.

The truth is that in the eyes of the representatives of the US Deep State, which is showing its ugly face ever more visibly, a mistake happened at the elections of 8 November 2016. The wrong candidate won.

Although it had just been possible to checkmate the popular Bernie Sanders in favour of Hillary Clinton, the establishment failed in preventing Trump’s success. Now, in their opinion, a clueless real estate shark reigns in the White House, who is not a died-in-the-wool representative of the military-industrial complex and does not know the customs in Washington. And what makes matters worse, even after two years in office, he accepts these customs only with difficulties – and usually only in the follow-up.

So it was again this time. Back in the US, Trump backpedalled in his own way. When Putin said it was not Russia (interfering in the US election campaign), he (Trump) had made a slip of the tongue in his answer. “I see no reason why it should not have been Russia,” Trump tweeted 24 hours after saying the opposite at the Helsinki press conference: “I see no reason why it should have been Russia.” The truth is extremely flexible, also – and even especially – in grand politics.

One final word on the obvious underlying cause of US domestic politics:

An experienced observer will permit himself to ask whether anyone in Washington really believes that Trump was elected by the Russian Kremlin rather than by the American voters.

The fact that foreign intelligence services operate abroad from their base corresponds to their job description. That is a fact which should have got about in the US especially, where senior security coordinator James Clapper admitted to a Senate hearing in early 2017 that according to his records, since World War II the US had intervened in foreign elections once a year on average.

The agitation about others acting in the same way can only be explained against the background that the (supposed) Russian intervention had actually hit a tender spot of the ruling interests.

However, excited the Washington establishment, to which Trump still does not seem to be admitted, was in its response to alleged election manipulations, Putin stayed calm. Asked by the moderator of Fox News for his opinion about the charges against the twelve Russian spies, the Kremlin head responded:

“That doesn’t interest me at all. These are internal US political games. Don’t take the relationship between Russia and the US hostage for internal political quarrels. […] It is not something American democracy can be proud of; using legal prosecution for political rivalry is unacceptable.”

A response of this kind would have become the political and media representatives of Washington well.             •

• Hannes Hofbauer, born 1955 in Vienna, studied economic and social history and works as a Publicist and Editor. His latest publications were published by Promedia Verlag: Balkankrieg: Zehn Jahre Zerstörung Jugoslawiens (2001) (Balkan War: Ten years of destruction of Yugoslavia), EU-Osterweiterung. Historische Basis – ökonomische Triebkräfte – soziale Folgen (2008) (EU enlargement to the East. Historical basis – economic driving forces – social consequences), Die Diktatur des Kapitals. Souveränitätsverlust im postdemokratischen Zeitalter (2014) (The dictatorship of capital. Loss of sovereignty in the post-democratic era) and Feindbild Russland. Geschichte einer Dämonisierung (2016). (The Bogeyman Russia. History of demonisation).

First published: www.rubikon.news from 19 July 2018

(Translation Current Concerns)