Unless you slept through the years between 2017 and 2021, you will not have failed to notice the widely accepted fact – not assumption, fact – that Donald Trump was Vladimir Putin’s dream President.
In almost every media outlet in the west, this narrative was driven well beyond the point of conspiracy theory: We had, at one point, open speculation that Putin had “kompromat” on Trump. That Trump was a weakling who would never stand up to Putin. That the Russian President was pulling the strings in the United States, having interfered to ensure the defeat of that noble and virtuous Democrat, Mrs. Clinton.
And yet, for those four years, there was no open Russian aggression. Russia had, indeed, annexed the Crimean Peninsula in 2014, but that was under President Obama – another beloved figure, who said the right things at the time, but who, predictably enough, issued a few sanctions on Moscow and called it a draw.
But while Trump was in office, Moscow was actually… relatively subdued. Now, with Joe Biden less than a year into his Presidency, the Kremlin is once again picking apart the weave that holds the NATO alliance together – in this instance by openly challenging the Germans on the question of whether they prefer their historic alliance with the USA, or the nice supply of cheap gas that comes via a pipeline from the Russian Steppes.
To be fair to President Biden, he is in something of a strategic pickle: Were he to commit troops to the defence of Ukraine, he would be openly risking another Vietnam type proxy war, coming within a year of his abandonment of Afghanistan on the grounds that the US could not keep indefinitely fighting foreign wars. What’s more, with US forces tied down in Europe, he may as well invite China to invade Taiwan.
What has not been remarked upon, however, is the direct political link between that withdrawal from Afghanistan and the present situation in Ukraine: Biden, by pulling out of Afghanistan, signalled to the world that he is reluctant to commit forces. The American public will certainly not welcome any decision to become involved in a conflict in Eastern Europe. In the words of D’unbelievables, in their legendary “crimebusters” sketch, his message to Vladmir Putin in terms of Ukraine could be summed up as “he might as well open the front door and let them in! Might as well have made tay for them!”.
There is a point here, though, which matters: So much of foreign affairs media coverage these days is filtered through the lense of political partisanship that it has almost become useless. Many of those who spent four years writing about the need for an American President who would stand up to Putin are now comfortable defending one who has openly emboldened Putin. Not because, in truth, they really care about Putin at all, but because they care about who might win the next American Presidential election. We’ve gotten to the point now where even wars are good or bad only and exclusively insofar as they impact the culture war.
This writer is not, and never will be, a fan of Donald Trump: The man is, in my estimation, a self-involved, self-obsessed, emotionally incontinent individual who lacks the temperament or the character for high office. Yet, none of that excuses the Russia smear that was fired against him relentlessly, and without any basis in fact, by the western media for the four years of his Presidency.
Current events prove, without much equivocation, that a great many people owe the former President an apology. And that the current American President, for all that he was vaunted as a wise and experienced hand in Foreign Policy, has made a calamitous mess of America’s standing in the world.
Not a view, I promise you, that you’ll read in the Irish Times.