Putin's best-laid plans are failing: Max Boot
Max Boot Published 4:51 p.m. ET March 2, 2017 |
He got the incompetent president he preferred, but he also got an increasingly anti-Russian Congress.
I recently asked some Chinese officials what they thought of Vladimir Putin’s intervention in the 2016 U.S. election. Was this a smart thing to do? Will other countries — like China — emulate Russia’s example? After some hemming and hawing, and obligatory disavowals that there is no proof of Russian complicity, they said something pretty interesting: that Russia made a mistake. They have learned, they told me, that American politics is like a seesaw — if you tip one end, the other goes up in the air. The Russians have leaned hard on the executive branch, and as a result of that Congress is turning more anti-Russian. It is much wiser, they suggested, to follow a policy of non-interference in other nations’ internal affairs.
A cynic could easily point out that in years past, China sponsored communist insurgencies in places such as Malaysia, Vietnam and Korea, which hardly hewed to the principle of non-intervention. A realist could also note that the Chinese, coming from a country that continues to grow in wealth and power, can afford to take the long view, whereas Putin presides over a declining state and so must maximize its influence while he can. But there is a good deal of wisdom in the Chinese reaction because Putin’s intervention does seem to be backfiring, even if it’s far from a total loss.
A few months ago, it was reasonable to fear that a pro-Putin president would be presiding over a pro-Putin team — including national security adviser Michael Flynn, who accepted $40,000 to attend a banquet in Moscow with Putin, and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who was once awarded an Order of Friendship by Putin — and that together they'd lift sanctions on Russia, dismantle NATO and let Russia have its way with Eastern Europe. It is not clear why this hasn’t happened, but surely part of the reason is that the Kremlingate scandal has made it impossible for Trump to make "good deals" with Putin, as he has said he'd love to do.
Continued: http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2017/03/02/putin-plans-are-failing-congress-is-anti-russian-max-boot-column/98647504/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_BootMax Boot, I'm not a fan of this guy but post just for balance, I don't think there's anything wrong with this, his name comes up every so often. He wrote for CFR, so that might not be good. No endorsement here, just a different view.
