Im-Politic: Flynn-Flamm

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Barack Obama, collusion, election 2016, FBI, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Im-Politic, James Comey, Justice Department, Logan Act, Michael T. Flynn, Mueller investigation, Russia, Sally B. Yates, Sergey Kislyak, Susan E. Rice, Trump, William P. Barr

So let’s wade right into the (latest) Michael T. Flynn uproar.

Unless you’ve been living under the proverbial rock for the past few weeks, you know that Flynn is the former Army Lieutenant General and head of the Pentagon’s intelligence chief (during the Obama administration) who served briefly as President Trump’s national security adviser. He resigned in February, 2017 after stating that he misled Vice President Mike Pence about the content of conversations he held during the transition period with Russia’s ambassador to the United States. That December, he was indicted by the Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Trump Russia collusion investigators for lying to the FBI during interviews in January with Bureau agents in the course of their investigation into his activities, and also pled guilty to the charges.

More recently, after Flynn sought to withdraw this plea, Attorney General William P. Barr appointed a career federal prosecutor to review the case, and in light of newly released FBI documents indicating serious irregularities in the Bureau’s handling of the case, Barr agreed to the prosecutor’s recommendation that the case be dismissed altogether. A federal judge will make the final decision.

This summary, though, scarcely begins to do justice to all the ins and outs and other complexities of the Flynn case. Dealing with them would require a  post even longer than this one will be! But one dimension of the case with unusual importance concerns former President Obama’s actions, specifically because of the recent declassification of an email written by his own former national security adviser, Susan E. Rice, about a meeting held among Obama, former Vice President and presumptive Democratic Party presidential nominee Joe Biden, and the former heads of the FBI and Justice Department.

The Obama angle has of course generated claims that his administration’s handling of Flynn and other aspects of its investigation of the Trump campaign’s interactions with Russia amount to a major scandal – which Mr. Trump himself calls “Obamagate” and which others portray as nothing less than an effort to overthrow his presidency. To me, these charges should be looked into, but remain to be proved. (In fact, the Justice Department is probing the entire investigation into Russian election interference and the Trump campaign that took place during the Obama years, and the long-awaited report seems likely to be released before Election Day.)

In the absence of this report, what interests me right now is the question of why Obama didn’t quash the FBI investigation of Flynn during that January 5 meeting – which took place just over two weeks before his presidency officially ended. And the Rice email makes clear just how fishy his decision was.

According to this communication, which Rice sent to herself on Inauguration Day, the January 5 White House meeting was “a brief follow-on conversation” that took place right after Obama, Biden, Acting Attorney General Sally B. Yates, FBI Director James Comey, and Rice were briefed by the leaders of the intelligence community “on Russian hacking during the 2016 Presidential election.” And Flynn was a major subject of the conversation.

Flynn was highlighted due to the former President’s professed determination to (in Rice’s words) “be sure that as we engage with the incoming [Trump] team [during the transition], we are mindful to ascertain if there is any reason that we cannot share information fully as it relates to Russia.”

Comey responded (in Rice’s words again), “that he does have some concerns that incoming NSA [national security adviser] Flynn is speaking frequently with Russian Ambassador [Sergey] Kislyak. Comey said that could be an issue as it relates to sharing sensitive information.”

Now comes something really important. Rice continued:

“President Obama asked if Comey was saying that the NSC [National Security Council] should not pass sensitive information related to Russia to Flynn. Comey replied ‘potentially.’ He added that he has no indication thus far that Flynn has passed classified information to Kislyak, but he noted that ‘the level of communication is unusual.’

“The President asked Comey to inform him if anything changes in the next few weeks that should affect how we share classified information with the incoming team. Comey said he would.”

This Obama response is what raises so many questions. First, back in late January, 2017, the Washington Post reported that the FBI “in late December reviewed intercepts of communications between the Russian ambassador to the United States and retired Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn — national security adviser to then-President-elect Trump….”

This report was confirmed in the exhibits accompanying the Justice Department’s May 7, 2020 motion to dismiss the charges against Flynn. So apparently, Comey was privy to the Flynn-Kislyak conversations more than two weeks before the January 5 meeting with Obama. During that time, the Rice email states, he reported finding no evidence, or even any “indication,” that Flynn had passed sensitive information to Russia. All he said he uncovered information that he interpreted “potentially” meant that Flynn was untrustworthy.

At least as important, there’s compelling evidence that Obama himself knew the content of the Flynn-Kislyak conversations.  It comes in the form of testimony given by Yates to the Mueller investigators in September, 2017 and described in a September 7 FBI description contained in Exhibit 4 (page 2) of the Justice Department’s motion to dismiss.  She stated that during the January 5 meeting, Obama revealed he had “learned of the information about Flynn,” including not only about the fact that the conversations took place, but about their key subject.

Yates added that Obama at that point specified that he didn’t want “any additional information on the matter” (the FBI’s phrasing) but wanted enough provided (presumably to his aides) to guide the outgoing administration as to whether Flynn could be trusted. In other words, not only does Yates’ testimony add a crucial detail. It also supports the essentials of Rice’s account.

Of course, if the former President was aware of what Flynn and Kislyak discussed, he also must have known that no classified information had been passed to the Russian. Nor according to Rice did he express any other concerns. 

And this episode doesn’t mark the first time that Obama was surely made aware that an FBI investigation of Flynn had turned up nothing legitimately troubling.  For on August 16, 2016, as documented in Exhibit 2 of the motion to disniss, the Bureau began probing whether Flynn, who it identified as a foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign,

“is being directed and controlled by and/or coordinating activities with the Russian Federation in a manner which may be a threat to the national security and/or possibly a violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act [which requires any Americans working for foreign government, political parties, individuals, or other principals – though not U.S. affiliates of foreign-owned companies – to register with the Justice Department and report the nature of the relationship].”

Sounds pretty serious, right? Except in a January 4, 2017 memo – presented as Exhibit 1 of the motion to dismiss – the Bureau’s Washington field office reported its decision to close this investigation because the probe could identify “no derogatory information.”  Is it remotely conceivable that no one told the former President?

The story of this particular investigation, however, doesn’t stop there.  The memo not only wasn’t approved.  As the motion to dismiss recounts (page 4), ostensibly because the FBI’s top leaders (including Comey) had learned of the Flynn-Kislyak conversations, they kept the Flynn probe alive – even though, presumably, they knew they contained no incriminating or otherwise disturbing material, or certainly never reported such to Obama, including up to and including the January 5 meeting.    

The transcripts, though, suggested another possibility for nailing Flynn – a possible violation of the the Logan Act.  But this course of action was pretty problematic, too.  This law, dating from 1798 aimed at preventing private American citizens or other legal residents from interfering with the conduct of U.S. diplomacy.

That’s an entirely legitimate purpose. But throughout the entirety of American history, only two individals have even been indicted for violating the act (most recently, in 1853) and neither was convicted.

The FBI’s interest in such possible Flynn transgressions seems to have originated in purported Obama administration worries that before Inauguration Day, Flynn was engaged in such interference on two different fronts – an upcoming United Nations vote to condemn Israel, and a December 29 Obama decision to sanction Russia on the grounds of election interference.

Yet Flynn ultimately wasn’t indicted (and convicted) for anything having to do with the Logan Act, or anything having to do with his Russia conversations or with the UN business. His only alleged crime (to which he pled guilty) was making materially false statements and omissions” to the FBI about these subjects.

At this point, an obvious choice must have confronted Obama – who must have known that the transcripts absolved Flynn of the most serious offense he was suspected of committing – handing major official secrets to the Russians. He could have told Comey that further investigation of Flynn was pointless and to drop the matter – either because more than two recent weeks of surveillance had turned up nothing alarming; or because Flynn would begin serving in the new Trump administration only two weeks down the road, and would then have been entitled to view all the U.S government’s classified information; or because Obama realized that the Logan Act concerns were excuses for further surveillance of Flynn. Or he could have told Comey to continue (because he didn’t care why Flynn was pursued as long as the effort succeeded), along with directing Rice and all other U.S. officials to suspend sharing intelligence concerning Russia (or any other subject) with the Trump team (more out of some motive other than because of any genuine security concerns).

Instead, he told Comey to “inform him if anything changes in the next few weeks” – but also permitted Rice to continue intelligence sharing as normal. We know this because a May 19 statement by Rice’s lawyer on her behalf said that the former Obama aide “did not alter the way she briefed Michael Flynn on Russia as a result of Director Comey’s response.” This outcome, it must be noted, also supports the claim that Obama had no important security concerns about Flynn. All the same, Comey’s pursuit of Flynn remained ongoing.  

Unless Rice defied the President’s instructions despite her lawyer’s claim?  If not, and they were followed, then why didn’t Obama at any point between January 5 and the end of his administration halt the Comey investigation? Unless he did and Comey continued anyway? Possibly because the FBI chief wished to follow the former President’s instructions even after Obama had left office?  Whatever Comey’s motives, his pursuit of Flynn didn’t stop, and led to the January 24 FBI interview with the new national security adviser.      

Interestingly, that session also undercuts the idea that the Obama administration’s beef against Flynn had anything to do with national security.  For a partly declassified version of the FBI’s report on the January 24 meeting shows that neither of the agents who spoke with Flynn even brought up the matter of illegally passing classified or any sensitive information to Kislyak. Their exclusive concerns were Logan Act-related issues.

A final (for now) weird item: In its indictment, the Justice Department contended that “FLYNN’s false statements and omissions impeded and otherwise had a material impact on the FBI’s ongoing investigation into the existence of any links or coordination between individuals associated with the Campaign and Russia’s efforts to interfere with the 2016 presidential election.”

But of course, Flynn’s conversations with Kislyak took place after the election, not during the campaign. The only way they could have been related to the Trump campaign collusion allegations would be if they were the result of some secret deals concerning Russia policy made by Flynn or anyone else in the campaign with Moscow. Yet the exhaustive Mueller investigation of these matters found insufficient evidence to charge anyone in the Trump campaign with the crime of conspiring “with representatives of the Russian government to interfere in the 20q6 election.” And Flynn’s activities were included.

As mentioned above, the above analysis by no means exhausts all the questions raised by the Flynn uproar – including about Flynn’s dealings with foreign clients; about whether the FBI agents who interviewed Flynn concluded he was lying, or simply believed that his memory was faulty at time (and whether Comey himself was certain of Flynn’s dishonesty, as per the motion to dismiss, Exhibit 13, pages 3 and 4, and Exhibit 5, page 10, respectively); and about why, if the Obama administration viewed Flynn as a major threat to national security, no one ever told President-elect Trump promptly of their concerns, and instead chose a prosecution route that permitted Flynn to occupy an extremely crucial position for three weeks – and that risked his continuing in that post had he performed more skillfully during his session with the FBI.

Former Obama Acting Attorney General Yates has testified to Congress that she did tell then Trump White House Counsel Donald McGahn that Flynn’s false statements were known by the Russians, and therefore made him vulnerable to blackmail. But this warning wasn’t given until January 26 – six days after Mr. Trump assumed office, and Flynn became national security adviser. 

And then there’s perhaps the biggest Flynn-related mystery of all: whether the next few weeks will see more questions, or more answers.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Another Wuhan Virus Lesson Globalists Need to Learn

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alliances, allies, China, core deterrence, coronavirus, COVID 19, Eastern Europe, extended deterrence, globalism, Japan, NATO, North Atlantic treaty Organization, North Korea, nuclear deterrence, nuclear war, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Russia, South Korea, Soviet Union, tripwire, Western Europe, Wuhan virus

Here’s a seemingly off-the-wall question: What does the Wuhan Virus have to do with U.S. policy toward its global security alliances?

And here’s why it’s not only not a perfectly sensible and even vital question, but why the best answer is “Plenty”: Because these decades-old globalist arrangements now pose to America risks that look like the coronavirus-in-not-so-miniature. Even worse: The benefits to the United States these days are much more modest than  during the Cold War era when they were created.

The purely national security arguments should by now be familiar to RealityChek regulars. (See here and here for fuller descriptions of the points I’m about to summarize.) The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO – which has linked the United States, Europe, and Canada), and the bilateral security relationships between the United States and Japan and South Korea, originally aimed to prevent the Soviet Union from dominating global centers of economic and technological strength and potential, and therefore of military strength and potential.

In fact, these countries and regions were considered so important that American policy made clear that Washington was ready to wage nuclear war – with all the dangers such conflicts would create for the U.S. homeland. Moreover, because the allies (or protectorates, as many call them) understandably doubted that American leaders really would, when the chips were down, “sacrifice New York to save London,” Washington felt compelled to station the U.S. military directly in harm’s way.

The idea was never to stop Soviet or North Korean or Chinese aggression with conventional forces alone. Quite the contrary. These units were intended as trip-wires. The very likelihood that they’d be annihilated was supposed to put irresistable pressure on a U.S. President to respond to attacks with nuclear weapons. In turn, this prospect was supposed to deter U.S. adversaries from attacking in the first place.

Such an approach (called “extended deterrence” by the cognoscenti – as opposed to “core deterrence,” which sought to protect the United States itself) made obvious sense when the United States enjoyed a monopoly on nuclear weapons. It even made arguable (though less obvious) sense when the Soviets reached nuclear parity, and the Chinese developed their own rudimentary nukes.

Since the end of the Cold War, however, it’s made much less sense, and more recent developments have turned this nuclear umbrella border-line – and crazily – suicidal. For the Soviet Union is gone. It’s been partly replaced with a newly aggressive Russia, but the countries most threatened by Moscow are not the economic and technological giants of Western Europe, but the newer NATO members of Eastern Europe – whose security was never remotely vital to the United States, as evinced by the long decades they spent as Soviet satellites or actual parts of the former USSR.

In East Asia, nuclear forces both in China and in North Korea can now not only hit the United States (or in the case of Pyongyang, are rapidly approaching that capability). When it comes to China, these weapons’ launch platforms have become much more difficult for the United States even to find, much less take out before they can be used. In other words, for all the continuing and even growing economic and technological importance of Japan and South Korea – which is considerable – the nuclear threats to America from their leading potential adversaries have grown faster both quantitatively and qualitatively.

And in all these alliance cases, despite President Trump’s clear interest in a fundamentally new America First-type foreign policy, and even though the allies are amply capable of fielding the forces needed to defend themselves, they choose not to. Therefore, U.S. forces still serve as tripwires in both Europe and Asia.

It’s likely that the economic damage done to the United States from a North Korean nuclear nuclear bomb landing in a big American city or two wouldn’t compare to the coronavirus economic damage we’re seeing now and are likely to see. But who can doubt that this damage will be substantial in economic terms, and catastrophic from a humanitarian standpoint? And in the areas hit, the harm to businesses and their workers could well last much longer. Further, the impacts of the kind of much larger retaliatory strikes that could come from China (if it invades Taiwan) or Russia, would be that much greater.

And these prices paid for maintaining current alliance policies would be all the more unacceptable because they are now completely unnecessary – because of the allies’ capabilities, and because so many of the European countries now under this U.S. “nuclear umbrella” are so thoroughly marginal to America’s safety and prosperity.

The globalist supporters of these alliances insist that these risks are indeed acceptable largely because deterrence has made them so remote. That sounds ominously like the optimism expressed by so many Americans (myself included) the day(s) before the Wuhan Virus threat’s scale became all too real. Now it’s increasingly clear that the globalists’ favored policies of indiscriminate free trade and offshoring-happy globalization policies have gravely endangered the nation’s health security as well as its prosperity, at least in the near-term. Let’s not be needlessly blindsided by a calamity triggered by the globalists’ hidebound alliance policies.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: The Ukraine Mess that Really Counts

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Adam B. Schiff, America First, Barack Obama, Blob, George W. Bush, globalism, impeachment, NATO, North Atlantic treaty Organization, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Russia, Senate impeachment trial, Trump, Ukraine

Ever since U.S.-Ukraine relations became front-page news as Russia began its military and paramilitary campaign against the former Soviet “republic” (and cradle of Russian civilization), and especially ever since American Presidents and lawmakers have sought to help Kyiv resist, I’ve been writing that whatever emotions this struggle stirs, U.S. leaders have never viewed Ukraine’s security as a remotely vital interest of the United States – and with good reason.

Located right on Russia’s doorstep, the country is impossible to defend without using nuclear weapons (and thus running the risk of nuclear war), and its multi-decade span under the Soviet thumb never had the slightest impact on America’s safety, independence, or well-being. Indeed, even a card-carrying globalist like former President Barack Obama has stated that precisely because Ukraine is a core interest of Russia’s but not of the United States, it’s “going to be vulnerable to military domination by Russia no matter what we do.”

These observations have seemed especially important in recent months, as backers of impeaching President Trump have strenuously argued to the contrary. Indeed yesterday, in his formal presentation at Mr. Trump’s Senate trial, House Intelligence Committee and lead House Impeachment Manager Adam B. Schiff once more joined the chorus that has raised the stakes of protecting Ukraine considerably higher. The California Democrat endorsed a claim that Ukraine’s takeover by Russia would directly threaten America’s allies in the rest of Europe, and indeed, the U.S. homeland itself.

Quoting a previous impeachment witness (and eerily echoing a major argument for continuing to fight endless wars in the Middle East), Schiff declared, “The United States aids Ukraine and her people so that they can fight Russia over there, and we don’t have to fight Russia here.”

Not that Schiff nor any impeachment supporters my research has come across has ever called for the logical – indeed, the essential – follow-on to their Ukraine analyses (urging the permanent stationing of major American military units on Ukraine soil to deter the Russians.  And not that they’ve supported the Pentagon budget increases needed to deploy these forces without cannibalizing other missions). So it’s reasonable to conclude that their words amount to just so much bluster (and possibly Trump Derangement Syndrome).

At the same time, it’s important to note that there’s been no shortage of statements by Mr. Trump’s predecessors (including Obama) that draw connections between Ukraine’s fate and America’s.

For example, George W. Bush was a strong supporter of bringing Ukraine into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). This step would legally commit Washington to come to Ukraine’s defense against outside aggression just as strongly as the United States is committed to come to the defense of France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and other European allies whose security has long been deemed vital. And in 2008, the alliance officially endorsed this goal – though without any timetable or specific plan for achieving it.

In the context of endorsing greater efforts to help Ukraine strengthen its defenses, Obama himself in 2014 emphasized the importance of keeping NATO “open” to “countries that meet our standards and that can make meaningful contributions to allied security.” And in the same speech, he vowed, “we will not accept Russia’s occupation and illegal annexation of Crimea or any part of Ukraine.”

Further, although President Trump hasn’t been the biggest fan of Ukraine or NATO, his administration officially has kept the membership door open to Kyiv. Just as officially, and more diisturbingly, the United States still considers Ukraine a “strategic partner” and indeed actually calls “a strong, independent, and democratic Ukraine” a “vital interest.”

The big takeaway isn’t that my prior descriptions of U.S. policy toward Ukraine were flawed. (Although they were.) Instead, it’s that support for bringing Ukraine into NATO and saddling the United States with yet another security commitment it can’t meet without incurring the risk of nuclear attack is strong in both the Democratic and Republican wings of the intervention-happy, globalist foreign policy establishment. And unless the presidency continues to be held by leaders with powerful America First-type instincts, this Blob’s dangerous ambitions could well become reality.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: The Globalists’ Dangerous Tantrums over Syria and Ukraine

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America First, Cold War, Eastern Europe, FDR, Franklin D. Roosevelt, globalism, globalists, Harry S Truman, ISIS, jihadis, Middle East, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Russia, Soviet Union, spheres of influence, Syria, terrorism, Trump, Turkey, Ukraine, Vietnam, World War II, Yalta

If you know more than a little something about contemporary American history, you’ve no doubt been struck (or you should be struck if you haven’t been already) by the close resemblance in one key respect between the firestorms around the two big foreign policy-related uproars of the day these days, and the big foreign policy uproar of the late 1940s and early 1950s: The cries of “Betrayal” and “Backstabbing!” generated by President Trump’s withdrawal of the small American troop deployment in Syria, and his lack of interest in keeping Ukraine fully independent of Russian designs, fully recall similar charges that followed Washington’s early Cold War acquiescence in the Soviet Union’s establishment of control over Eastern Europe.

And there’s a very good reason for the similarities among these over-the-top reactions in all three cases – today’s version of which is all too capable of pushing the nation into repeating catastrophic foreign policy mistakes. In all of them, a combination of immutable geography and irrefutable common sense has established ironclad limits on American power. In all of them, America’s existential security and prosperity rendered these limits entirely acceptable. And in all, crusading globalists have reacted not with gratitude for the nation’s favored circumstances, but with tantrums that have slandered any support for the prudence logically suggested by these circumstances as evidence of treason and/or degeneracy. It’s the policy equivalent of refusing to take “Yes” for an answer.  (See this 2018 article of mine for the fullest statement of these views.) 

The Cold War event mainly responsible for the McCarthyite claims of spies and traitors shot through the U.S. government was Yalta conference of 1945 held by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his British and Soviet counterparts Winston S. Churchill and Josef V. Stalin,  At that late-World War II meeting in Crimea, FDR agreed to accept Moscow’s clam to the countries located between German and Soviet territory as a sphere of influence.

Roosevelt’s decision reflected his awareness that the enormous Red Army had planted stakes in Eastern Europe after having fought it way through the region on its way to Berlin, that it had no intention of leaving, and that dislodging these forces militarily at remotely acceptable cost was impossible. Interestingly, his successor Harry S Truman fully agreed, even though by the time he became President, the United States enjoyed a monopoly on nuclear weapons.

“Yalta,” however, became a synonym for treason for many Americans, and the next few years (including under the Democrats) became an time of loyalty oaths, persecution, and show trials, Although many of the charges that the U.S. government had become a nest of spies turned out to be true, “McCarthyism” nonetheless ruined numerous innocent lives as well, and for more than a decade stifled badly needed dissent within the national security bureaucracy.

But guess what? Despite Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, and the mass, multi-generation human tragedy that unfolded behind the Iron Curtain, the United States not only survived but generally prospered. Further, the serious problems it did experience had absolutely nothing to do with the fates of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, or even the former East Germany etc.

Self-interest and restraint in foreign policy go hand-in-hand just as neatly these days when it comes to Ukraine and Syria. As I’ve written, even more than Eastern Europe, Ukraine’s independence has never been considered a vital American interest because it’s never been a significant determinant of the nation’s safety or well-being; because it’s located even closer to the center of Russian military might than Eastern Europe; because as a result the United States is militarily incapable of mounting a sane challenge with conventional forces; and because on top of these assets, Moscow has long possessed nuclear forces that can obliterate the United States many times over.

As for Syria, Mr. Trump’s critics are caught in one or both intellectual time warps. The first has hurled them back to the era when the United States was thoroughly addicted to Middle East oil. However long it lasted, though, it’s now unmistakably over, thanks to the fossil fuels production revolution of the last decade or so.

It’s true that this oil still matters a great deal to Europe and East Asia, huge chunks of a global economy whose health still matters in turn to the United States (though less lately, since both regions seem chronically incapable of or unwilling to generate acceptable growth other than by amassing enormous – and unsustainable trade surpluses with America). But both regions are eminently capable of fielding the military forces needed to preserve the oil flow. P.S. So do the Middle East’s two biggest powers, Saudi Arabia and Iran. Their deadly struggle for geopolitical supremacy notwithstanding, both would collapse economically without the revenue brought in by their oil exports. Just ask Iran, which is being bankrupted by President Trump’s – unilateral – sanctions.

The second time warp has the foreign policy Never Trump-ers trapped in the early post-September 11 period, when the nation discovered its shocking vulnerability to Middle East-borne terrorism. Yet as I’ve repeatedly written, and experience can not have made clearer, the best way by far to protect the American homeland from this deadly threat is not continuing to chase jihadist groups around an uncontrollable region whose terminal dysfunction will keep them appearing and reconstituting, but securing America’s far more controllable borders.

Additionally, though less important, terrorist organizations like ISIS and Al Qaeda have been blessed with the unique gift of antagonizing every other significant actor in the Middle East, for either ethnic (Arab versus Persian versus Turk) or religious (Sunni versus Shia Muslims) reasons. And the Russians, who are now supposedly the new kingpins in the Middle East, have no interest in seeing a serious jihadist revival on their borders. So an American exit from the region will leave it full of countries with every reason to sit on Islamic lunatics, not to mention rife with their own mutual antagonisms and historic rivalries. A chaotic balance of power to be sure, but an entirely durable one. (These arguments have just been made powerfully here.)

During the Cold War, it took debacle in Vietnam, with all the devastation it brought to America’s economy, society, and domestic and national security institutions (some of which still haven’t fully recovered), to teach globalists and the public they led, that geography and common sense mustn’t be completely ignored. Let’s all hope that their America First-oriented opponents, including a critical mass of the body politic, can keep them away from the levers of power before they produce a similar disaster.

Im-Politic: Why Former Ukraine Envoy Kurt Volker Really Matters

Tags

America First, foreign policy establishment, globalism, Hunter Biden, Im-Politic, Joe Biden, John McCain, Kurt Volker, Russia, Trump, Ukraine, Ukraine Scandal, Vladimir Putin

Kurt Volker, who just resigned as special U.S. envoy to Ukraine, is testifying in closed session to Congress today, presumably to shed light on charges that President Trump improperly (and maybe impeach-ably) asked that country’s leader to investigate possible corruption by Democratic Presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter.

As much as I’d like to know what Volker says on this score, I worry that neither the lawmakers questioning him nor America’s supposedly watchdog Mainstream Media will examine an issue that’s at least as important: Why on earth did the Trump administration hire Volker in the first place? Because the likeliest answer will provide more evidence about an immense flaw in Mr. Trump’s foreign policy, and a consequent, neglected danger to American democracy, that shows no sign of ending any time soon.

President Trump, after all, campaigned promising to disrupt and transform American foreign policy. Out would be what he condemned as a globalist strategy that inevitably led to Forever Wars in places like the Middle East, and benefited only the country’s elites. In would be an “America First” approach he claimed would serve the entire nation’s interests.

As I’ve explained, the President’s foreign policy record in office has been mixed, but America First elements have definitely been introduced. And one of the biggest examples is policy toward Russia – whether you believe Mr. Trump has been motivated by a conspiracy with Russia strongman Vladimir Putin to fix the 2016 election, or by a sincere determination to deal realistically with a major (and nuclear-armed) military power.

And one of the biggest pre-Trump U.S.-Russia sticking points had been Ukraine – whose independence (including the freedom to tilt toward the West if it wishes) globalist U.S. Presidents have tried to maintain, against Moscow’s designs, but which Russia believes belongs squarely within its sphere of influence.

I’ve previously argued against antagonizing Russia over Ukraine because the latter’s fate was never viewed as a vital U.S. interest even during the Cold War. The idea that it’s become more important now makes no sense at all from an American standpoint. Worse, the United States plainly lacks anything close to the military capability to help Ukraine decisively (just look at a map if you don’t already understand why). So policies like arming the country to the hilt, and encouraging the idea that it can resist Russian hegemony militarily, look suspiciously like virtue-signaling exercises to “fight to the last Ukrainian.” Vastly preferable for all concerned, as I see it, is something like the deal I first outlined here.

The President has said little explicitly on the subject, but his reluctance as early as the 2016 campaign to go all-in on Ukraine arms aid indicates he’s open to such thinking (again, whatever his motives).

Which is why the Kurt Volker appointment was so bizarre. For Volker has long supported a hard-line anti-Russia approach to Ukraine. In fact, he was such a strong backer of military aid (and a “military solution” to the ongoing crisis) that he viewed former President Barack Obama’s Ukraine policy as needlessly spineless. Indeed, Volker is a protege of the late Arizona Republican Senator John McCain – one of the most prominent of the Ukraine-Russia hawks, and a leading Trump critic on foreign policy and many other issues – and in 2012 became head of a new institute created at Arizona State University to promote such ideas. (That’s why the school’s student newspaper broke the story of his resignation from the Trump administration late last month.)

Neither Volker’s views nor his affiliation with McCain is the slightest bit improper. (His work for defense contractors who would profit handsomely from Ukraine arms sales? That’s another matter altogether.) What is downright weird – and troubling for two reasons – is Volker’s decision to take a job with Mr. Trump’s State Department.

The first reason has to do with whose agenda Volker was serving – the elected Mr. Trump’s, or the globalist foreign policy establishment in which he worked for three decades. Given all the evidence that’s emerged throughout the Trump administration of bureaucrats and even Trump appointees committing acts of “resistance”. (See here for numerous examples, along with this unprecedentedly anonymous New York Times op-ed.) Given Volker’s ties to McCain, and given the way the so-called Ukraine scandal has so suddenly become a threat to Mr. Trump’s presidency, it’s vital to know whether Volker was one of these subversives.

If anything, the second reason is more depressing. For Volker’s appointment in the first place once again reveals a chronic weakness of the Trump administration and “Trump-ism” that will take many years to address even if the President and his supporters started right now: Mr. Trump entered office well before he or like-minded individuals paid any attention to the task of developing a group of skilled policymakers and analysts capable of staffing an administration both competently and loyally. As a result, the President had no choice but to fill any number of key posts with figures who, even when Republican and/or conservative, were far from America Firsters.

Not that this situation excuses the resistance that so many of these officials have mounted. But until those with Trump-ian leanings and the needed resources start creating the institutions needed to give these ideas scale and staying power, conservative nationalism, or nationalist populism, or whatever you want to call it, may wind up as a flash in the pan. Moreover, even if its adherents can keep the presidency, the clandestine bureaucratic revolt that’s been waged for three years, with all its dangers to accountable, democratic government, is only likely to worsen. And you should worry about that even if you’re a Never Trump-er.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Why a Real America First European Security Policy is More Urgent than Ever

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alliances, America First, Article Five, Cato Institute, China, Cold War, coupling, EU, Europe, European Council on Foreign Relations, European Union, extended deterrence, globalism, NATO. North Atlantic Treaty Organization, nuclear weapons, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Pew Research Center, Russia, Ted Galen Carpenter, tripwires, Trump

Even if the Cato Institute’s Ted Galen Carpenter wasn’t one of my closest friends, I’d still be writing this post highlighting his op-ed piece earlier this week for the Washington Post. Because it absolutely decimates the claim that all that ails the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), America’s oldest national security alliance, is recklessly mindless norms-buster Donald Trump.

Instead, Carpenter reports on overwhelming evidence that the arrangement, which since 1949 has committed the United States to the defense of first Western Europe and now most of Europe (and at considerable risk of nuclear attack on the U.S. homeland), is critically ill mainly because, in the decades since the end of the Cold War, U.S. and European interests have been steadily – and inevitably – diverging. And these findings add powerfully to the case that America’s globalist military commitment to Europe has become dangerously outdated.

The evidence consists of polling data showing unmistakably that European publics no longer believe that their governments should side with the United States in its disputes and conflicts with Russia (whose perceived threat Western Europe’s independence during its post-World War II decades as the Soviet Union sparked NATO’s creation in the first place), or that they should even rally to each other’s defense.

The Russia-focused results come from a September survey conducted by the European Council on Foreign Relations, and are based on the views of no less than 60,000 individuals from fourteen countries belonging to the European Union (EU) – an economic organization not officially related to NATO but many of whose member countries are U.S. NATO allies as well.

The bottom line – which Carpenter rightly describes as “startling”? “When asked ‘Whose side should your country take in a conflict between the United States and Russia?’ the majority of respondents in all 14 E.U. countries said ‘neither’.”

Some of the country-specific results?

“In France, only 18 percent would back the United States, while 63 percent opt for neutrality; in Italy, it’s 17 percent vs. 65 percent, and in Germany, 12 percent to 70 percent.

“The results were similar even in NATO’s newer East European members, despite their greater exposure to Russian pressure and potential aggression. Hungarian respondents selected neutrality over supporting the United States 71 percent to 13 percent, while Romanians did so 65 percent to 17 percent. Even in Poland, a country whose history with Moscow during both the Czarist and Soviet periods was especially frosty, neutralist sentiment had the edge, 45 percent to 33 percent.”

What’s especially disturbing, and indeed outrageous, from an American standpoint is that since NATO’s founding, European governments have insisted that U.S. troops be stationed on the continent to serve (as in South Korea) in a trip-wire role – which RealityChek regulars knows means units deployed close enough to invasion routes and vulnerable enough to the superior conventional militaries of aggressors practically to force American Presidents to use nuclear weapons to save them if conflict breaks out.

This policy of “extended deterrence,” or “coupling,” has been intended to prevent such conflicts from breaking out in the first place. What’s dangerous for the United States of course – and needlessly so – is that if deterrence fails, nuclear weapons use could expose American territory to a retaliatory nuclear strike, even though the United States itself may not be at risk.

Even worse: Throughout the Cold War, NATO non-nuclear forces were inferior to their Soviet and Soviet satellite counterparts because the European allies preferred to free-ride on the U.S. military guarantee instead of spending funds they all could have afforded for armed forces capable of self-defense.

For good measure, moreover, this European Council on Foreign Relations poll showed that Europeans are just about as ambivalent in joining with the United States if a conflict with China broke out.

Of course, even though the lopsided nature of the results indicates that these European views have been long in the making, it’s not entirely crazy to believe that Mr. Trump’s election has been so alarming to these populations that the shift did actually begin with his 2016 victory. But as Carpenter points out, a survey from the Pew Research Center conducted in 2015 demonstrates that NATO’s core principles were in deep trouble in Europe well before the President even declared his candidacy for the Oval Office.

Pew sampled opinion in eight NATO members and found that 49 percent of respondents opposed their country coming to the defense of other allies. And majorities in key alliance members France, Italy, and Germany alike rejected “fulfilling their country’s obligation to fulfill the Article 5 treaty pledge to consider an attack on any NATO member as an attack on all.” Crucially, Article 5 of the NATO treaty embodies the notion of collective security. In other words, it literally makes NATO NATO.

Carpenter rightly concludes that “the concept of transatlantic solidarity, even on collective defense, is now largely confined to out-of-touch political elites on both sides of the Atlantic.” Just as important, he notes that “it will be hard to sustain policies that increasingly run counter to the wishes of popular majorities.”

Ironically, however, despite his harsh criticisms of NATO allies’ free-riding and periodic swipes at the alliance as possibly obsolete, President Trump is increasingly acting like one of those out-of-touch globalist mainstays who urgently needs to see these poll results. For despite the warnings sounded by these polls that the United States won’t be able to rely on the European governments and their militaries even if shooting breaks out in Europe, he’s actually strengthened American forces on the continent – including in Poland, right on the Russian border.

In other words, an avowedly America First President is binding his country’s fate to that of Europe at the very moment when disengagement is more important than ever.

Im-Politic: Why The New York Times Shouldn’t be Writing the History of Slavery – or Anything Else

Tags

1619 Project, Dean Baquet, history, Im-Politic, Mainstream Media, media bias, race, race relations, racism, Russia, slavery, The New York Times, Trump, Trump-Russia

It’s bad enough that The New York Times all but admitted last week that its news operations lately have been driven by over-arching missions and “visions” centering on specific issues. In the words of Executive Editor Dean Baquet at an internal “town hall” meeting of Times staff, the paper is now shifting from investigating “Did Donald Trump have untoward relationships with the Russians, and was there obstruction of justice?” to focusing on “what it means to be an American in 2019” and more specifically writing “about race and class in a deeper way than we have in years” because “America [has] become so divided by Donald Trump.”

Possibly worse is how The Times has also decided that this mission includes throwing much of its still considerable resources behind what Baquet called “the most ambitious examination of the legacy of slavery ever undertaken in [inaudible] newspaper….”

For although it’s disturbing that a news organization would in effect bet the house on probing an issue – and thereby create overwhelming incentives for its staff to assume continually that any and all appearances of smoke, even from clearly conflicted sources, add to the case of underlying fire – this Times decision at least dovetails generally with commonly used definitions of journalism that have long served the country and its democratic system well.

Not that the press should get into the habit of proactively designating issues as existential priorities well before the outcomes and implications are reasonably clear. But Baquet deserves some slack here given the charges that the President was a Manchurian candidate beholden to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin – unmistakably an earth-shattering story at least potentially. Therefore, it’s hard to blame him for in effect establishing a major priority and allocating his resources accordingly, and it’s nitpicking to insist that he still might have gone somewhat too far.

Two possible and related qualifications to these conclusions, though, should be kept in mind. First, it’s painfully obvious from the meeting transcript linked above (and not disavowed by any participants) that any number of Times staffers are virulently anti-Trump – which logically raises suspicions about whether any of the paper’s reporters or editors cooperated with the equally virulent Trump opponents in the Obama Justice Department and intelligence agencies to keep the story artificially alive through publishing obviously selected leaks selectively, and even through knowingly trafficking in sheer rumor and innuendo.

Second, as I’ve written, given the abundance of Never Trump-ers in the federal bureaucracy and in the D.C. Swamp generally speaking, and given how commonplace leaks of even the most sensitive material had become, long before the release of Special Counsel Mueller’s report, it was becoming increasingly apparent that if no smoking guns had yet been found, chances are they didn’t exist. But there’s no reason to believe that the paucity of genuinely damning evidence ever gave Baquet any second thoughts about his initial decision – which indicates troubling stubbornness at best and even more troubling bias at worst.

But I can’t prove either of the these two points. Moreover, just as I can’t legitimately fault Baquet for per se focusing, at least for a serious period of time, tightly on the Trump-Russia story, I can’t fault him per se for deciding subsequently to devote much of the paper’s attention to race relations. For times change, and news coverage priorities need to change with them – although Baquet’s link of the decision to a Trump record that he plainly views as uniquely and dangerously divisive strongly indicates that he’s prejudging the results awfully early in the game.

The examining slavery thing, however – that’s fundamentally different. It’s the kind of endeavor, after all, that can’t be squared with any longstanding tradition of American journalism. Instead, the “1619 Project” at its heart is nothing less than an effort to change the way Americans view their history, and how it’s been impacted down to the present by slave-holding. (1619 was the year in which the first enslaved African blacks arrived in North America – specifically, near British-held Jamestown, Virginia.  Just FYI, African slaves didn’t arrive in French-held North America until a decade later.) If you’re skeptical about this 1619 project claim, check out how it’s described by The Times:

“The 1619 Project is a major initiative from The New York Times observing the 400^th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery. It aims to reframe the country’s history, understanding 1619 as our true founding, and placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are.”

For good measure, the paper tells us that “it is finally time to tell our story truthfully.”

Any thinking person understands the need for continual reassessments of history – and all fields of knowledge – if only because new information is constantly coming to light. In addition, you don’t need to fall prey to “present-ism” (judging or merely viewing past events and works through the prism of contemporary standards) to recognize that standards do change; that they can change for legitimate and considered, as well as for faddish and/or partisan, reasons; and that whenever such circumstances warrant, reassessments are needed. Indeed, these exercises are especially important when engaged in the always hazardous but ultimately needed effort to identify the past’s lessons.

And what thinking, informed person doubts that the nation’s professional historians fully understand this imperative, and that in fact their discipline isn’t in a constant state of reassessment?

But even if these scholars were failing their country and academe’s best traditions and practices, why would any thinking person consider The Times institutionally qualified to fill the gap competently? What evidence has the paper presented that it can carry out satisfactorily a project that even it describes as “unprecedentedly ambitious” and that’s surely more accurately described as “unprecedented” period? And as a result, from where does The Times draw its confidence in declaring that it’s able to “finally…tell our story truthfully.”

My answers to all these questions: “Beats me.”

And if you believe that the paper is up to this task, you really need to read the full transcript of the town hall meeting. For it makes distressingly clear that many of the paper’s staffers have no use for notions like sticking to the facts and enabling readers to make up their own minds – at least not since the civilization-menacing emergence of the Trump presidency. (Or was it the Trump candidacy?) As for views of race and its proper role in Times journalism, take a look at these remarks from one staffer:

“I’m wondering to what extent you [Baquet] think that the fact of racism and white supremacy being sort of the foundation of this country should play into our reporting. Just because it feels to me like it should be a starting point, you know? Like these conversations about what is racist, what isn’t racist. I just feel like racism is in everything. It should be considered in our science reporting, in our culture reporting, in our national reporting. And so, to me, it’s less about the individual instances of racism, and sort of how we’re thinking about racism and white supremacy as the foundation of all of the systems in the country. And I think particularly as we are launching a 1619 Project, I feel like that’s going to open us up to even more criticism from people who are like, ‘OK, well you’re saying this, and you’re producing this big project about this. But are you guys actually considering this in your daily reporting?’”

His boss’ response (in part)?

“I do think that race and understanding of race should be a part of how we cover the American story. Sometimes news organizations sort of forget that in the moment. But of course it should be. I mean, one reason we all signed off on the 1619 Project and made it so ambitious and expansive was to teach our readers to think a little bit more like that.”

Translation: “You’re right. And the 1619 Project is aimed at persuading Americans to think ‘a little bit more’ like you.” P.S. The transcript records zero pushback against this wildly distorted, reductionist view. That is, like too much of the rest of the Mainstream Media, The New York Times has drifted dangerously far from the notion that journalism amounts to “writing the first draft of history.” It’s going to start writing that history itself. And it’s firmly convinced that it has a monopoly on wisdom.

And that’s fine in principle – if the paper wants to turn itself into something like an opinion publication, a think tank or a lobby group. For a newspaper, however, it represents a bright and dangerous line crossed, and is certain to further erode the public’s confidence in journalists – thereby adding to a list of dangers facing American democracy that’s already far too long.

Im-Politic: Biden’s Fake History on Fighting Russia’s Political Interference in Europe

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Alliance for Securing Democracy, Biden, Bill Kristol, Eastern Europe, election 2016, election interference, Europe, German Marshall Fund, Im-Politic, John Podesta, NATO, North Atlantic treaty Organization, Obama, Putin, Russia, Trump, vital interests, Western Europe

Maybe Joe Biden’s main problem isn’t simply that he’s “gaffe-prone” – at least not nowadays, as he again seeks the Democratic nomination for President. Maybe the former Vice President’s main problem is that he’s suffering major memory loss – and I mean major memory loss. Either that, or his recollection of how the Obama administration in which he served responded to Russian political subversion in Europe reveals a truth-telling problem comparable to the one widely believed displayed by President Trump.

How else can the following recent Biden statement be explained, in a CNN interview in which he charged that Mr. Trump’s reelection would wind up destroying the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) – America’s most important post-World War II security alliance:

“Why did we set up NATO…? So no one nation could abuse the power in the region in Europe, would suck us in the way they did in World War I and World War II. It’s being crushed.

“Look at what’s happened with [Russian President Vladimir] Putin. While he — while Putin is trying to undo our elections, he is undoing elections in — in Europe. Look what’s happened in Hungary. Look what’s happened in Poland. Look what’s happened in — look what’s happening. You think that would have happened on my watch or Barack [Obama]’s watch? You can’t answer that, but I promise you it wouldn’t have, and it didn’t.”

Leave aside for now the massively inconvenient truth that the Obama-Biden watch was exactly when Putin most recently tried to “undo” (bizarro phrasing, I know) a U.S. election. Leave aside also the incoherence of the claim that “You can’t answer that, but I promise you it wouldn’t have, and it didn’t.”

Because even if Biden is only referring to Russian interference with politics in Europe, his statement ignores literally dozens of such instances and campaigns during his White House years. Abundant evidence comes from the Alliance for Securing Democracy – a research organization housed in the German Marshall Fund – a quintessentially globalist, Washington, D.C.-based think tank. For good measure, the Alliance’s “Advisory Council” contains not only the usual crew of bipartisan Washington foreign policy Blob hangers-on from previous globalist administrations, but virulent Trump-haters like long-time neoconservative stalwart Bill Kristol, as well as John Podesta, who chaired Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s unsuccessful presidential run in 2016. So clearly, this source has no interest in putting out anything that will make Mr. Trump look good relative to political rivals.

The Alliance maintains a handy-dandy interactive search engine called the “Authoritarian Interference Tracker,” which makes it easy to identify political subversion efforts by a wide range of countries in a wide range of countries. And here’s just a small sample of what comes up when the controls are set for the Obama years:

>2008 – present: “In 2008, the Institute of Democracy and Cooperation, a pro-Russia think tank headed by former Duma deputy Natlaya Norchnitskaya, opened in Paris. According to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, ‘the organization toes a blatantly pro-Kremlin line.’ The Institute’s Director of Studies…told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty that its financing comes from ‘the Foundation for Historical Outlook in Moscow, which in turn is financed by unspecified private Russian companies.’”

>2008-2017: “According to the [British newspaper] The Guardian, between 2008 and 2017, Rossotrudnichnestvo, a Russian government-organized non-governmental organization (GONGO) worked with state-sponsored media outlet TASS and Russian intelligence agencies as part of a nearly decade-long influence effort that sought to distance Macedonia from the EU [European Union] and N NATO and to prevent the success of the Macedonian name change referendum.”

>2009-2011: “According to the Czech Security Information Service’s (BIS) annual reports for 2009 and 2010, Russian intelligence services were actively involved in programs to build closer relations with the Russian expatriate community in the Czech Republic as a way to expand influence in the country. These programs specifically targeted academic and intellectual elites as well as students, according to BIS.”

>2010-2014: “According to Reuters, between 2010 and 2014, the Russian government offered Ukrainian oligarch Dmytro Firtash lucrative business deals in exchange for Firtash’s political support in Ukraine. Firtash and his companies received large loans and lucrative gas contracts from Russian state-owned energy giant Gazprom at significantly discounted prices. Firtash’s companies would then sell gas to the Ukrainian government at a high price and pocket the difference. Firtash used his domestic political influence in Ukraine to support Russian government-backed presidential candidate Viktor Yanukovych’s successful 2010 campaign for the presidency. According to Reuters, the Russian government instructed Firtash to ensure Ukraine’s position in Russia’s sphere of influence.”

Here are some abbreviated descriptions of other such incidents:

>2010-2011: “Funds from Russian money-laundering scheme funneled to Latvian political party.”

>2010: “Russian government-connected oligarch Vladimir Yakunin finances pro-Russian Estonian political party.”

>2010-2014: “Emails expose Greek political party Syriza’s ties to Russian-connected actors.”

>2013: “Russian money-laundering ring cycles money through Polish, pro-Russia think tank.”

>2013: Bulgaria’s “Pro-Russian Ataka party reportedly receives funding from the Russian embassy.”

>2013: “Russian government-connected oligarch Vladimir Yakunin launches foundation in Geneva [Switzerland]. The foundation allegedly “is part of a network of organizations promoting an authoritarian and Eurasianist model of thought to counter the current liberal-democratic world order.”

>2014: A “new Russian Orthodox Church in Skopje [Macedonia] raised concerns among Macedonian officials that ‘Russia may be trying to use the Orthodox Church to its Russian interests in Macedonia,’ according to” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

>2014-present: “Emails reveal Russian government-connected oligarch funded network of pro-Russia fringe political groups in Eastern Europe.”

>2014: “French far-right party National Rally, formerly Front National…receives loan from bank ‘with links to the Kremlin.’”

>2015: “Russian government activist founds pro-Russia political party” in Poland.

>2016-17: “Czech intelligence service reports on Russian covert political influence campaign in annual report.”

My point here certainly isn’t to sound the alarm about all this Russian political activity, especially in Eastern Europe – which, as I’ve written repeatedly (see, e.g., here), has long been part of Russia’s sphere of influence, has never been defined as a vital U.S. interest, and where America’s options for responding effectively are limited at best. Nor is my point to vouch for the accuracy of every single one of the above claims, or others like it in the database. And I certainly don’t believe that the above information represents any evidence that Russian interference put Mr. Trump over the top in 2016.

Instead, the point is to show that, despite Biden’s boasts, the kind of Russian activities about which he’s alarmed plainly took place during the Obama years in spades (and have been reported by many Mainstream Media sources, as the database makes clear), they occurred in both Eastern and in (more important to the United States) Western Europe, and that Washington’s responses evidently did little to stop or even curb them.

Indeed, the record shows that, at least when it comes to Biden’s record of fighting the Russian subversion in Europe that he considers a mortal threat to America, by his own standards, he deserves the Trump-ian label of “Sleepy Joe.” As in asleep at the switch.

Im-Politic: Mueller’s Sin of Omission on Obstruction

Tags

Attorney General, collusion, Don McGahn, election 2016, FBI, Im-Politic, impeachment, indictment, James Comey, Jeff Sessions, Justice Department, Michael Flynn, Mueller Report, obstruction of justice, Robert S. Mueller III, Rod Rosenstein, Russia, Special Counsel, Trump, Trump-Russia, William P. Barr

There’s no longer any legitimate doubt: Nearly six weeks after its release, almost no one with any influence on American public policy or public opinion has actually read the publicly available version of the Mueller report on Russian election interference and possible presidential obstruction of justice. And most of those who have read it either didn’t understand it, or are trafficking in misleading descriptions. P.S. Based on his brief farewell remarks yesterday, that list includes Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III himself.

Those are the only logical conclusions that can be drawn from the continuing insistence that, to quote Mueller, President Trump would have been charged in the report with the crime of obstructing justice but for “long-standing Department policy, [that] a President cannot be charged with a federal crime while he is in office. That is unconstitutional….The Special Counsel’s Office is part of the Department of Justice and, by regulation, it was bound by that Department policy. Charging the President with a crime was therefore not an option we could consider.”

Was Department policy a major determinant of Mueller’s non-indictment decision? Of course. And Mueller made that clear both in his reports and in his brief public statement. But was it the only determinant? And, by implication, given Mueller’s declaration that his report’s findings did not “exonerate” the President on this score, did Attorney General William P. Barr behave improperly by issuing his own determination that, even leaving aside Justice’s presidential indictment policy, Mueller’s investigation did not produce evidence “sufficient to establish” presidential obstruction?

The answer to both questions is clearly “No.” And it’s not even necessary to rely on Barr’s denial, in his March 24 letter announcing the decision reached by he and then Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, that the determination “was made without regard to, and was not based on, the constitutional considerations that surround the indictment and criminal prosecution of a sitting president.”

It’s not even necessary to believe Barr’s May 1 testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee that, at a March 5 meeting with Mueller, “in response to our questioning, [Mueller stated] that he emphatically was not saying that but for the [Justice Department policy] he would have found obstruction. He said that in the future the facts of the case against the president might be such that a special counsel would recommend abandoning the OLC opinion, but this is not such a case.”

These Barr statements can be ignored because Mueller’s April 18 report itself not only gathered abundant evidence bearing on the obstruction charge. It declared that it was inconclusive. To quote from the report (Volume II, p. 8. All subsequent page references are to this Volume unless otherwise noted.) “The evidence we obtained about the President’s actions and intent presents difficult issues that would need to be resolved if we were making a traditional prosecutorial judgment.” And the report’s detailed discussions of ten Trump-era potential obstruction of justice episodes makes clear that the difficulties arose precisely because his team found significant evidence on both sides of the issue.

As a result, the most obstruction-friendly conclusion that Mueller and his aides reached was

that “there was a sufficient factual and legal basis to further investigate potential obstruction-of -justice issues involving the President.” (p. 12). In other words, an indictment decision was anything but a slam dunk. And after a protracted probe involving the questioning of literally hundreds of witnesses, all that the Special Counsel could state with high confidence was that a case can be made.

Moreover, the report spent so much time weighing the kind of evidence that would be used in a normal obstruction case that an entire section was devoted to summarizing “the law interpreting the elements of potentially relevant obstruction statutes in an ordinary case. This discussion does not address the unique constitutional issues that arise in an inquiry into official acts by the President.” (p. 9)

The obstacles to indicting Mr. Trump for obstructing justice came through loud and clear in the Mueller report’s analysis of what’s often portrayed as the leading candidate for such a charge – the President’s alleged order to his then White House Counsel Don McGahn to fire Mueller. According to the Mueller Report (on p. 87):

“A threshold question is whether the President in fact directed McGahn to have the Special Counsel removed. After news organizations reported that in June 2017 the President had ordered McGahn to have the Special Counsel removed, the President publicly disputed these accounts, and privately told McGahn that he had simply wanted McGahn to bring conflicts of interest to the Department of Justice’s attention….Some of the President’s specific language that McGahn recalled from the calls is consistent with that explanation. Substantial evidence, however, supports the conclusion that the President went further and in fact directed McGahn to call Rosenstein to have the Special Counsel removed.”

It’s perfectly valid to note that the “substantial evidence” cited here surely outweighed in Mueller’s mind the evidence about presidential language recalled by McGahn – evidence that wasn’t even given an adjective. Yet readers are told that even the substantial evidence simply “supports a conclusion.” And there may be less to that conclusion than meets the eye. For couldn’t the presidential order to McGahn to call Rosenstein have reflected the same concerns about Special Counsel team conflicts of interest?

On the question of intent, which matters greatly in obstruction cases, Mueller wrote (p. 89) that “Substantial evidence indicates that the President’s attempts to remove the Special Counsel were linked to the Special Counsel’s oversight of investigations that involved the President’s conduct- and, most immediately, to reports that the President was being investigated for potential obstruction of justice.

I’m not a lawyer, but could someone please explain to me why that “substantial evidence” is so all-fired incriminating? And as for this claim (p. 90) – “There also is evidence that the President knew that he should not have made those calls to McGahn” – that doesn’t exactly strike me as “Lock him up” material.

Muddying the waters even further are the aspects of possible obstruction-related episodes for which the Mueller Report presents no judgment on the evidence in terms of adjectives or other descriptions.

For example, regarding the President’s conduct with respect to the investigation of his (quickly fired) national security adviser Michael Flynn during the transition period, the report simply states (pp. 46-47):

“As part of our investigation, we examined whether the President had a personal stake in the outcome of an investigation into Flynn-for example, whether the President was aware of Flynn’s communications with [Russian Ambassador to the United States Sergey] Kislyak close in time to when they occurred, such that the President knew that Flynn had lied to senior White House officials and that those lies had been passed on to the public. Some evidence suggests that the President knew about the existence and content of Flynn’s calls when they occurred, but the evidence is inconclusive and could not be relied upon to establish the President’s knowledge….

“Our investigation accordingly did not produce evidence that established that the President knew about Flynn’s discussions of sanctions before the Department of Justice notified the White House of those discussions in late January 2017. The evidence also does not establish that Flynn otherwise possessed information damaging to the President that would give the President a personal incentive to end the FBI’s inquiry into Flynn’s conduct.

“Evidence does establish that the President connected the Flynn investigation to the FBI’s broader Russia investigation and that he believed, as he told Christie, that terminating Flynn would end “the whole Russia thing.”

No bottom line is presented.

Similarly (p. 154), the report’s discussion of the “nexus” issues raised by presidential conduct toward his former lawyer and all-around fixer Michael Cohen (focusing on the obstruction-relevant possibility that an individual being investigated knew that certain actions could bear on certain official proceedings ranging from judicial or grand jury actions to Congressional probes) simply observed:

“The President’s relevant conduct towards Cohen occurred when the President knew the Special Counsel’s Office, Congress, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York were investigating Cohen’s conduct. The President acknowledged through his public statements and tweets that Cohen potentially could cooperate with the government investigations.”

One powerful overall conclusion, though, can easily be reached after reading the entire Mueller Report, and it bears on the crucial obstruction-related consideration of whether an individual acted with corrupt intent. As Barr observed in a May 17 interview with Fox News, Mr. Trump’s actions sprang from the genuine – legally non-corrupt – conviction that Mueller’s investigation of his record, along with the Obama administration’s surveillance of his campaign and the presidential transition, was a “witch hunt and a hoax.”

Continued Barr:

“[A]t the time, he was saying he was innocent and that he was being falsely accused. And if you’re falsely accused, you would think [it] was a witch hunt. … He has been hammered for allegedly conspiring with the Russians. And we now know that was simply false…. I think if I had been falsely accused, I’d be comfortable saying it was a witch hunt.”

At least as important, the Mueller Report itself supports this interpretation in many instances. For example:

“[U]nlike cases in which a subject engages in obstruction of justice to cover up a crime, the evidence we obtained did not establish that the President was involved in an underlying crime related to Russian election interference. Although the obstruction statutes do not require proof of such a crime, the absence of that evidence affects the analysis of the President’s intent and requires consideration of other possible motives for his conduct.” (p. 7)

“Multiple witnesses recalled that the President viewed the Russia investigations as a challenge to the legitimacy of his election.” (p. 47)

“[Then Attorney General Jeff] Sessions said he had the impression that the President feared that the investigation could spin out of control and disrupt his ability to govern, which Sessions could have helped avert if he were still overseeing it. (p. 51)

“On Saturday, March 25, 2017…the President called [Director of Intelligence Daniel] Coats and again complained about the Russia investigations, saying words to the effect of, “I can’t do anything with Russia, there’s things I’d like to do with Russia, with trade, with ISIS, they’re all over me with this.” (p. 56)

“In addition to the specific comments made to Coats, [the CIA Director Mike] Pompeo, and [then National Security Agency Director Admiral Michael] Rogers, the President spoke on other occasions in the presence of intelligence community officials about the Russia investigation and stated that it interfered with his ability to conduct foreign relations.” (p. 57)

“The evidence shows that the President was focused on the Russia investigation’s implications for his presidency- and, specifically, on dispelling any suggestion that he was under investigation or had links to Russia.” (p. 61)

“Evidence indicates that the President was angered by both the existence of the Russia investigation and the public reporting that he was under investigation, which he knew was not true based on [then FBI Director James] Comey’s representations. The President complained to advisors that if people thought Russia helped him with the election, it would detract from what he had accomplished.” (p. 61)

President Trump “told Comey that ‘he was trying to run the country and the cloud of this Russia business was making that difficult.'” (p. 61)

“The President…told McGahn that the perception that the President was under investigation was hurting his ability to carry out his presidential duties and deal with foreign leaders.” (p. 62)

“According to [then White House adviser Stephen K.] Bannon, the President said the same thing each time: ‘He [Comey] told me three times I’m not under investigation. He’s a showboater. He’s a grandstander. I don’t know any Russians. There was no collusion.'”

“We also considered why it was important to the President that Corney announce publicly that he was not under investigation. Some evidence indicates that the President believed that the erroneous perception he was under investigation harmed his ability to manage domestic and foreign affairs, particularly in dealings with Russia.” (p. 76)

“The President wanted Sessions to disregard his recusal from the investigation, which had followed from a formal DOJ ethics review, and have Sessions declare that he knew ‘for a fact’ that “there were no Russians involved with the campaign” because he ‘was there.’ The President further directed that Sessions should explain that the President should not be subject to an investigation ‘because he hasn’t done anything wrong.'” (p. 97)

“[T]he President knew that the Russia investigation was focused in part on his campaign, and he perceived allegations of Russian interference to cast doubt on the legitimacy of his election.” (p. 97)

“[T]he evidence does not establish that the President was involved in an underlying crime related to Russian election interference. But the evidence does point to a range of other possible personal motives animating the President’s conduct. These include concerns that continued investigation would call into question the legitimacy of his election….” (p. 157)

As I wrote in an April 21 post, I believe that, because he had no reason to believe that a nearly complete version of his report (whose only required audience was the Attorney General) would be made public, Mueller acted perfectly appropriately in including a judgment that his investigation did not exonerate Mr. Trump on the obstruction question. For he was trying to impart information to Barr.

But Mueller has done the country a grave disservice by stressing the Constitutional barriers to indicting the President on this score. His report plainly demonstrates that he and his staff spent enormous amounts of time probing the traditional legal bases for an obstruction charge, and found considerable evidence to support decisions both to indict and not indict had Justice Department policy permitted such a step to be considered. And his farewell remarks yesterday were an inexcusable missed opportunity to clarify these matters.

As for Barr’s decision to file no obstruction charges, he and Rosenstein just as plainly saw the amount of evidence supporting such a conclusion, and quite reasonably judged that the obstruction allegations could not be proved “beyond a reasonable doubt” had Justice’s reading of the Constitution permitted a case to be brought. Moreover, as Barr’s May 17 press interview demonstrates, he believed that the President’s relevant words and deeds stemmed from his conviction that he was being framed – a conviction borne out by Mueller’s findings not only that the evidence was “not sufficient to support criminal charges” on any grounds against any Trump campaign officials who had contacts with the Russian government, but that no members of the campaign had “coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.” (Vol I, pp. 9,2)

Now that Mueller’s investigation is finally, officially, totally over, Congress, of course, has every Constitutional right to launch impeachment proceedings. For impeachment charges can properly include deeds that are not strictly speaking crimes. But it’s crucial to note that, from a legal standpoint, Mr. Trump is now in the clear. And although technical objections like Mueller’s can be raised to the President’s “no collusion, no obstruction claims,” his own report shows that they’re more than accurate enough.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Why the Venezuela Crisis is Getting Really Scary

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Austria, Baltics, Cuban Missile Crisis, Monroe Doctrine, NATO, NATO expansion, neutralization, North Atlantic treaty Organization, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Russia, South America, Soviet Union, spheres of influence, Trump, Venezuela, Vladimir Putin, Western Hemisphere

No one who lived through it or knows about it (me in both cases) would ever say lightly, “The X situation reminds me of the Cuban Missile Crisis.” So that’s at least one reason to be very worried about the largely under-the-radar situation that’s been unfolding in Venezuela lately. It shows signs of turning into the kind of Western Hemisphere incursion by Moscow that put the world on the brink of superpower nuclear war in October, 1962. What’s worse – there are major reasons for assigning (pre-Trump) U.S. globalist leaders much and even most of the blame.

Normally, I wouldn’t be too concerned about what happens inside any South American country, at least from the standpoint of U.S. national interests. And you shouldn’t be, either. None of the continent’s countries is strong or rich enough to endanger the United States militarily or economically. Further, although chronic misrule is always a threat to generate refugee crises, even the South American countries closest to the United States are too far away to send many to these shores.

The last few weeks in Venezuela, however, have been anything but normal. It’s not just that the country is descending into the kind of economic and political chaos that makes President Trump’s term “a big fat mess” look like happy talk. It’s that Russia – a long time ally of the leftist dictators whose corruption and incompetence have turned this oil-rich country into a bona fide failed state – looks to be establishing a military presence inside Venezuela’s borders.

Moscow’s forces so far are tiny. But there’s no guarantee that they’ll stay small – at least as long as the current Venezuelan regime remains in power. And P.S.: They include specialists assisting with the operation of a battery of anti-aircraft missiles – although in fairness, the Venezuelans bought the system back in 2009. That’s why President Trump has stated that “Russia has to get out.” At the same time, that’s going to be easier said than done without the United States using armed force. Which is scary because Russia is a full-fledged nuclear power. As a result, the President could well be faced with a genuinely agonizing dilemma: Either back down, and open the doors to a big, conspicuous, dangerous violation of one of longest-standing and most crucial pillars of U.S. national security doctrine; or challenge Russian leader Vladimir Putin militarily, and risk a conflict that could quickly escalate to the nuclear level.

I use the word “dangerous” because that national security doctrine, the 1823 “Monroe Doctrine,” correctly assumes that the stationing of foreign military forces in the Western Hemisphere would pose an intolerable threat to America. The missiles the Soviet Union planned to place in Cuba in 1962 raised the prospect of a devastating attack on the U.S. homeland delivered with almost no warning – and thus no way to stop them. Even a Russian deployment in Venezuela falling well short of this scale could bring alarmingly close to U.S. borders significant Russian intelligence capabilities along with military units. The latter could carry out missions ranging from interfering with shipping in the Caribbean and all along America’s Atlantic coast to protecting other anti-U.S. strongmen and interfering in civil conflicts throughout Central and South America whose consequences could well spill across U.S. borders.

Moreover, if the Russians succeeded in creating these kinds of footprints, what would stop the Chinese – who also boast an impressive nuclear arsenal? Even strong opponents of America’s numerous foreign military ventures should worry about these developments.

It’s tempting to look at the Cuban Missile Crisis and conclude that America’s major nuclear edge over the Soviet Union enabled the naval blockade of Cuba to succeed and ultimately force Moscow to back down – and that similar measures could kick Russia out of Venezuela today and keep it out of the hemisphere.

But this temptation needs to be resisted. Declassified documents have thoroughly debunked the reassuring accounts and interpretations that followed the Missile Crisis’ resolution – colorfully summarized by then Secretary of Dean Rusk’s claim that “We’re eyeball to eyeball and I think the other fellow just blinked.” In fact, the crisis ended because President John F. Kennedy secretly agreed to dismantle American missile deployments in Soviet neighbor Turkey, and to pledge to stop seeking to overthrow Cuba’s Communist dictator Fidel Castro. And since the United States has long since lost any nuclear superiority over forces controlled by Moscow, Washington would have even less leverage today to achieve an acceptable compromise.

Fortunately, the basis of such a deal exists – and ironically, because of a reckless American policy that surely prompted Russian leader Vladimir Putin to show his flag in Venezuela (and elsewhere, as in Crimea and Ukraine). That policy entailed the decision following the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union to expand the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) right up to Russia’s borders.

As I’ve argued previously, the United States should publicly offer to declare NATO expansion a mistake and to promise not to add further members in return for Russia’s agreement not to threaten the security of new members already admitted. In addition, Moscow would keep military forces out of the Western Hemisphere.

Washington could sweeten the offer by proposing to neutralize the new NATO countries whose membership has most rankled the Russians – the three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, which had been forcibly annexed into the old Soviet Union in 1940. If Austria could be successfully neutralized during the height of the Cold War (1955), a Baltic deal should be eminently achievable today.

Many if not most American globalists would condemn this arrangement as a modern version of spheres of influence diplomacy that they contend have long carved up regions for the benefit of large powers and needlessly ran roughshod over the interests of smaller countries that were denied the fully internationally recognized right to determine their own destinies – including their own security arrangements. What the globalists consistently ignore is that such hard-hearted realism can be an effective way to prevent great power conflicts – many of whose worst victims tend to be those same smaller countries.

Ultimately, however, the strongest argument for offering this deal to Putin is that it creates the optimal realistic net benefits for the United States. As a result, it’s an opportunity that a President elected in large part on an “America First” platform should eagerly seize.