Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Biden’s Biggest Putin Summit Failure

Tags

Biden, China, Cold War, Democrats, election 2016, election interference, globalism, Henry Kissinger, impeachment, Nordstream 2, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Russia, Trump-Russia, Ukraine, Vladimir Putin

Even though he’s just turned 98, I’m still surprised that none of the voluminous coverage and commentary on the just-concluded summit between President Biden and Russian leader Vladimir Putin featured any analysis from Henry Kissinger. Not that I agree with every policy decision or even strategy that the former Secretary of State and White House national security adviser favored – far from it.

But as I’ve written before, he’s one of the few first-rate analysts of U.S. foreign policy that I’ve encountered over my own decades in the field (and would have been even if in fact this bar was not so low). He’s still speaking out on these issues. And most important of all, Mr. Biden seems to have paid little attention either in the run-up to the Putin meeting and at the actual session (though of course, the details will long remain highly classified) to an historic insight that Kissinger helped contributed to American diplomacy whose core is as relevant as ever: the imperative of not needlessly antagonizing Russia and China at the same time. 

At this point, three big caveats need to be mentioned. First, it’s an imperative if U.S. foreign policy is to take a globalist course. That’s not my favored course, and under my kind of America First framework, the approach toward each of this powers would be substantially different. But the President is a died-in-the-wool globalist, so what counts most isn’t how his decisions compare with my preferences, but how well and coherently he’s pursuing his own strategy.

Second, there’s no question that Kissinger – and the rest of the bipartisan globalist U.S. foreign policy establishment – took the engage-with-China strategy way too, and indeed disastrously, too far. But at the time, and given the prevailing Cold War priorities both he and then President Nixon held, opening ties with China largely (but not exclusively) to complicate global matters for a Soviet Union feeling its oats, not only made good sense, but was long overdue.

And third, as suggested by my Cold War reference and my claim that U.S. China policy went way overboard, both national and international circumstances have changed dramatically.

Nonetheless, although China today is the rising behemoth facing the United States and post-Soviet Russia’s power is greatly diminished, the latter is still more than strong enough militarily and technologically to cause major problems for America. These range from aggressive designs on vulnerable new U.S. allies like the Baltic countries and Moscow’s former Warsaw Pact satellites, to damaging and disruptive hacks to America’s infrastructure. (I put election interference in a different box, since only extreme partisans believe that Russian operations made the difference in 2016.)

Since the China threat is far greater – and much more multidimensional – than the Russia threat, Mr. Biden has to date sensibly continued his predecessor’s policies of pushing back both militarily (in areas like the South China Sea) and economically (by keeping the Trump China tariffs and tech sanctions in place).

But he’s also spent his first months in office until this week seemingly determined to do his utmost to villify Russia and Putin verbally, apparently heedless of how his posture threatened to push Moscow and Beijing even closer together.

That’s not to say that a rapprochement between China and Russia didn’t take place during the Trump years. It did. (See, e.g., here.) And undoubtedly one big reason was that the Trump actions were much tougher than the Trump words. That’s true whether we’re talking about energy policy (where the former President’s encouragement of American independence gravely weakened the economies of Russia and other big foreign oil and gas producers), or Europe policy (where despite Trump’s scorn for America’s militarily free-riding allies, he beefed up the U.S. air and ground force and naval presence in and around Eastern Europe, right at Russia’s doorstep).

But unlike Mr. Biden to date, Trump also just as undoubtedly sought to contain disputes and even keep open the door to lowering tensions. And one key reason for this hostile posture can only be the flagrantly false claims from so many Democratic party politicians that Trump was excusing and even enabling Putin’s hostile actions out of gratitude for that election year assistance. President Biden eagerly joined the chorus, which tragically turned any outreach toward Russia toxic politically, and now he’s paying the piper – coming under fire from vengeful Republicans and other conservatives for even so modest and reasonable a decision as meeting Putin in person.

As a result, despite this recent report that “Biden fears what ‘best friends’ [Chinese leader] Xi and Putin could do together” and that “U.S. wariness over the Russia-China relationship has grown to the point where high-level American strategists are weighing how to factor it in as they try to reorient U.S. foreign policy to focus more on a rising China,” there’s not only no evidence that the subject came up in any serious way. It’s difficult at best to imagine that Mr. Biden could actually take any noteworthy steps in this direction without sparking (understandable) charges that he’s a Trump-like Putin lapdog, too. Just think of the reactions even in his own party to his recent decision to waive U.S. sanctions on finishing the Nordstream 2 natural gas pipeline, which as I’ve written, can only enrich Russia at the expense of Ukraine (whose security against Russian expansionism was declared vital to the United States itself by so many Democrats during the first Trump impeachment procedings).

An anti-American genuine Russia-China alliance is still no foregone conclusion. After all, countries bordering each other often have long histories of intense and often violent rivalries (like Russia and China). Dictators and would-be dictators like Putin and Xi Jinping rarely trust each other. As a result, countries headed by such authoritarians that are also next-door neighbors are especially unlikely partners.

But there’s also historically a great deal to the adage that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” And for the time being – and at an especially crucial juncture – Mr. Biden will struggle mightily to heed it. 

Following Up: The Democrats’ Trump/Ukraine/Impeachment Hypocrisy is Now Complete

Tags

Adam Schiff, Alexander Vindman, Biden, Bill Taylor, Bob Mendendez, Democrats, Donald Trump, Eric Swalwell, Fiona Hill, Following Up, foreign policy, globalists, impeachment, Jeanne Shaheen, Mainstream Media, Marie Yovanovitch, Nancy Pelosi, national security, natural gas, Nordstream 2, Russia, Ukraine, Vladimir Putin

As known by RealityChek regulars, I’ve devoted two posts lately (here and here, and here) to the puzzling matter of President Biden’s policies toward the Nordstream 2 gas pipeline. The reason: For months during the last half of the Trump administration, any number of leading Democrats and globalist U.S. diplomats and other officials had justified the first effort to impeach the former President largely because he allegedly threatened key U.S. national security interests by hinging American military aid to Ukraine to its government’s cooperation in investigating charges against Mr. Biden (then a likely Democratic presidential candidate and therefore political rival) and his family.

Indeed, the first Article of Impeachment expressly stated that Trump “compromised” and “injured” national security for precisely this reason.

Mr. Biden never explicitly accused Trump of comprising American security by weakening ties to a supposedly crucial ally. But he certainly insinuated comission of this “high crime or misdemeanor” by charging that Trump “betrayed this nation.”

So I believed it was worth spotlighting that the Biden administration had for months been moving toward a decision that would both unquestionably endanger Ukraine and enrich Vladimir Putin’s Russia – whose apparent designs on Ukraine have prompted the United States (including the Trump administration) to provide it with various kinds of weapons and other military supplies to begin with. That decision: nixing significant sanctions on companies building the pipeline, which would transport Russian natural gas directly to Europe, in the process bypassing the previous transit route through Ukraine and enabling Russia to avoid the need to pay literally billions of dollars’ worth of tolls to its neighbor. And yesterday, the Biden administration made the move official.

For the record, I don’t consider Ukraine a vital or even important ally of the United States (for reasons explained, e.g., here). But Americans were told consistently during the first Trump impeachment hearings and actual proceedings that it was, making at least ironic a Democratic administration’s pursuit of a policy bound to enrich the country threatening Ukraine – and at Ukraine’s expense.

And at least as interesting, during the period that Mr. Biden has made his Nordstream intention clear, and since the final decision was announced, it’s become clear that most of the Democratic and diplomatic voices that touted Ukraine’s centraility to America’s own safety didn’t believe their own claims either. And ditto for the Mainstream Media news organizations that breathlessly reported and even endorsed them.

How do I know this? Because none of Trump’s main accusers along these lines seems to have had anything to day about Mr. Biden’s unmistakably anti-Ukraine decision. And my charge is easily verifiable. Just Google “Nordstream” and any of the following names: Alexander Vindman, Marie Yovanovitch, Fiona Hill, Bill Taylor, Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff, Eric Swalwell. In various roles, these folks were leading the charge to dump Trump because of his Ukraine record and the related claim that he was a ” Manchurian” candidate and then President who won the presidency by accepting Putin’s help during the campaign in return for doing the Russian dictator’s bidding.

And do you know what these Google searches come up with? Not a peep of protest about Mr. Biden’s Nordstream decision. Incidentally, some of these figures have been commenting some on Ukraine-related issues. Vindman, for example, co-authored a Washington Post op-ed piece in March urging the West as a whole to toughen its stance against Russia’s “blatant violations of human rights and unrestrained repression of opponents both at home and abroad.” He urged Germany “in particular [to] reconsider its business ties to Moscow — specifically the Nord Stream 2 natural-gas pipeline which is nearing completion” and the United States and the United Kingdom to strengthen existing Nordstream sanctions. But nothing about Biden indifference to the matter even though it was already becoming apparent – and certainly nothing since.

Three weeks later, after the President imposed sanctions on Russia for cyberattacks and election meddling, Schiff – the lead House impeachment manager in 2019 – noted that “While appropriate, sanctions alone will not be enough to deter Russia’s misbehavior. We must strengthen our own cyber defenses, take further action to condemn Russia’s human rights abuses, and, working in concert with our Allies and partners in Europe, deter further Russian military aggression.” But he said nothing about Nordstream at all.

At least as important, I can’t find a single instance of a Mainstream Media journalist even seeking the Nordstream views of either figure, or of their other impeachment-period Ukraine-philes.  

Some Democrats have condemned the Mr. Biden’s Nordstream decision – notably, Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Bob Menendez of New Jersey and Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire. But although both voted to remove Trump from office in part because his Ukraine actions jeopardized national security (see here and here), neither mentioned taking any punitive measures against Mr. Biden even though in the long run his Nordstream decision could undermine Ukraine’s independence far more than Trump’s brief suspension of the arms aid.     

It’s true that the Ukraine national security charge wasn’t the only accusation leveled against Trump in 2019. He was also impeached for violating the law in holding up the military assistance Congress approved for the country.  But as pointed out in this post, nothing in the statute in question regards such presidential actions as impeachable. Certainly they’re far from the first course of action. Instead, the law specifically instructs Congressional plaintiffs to bring a lawsuit in a U.S. District Court.

As for the claim that Trump abused the power of the Presidency by launching an official investigation of a political opponent for purely political reasons, the revelations since of Hunter Biden’s activities in Ukraine during his father’s vice presidency show how premature – to put it kindly – that conclusion was.   

Aa a result, given the outsized role played by the Ukraine charge’s substance, the indifference shown this year to that country’s fate by Trump’s 2019 prosecutors strengthens the case that the first impeachment pretty thoroughly abused power itself.  The one silver lining (and it’s not negligible):  At least the Democrats and other Never Trumper globalists aren’t beating the Ukraine war drums for now.

Following Up: Biden’s Cave-In on Ukraine, Russia, and Germany and Why It Matters

Tags

Adam Schiff, alliances, allies, America First, Angela Merkel, Democrats, Donald Trump, energy, Eric Swalwell, Following Up, Germany, impeachment, NATO, natural gas, Nord Stream 2, North Atlantic treaty Organization, Russia, Ukraine, Vladimir Putin

Earlier this month, I wrote about the weirdness of the Biden administration’s seemingly blasé attitude toward Ukraine’s security, given the President’s long record of support (including military aid) for its independence from an expansionist Russia, and especially given the determination of the entire Democratic party to impeach Donald Trump largely because his allegedly blasé attitude toward Ukraine security treasonously endangered America’s own security.

Today I can report that the situation has grown even weirder – and in the process, raised major questions about the administration’s view of smooth alliance relations as a top foreign policy priority, and about its adults-in-the-room reputation itself for foreign policy competence itself.

As explained in my March 17 post, the issue at hand is the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, That’s a natural gas transport project that the Trump administration opposed because it threatened to, among other problems, increase Europe’s energy dependence on Vladimir Putin’s Russia, provide this aggressive autocrat with a big new source of revenue and therefore of funds for his military, and ace Ukraine itself out of natural gas earnings, thereby weakening its economy and ultimately its ability to defend itself.

So why is Nord Stream 2 being built? Two main reasons. First, lots of big German (and other European) companies have been involved in its financing and nearly finished construction, and will profit from its operation. (See here and here for good summaries.) Further, the German government is obliged to cover the multi-billion dollar losses that would result from cancellation. Second, Chancellor Angela Merkel;s government views the project as a means of keeping Germany, and Europe in general, economically engaged, influential, and therefore at peace with Russia.

The Germans also say they need the new gas because of its plans to de-nuclearize and de-carbonize its economy. Berlin also has the option of filling the looming energy supply gap by purchasing more gas from the United States than at present.  But Germany seems more impressed by the fact that higher transport costs make the U.S. product more expensive than Moscow’s.

You’d think, therefore, that Germany would be facing heavy pressure to cancel the pipeline from the Biden administration and especially from the impeachment enthusiasts in the Democrats’ Congressional ranks – like California’s Adam Schiff, the lead House manager for the first Trump impeachment trial, who described Ukraine’s sovereignty and safety as nothing less than a vital interest of the United States.

Not a peep about Nord Stream has been heard from Schiff or from other Trump impeachment hard-liners, like California Democratic Congress Member Eric Swalwell – confirming suspicions that their main concerns all along during both the Trump-Russia collusion and impeachment dramas were somehow ousting Trump for purely partisan or possibly simply deranged reasons, not safeguarding America’s security or democracy.

But Mr. Biden’s stance is more puzzling and disturbing – the latter since Presidents matter so much more than individual legislators. As my earlier post noted, his administration has seemed more relaxed about Nord Stream even though it, too, has claimed to harbor major concerns about Ukraine’s fate.

In fact, as recently as a few days ago, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken declared that “President (Joe) Biden has been very clear, he believes the pipeline is a bad idea, bad for Europe, bad for the United States, ultimately it is in contradiction to the EU’s own security goals, It has the potential to undermine the interests of Ukraine, Poland and a number of close partners and allies.”

Yet just this morning, when asked whether Washington could (and by extension, actually would) do anything to stop Nord Stream 2, Blinken “Well, ultimately that is up to those who are trying to build the pipeline and complete it. We just wanted to make sure that our … opposition to the pipeline was well understood.”

In other words, “La de dah.”

Such quick and complete turnabouts by America’s top diplomat are disturbing in and of themselves, but the real problems with the Biden Nord Stream stance go far beyond the impotence claimed (and therefore advertised) by Blinken.

After all, avoiding a showdown with Germany on the pipeline would be understandable and even smart if Mr. Biden really didn’t view Ukraine’s security, and/or Russia’s aims and power, as terribly important in the first place, or if (as I offered as a possibility in my previous post), this decision reflected some broader administration conclusion that relations with Russia should be improved in order to outflank the stronger and more dangerous Chinese.

But not only is the President a strong believer in deterring Russian designs on Europe. He recently seemed to go out of his way to antagonize Putin by calling him a “killer.”

So the most reasonable conclusion to draw is that, at least for now, Mr. Biden is so determined to keep America’s wealthiest European ally happy that he’s given it a veto on a matter he himself has deemed a major U.S. interest. Worse, he seems indifferent to Trump’s (correct) complaint that Germany evidently has no problem with enriching Moscow while continuing to rely on the U.S. military to defend it from Russia. This doesn’t necessarily leave the President guilty of carrying out an “America Last” foreign policy. But it makes you wonder how far he’ll drift from from putting America First.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Is Biden Going Trump-y on Russia and Ukraine?

Tags

Adam Schiff, alliances, Atlantic Council, Biden, China, Democrats, Donald Trump, energy, Frederick Kempe, Germany, globalism, impeachment, natural gas, Nord Stream 2, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Russia, Ukraine, Vladimir Putin

Something weird’s going on with the Biden administration, Ukraine, and Russia, and it could eventually put lots of Democrats in an awfully awkward position.

I’m old enough to remember when helping the eastern European country maintain its independence against Russia’s aggression was considered so important by leading Democrats, along with U.S. foreign policy establishmentarians, that it justified impeaching Donald Trump. For allegedly he illegally slow-walked Congressionally approved military aid to the Ukrainians – allegedly because he wanted to force Ukraine’s government to help him dig up political dirt on then soon-to-be Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.

As a result, for months, Americans heard again and again how critical Ukraine’s security was to America’s own security, and how Trump’s actions therefore endangered U.S. national security. In the words of lead House impeachment trial manager Adam Schiff (D-California):

“[T]he military aid that we provide, Ukraine helps to protect and advance American national security interests in the region and beyond. America has an abiding interest in stemming Russian expansionism and resisting any nation’s efforts to remake the map of Europe by dent of military force, even as we have tens of thousands of troops stationed there. Moreover, as one witness put it during our impeachment inquiry, the United States aids Ukraine and her people so that we can fight Russia over there and we don’t have to fight Russia here.”

Mr. Biden has never gone quite this far in public, either as former President Obama’s vice presidential point man on Ukraine, as presidential candidate, or as chief executive himself. Nonetheless, he continually pressed his former boss to provide more and better weapons to the Ukrainians than Obama was willing to approve, indicating he, too, considered Ukraine’s security closely related to America’s own.

Indeed, last year, his campaign issued a statement declaring that “Ukraine’s success will contribute to a more stable and secure Europe, which is in America’s interest.”

More recently, however, President Biden has been sending out significantly different signals. For example, his statement last month marking the seventh anniversary of Russia’s “illegal invasion of Ukraine,” he pledged to “stand with Ukraine against Russia’s aggressive acts” and condemned Moscow for violating “international law, the norms by which modern countries engage one another,” but didn’t draw any direct connections between Ukraine’s fate and America’s.

More concretely, Mr. Biden has been looking pretty slow-walking-ly himself on an issue vital to Ukraine’s prosperity: preventing Russia and Germany from completing a natural gas pipeline that would bypass that country, deprive it of billions of dollars worth annually in badly needed revenues from transit fees from existing pipelines across its own territory, heighten its vulnerability to Russian gas blackmail (as candidate Biden noted himself last year), and increase Europe’s energy dependence on Vladimir Putin’s regime to boot. His press secretary has called the Nord Stream 2 project a “bad deal for Europe.” But the project is nearly finished, and his administration isn’t displaying much urgency. As State Department spokesperson Ned Price told reporters blandly, “we are always looking at pipeline activity that would be sanctionable, so if we see activity that meets that threshold we are prepared to follow the law.”

Not that the administration doesn’t have some good reasons for caution on the Nord Stream 2 project. After all, improving relations with allies like Germany, which were strained by Trump’s “transactional” approach, is a top Biden priority.

Perhaps more important, and revealing, Mr. Biden might be reacting to signs of ever closer ties between Russia and China, since responding to the latter’s rise and increasingly aggressive behavior is also a U.S. priority now. Indeed, just last weekend, leading think tanker Frederick Kempe, whose Atlantic Council sees the world in precisely the kinds of globalist ways as the President, cited growing Sino-Russian cooperation as one reason for America moving away from an indiscriminately anti-Moscow hard line to “a more strategic approach” that would “combine more attractive elements of engagement with more sophisticated forms of containment alongside partners.”

During his first presidential campaign, Trump responded to complaints about his supposedly excessive and even corrupting regard for Russia by asking “If we could get along with Russia, wouldn’t that be a good thing, instead of a bad thing?” and noting possible benefits like defeating ISIS jihadists in the Middle East. No remotely comparable statement has come from the Biden administration, but its deeds on the Ukraine-Russia front are starting to send a similar message. Expect the silence from the Democrats’ ostensible Ukraine hawks and Russia hawks to be deafening.

Making News: New Article on Why I Voted for Trump

Tags

Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, censorship, China, Conservative Populism, conservatives, Democrats, economic nationalism, election 2020, entertainment, environment, freedom of expression, freedom of speech, George Floyd, Hollywood, Hunter Biden, Immigration, industrial policy, Joe Biden, Josh Hawley, journalism, Mainstream Media, Making News, Marco Rubio, police killings, regulation, Republicans, Robert Reich, Russia-Gate, sanctions, Silicon Valley, social media, supply chains, tariffs, taxes, technology, The National Interest, Trade, trade war, Trump, Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Ukraine, Wall Street, wokeness

I’m pleased to announce that The National Interest journal has just published a modified version of my recent RealityChek post explaining my support for President Trump’s reelection. Here’s the link.

The main differences? The new item is somewhat shorter, it abandons the first-person voice and, perhaps most important, adds some points to the conclusion.

Of course, keep checking in with RealityChek for news of upcoming media appearances and other developments.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: The Main Threat to U.S. Alliances Sure isn’t Trump

Tags

alliances, allies, America First, Angela Merkel, Belarus, Blob, China, David Brin, free-riding, Germany, globalism, natural gas, Nord Stream 2, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Philippines, Russia, science fiction, South China Sea, Trump, Ukraine, Vladimir Putin

Here’s how widespread the charge is that President Trump has been destroying America’s longstanding foreign policy alliances – and for no good reason: I just saw it made on Facebook by David Brin. (I hope this link works.)

In case you’re not a science fiction fan like me, Brin is one of the truly great modern masters of this genre. A few years ago, I read his novel of the near future Kiln People, and was just blown away. And his achievements are hardly limited to literature, as this bio makes clear. In other words, he can’t be written off as some hysterically virtue-signaling, Never Trumper know-nothing celebrity. And even if he was, he has every right to express these or any other views. But clearly foreign policy isn’t his wheelhouse.

But here’s how deeply ignorant this comment is: It, and others like it from sources with more than a passing familiarity with U.S. foreign policy and world affairs, keep ignoring just how feckless the countries America’s allied with – and to whose defense the United States is pledged – have long been, and remain. For anyone who cares about The Facts, two major examples of their cynicism and unreliability have appeared in the last month alone.

The first came from the Philippines, whose president, Rodrigo Duterte, is no decent person’s ideal of a national leader. But his island archipelago country is located on the eastern edge of the South China Sea, which has turned into a major regional hotspot and theater of U.S.-China rivalry due to Beijing’s efforts over the last decade or so to assert more and more control over its economically and strategically important sea lanes. So as with decades of pre-Trump presidents and their relations with authoritarian allies, the current administration has overlooked Duterte’s domestic record for the sake of national security.

Duterte, however, hasn’t exactly reciprocated. As a foreign policy realist, I can’t blame him for trying to placate China (which is right in his neighborhood) while continuing to enjoy the protection of the United States (which is far away). But as an America Firster, my main concern is whether the United States has any reason to feel confident about counting on Duterte when the chips are down and shooting starts, and the Filipino leader’s fence-sitting clearly shows that the answer is “No.”

In fact, in February, Duterte went so far as to announce the ending of one of the deals in the web of official U.S.-Philippine defense ties that regulates exactly what American forces can and can’t do on Filipino territory. Because of the Philippines’ location, this so-called Visiting Forces Agreement inevitably impacts how effectively the U.S. military can operate to counter China – and defend the Philippines itself. But Duterte’s spokesman boasted that it was time that Filipino’s “rely on ourselves” and “strengthen our own defenses and not rely on any other country.”

Funny thing, though. In the six-and-a-half months since, Duterte’s confidence seems to have evaporated. Because late last week, his foreign secretary announced that if China attacks, “say a Filipino naval vessel … [that] means then I call up Washington DC.” So maybe there’s some merit to Trump’s insistence that these relationships be reexamined from head to toe?

But in case you think that double-dealing and hypocrisy is limited to “our bastard” types like Duterte…stop. For the second such instance comes courtesy of no less than Germany’s Angela Merkel, who has been anointed as the current champion of the global liberal order by much of the globalist U.S. foreign policy Blob and the Mainstream Media journalists who drink its Kool-Aid.

This lionizing of Merkel, however, is mocked mercilessly by Germany’s continued refusal to make serious military contributions to the defense of Europe, by its huge, global growth-killing trade surpluses, and by its rush to ban exports of crucial medical equipment as soon as the CCP Virus hit the continent.

But Merkel-worship seems to be just as devoted – and unjustified – as ever judging from this report in yesterday’s Financial Times. “Angela Merkel warns Vladimir Putin against intervention in Belarus,” the headline declared.

The article itself, however, made clear that nothing of the kind happened. The German Chancellor simply expressed the “hope” that the Russian leader wouldn’t send troops to quell pro-democracy protests that threaten to topple the longtime leader of this compliant Russian neighbor.

Just as worrisome, earlier this month, Germany reacted with indignation to U.S. attempts to punish and therefore give pause to an increasingly aggressive Russia by ending a pipeline deal that would bring natural gas directly from Russia to Germany.

This Nord Stream 2 project would greatly enrich Putin’s regime (and make more resources available to his military) – and at the expense of alternative gas supplier Ukraine, another Putin target. German companies, however, are heavily invested in the project. So Merkel has responded to suggestions that the country pull out of the deal to protest what looks like Putin’s latest attempt to assassinate a political rival by arguing that the two matters should be “decoupled” because linking an “economically driven project” to the alleged assassination wouldn’t be “appropriate.”

Again, I’m a realist, and won’t criticize these allied leaders for wanting their cake and eat it, too. Their job is to protect and advance their countries’ interests. So if they judge that accomplishing this mission requires fence-sitting and free-riding – and thereby increasing risks to the United States – (especially the risks of rushing to their defense and even of nuclear attack on the U.S.homeland) – they should go ahead,

But by the same token, an American chief executive’s job is protecting advancing and protecting U.S. interests. And the charge – whether by the Brins or the Blobbers of the world – that Mr. Trump is gratuitously endangering venerable relationships that unquestionably make America safer and stronger – belongs in the realms of science fiction and fantasy, not fact..

Im-Politic: The CCP Virus and…Impeachment??

Tags

Articles of Impeachment, CCP Virus, China, Comptroller General, Congress, coronavirus, COVID 19, Democrats, GAO, Government Accountability Office, House of Representatives, Im-Politic, impeachment, Impoundment Control ct of 1974, Senate, Trump, Ukraine, WHO, World Health Organization, Wuhan virus

I’m actually glad that Congress’ Democrats are accusing the Trump administration of violating the same law in its decision to suspend funding for the World Health Organization (WHO) as it allegedly did in halting military aid to Ukraine – which of course was a central impeachment charge.

The point here is not to debate the merits of the WHO action (for the record, I’m strongly in favor) or of the impeachment effort (for the record, I strongly opposed) but to make clear how transparently partisan and Trump-ly deranged inclusion of the Ukraine aid accusation actually was.

Specifically, the Democrats’ allegation that “President Trump is violating the same spending laws that brought about his impeachment” represents a golden opportunity to point out that, legally speaking, jumping to the conclusion that the Ukraine decision was impeachable arguably violated those spending laws, too.

Let’s say that the way the Ukraine aid disbursement delay was carried out did clash with the terms of the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 – signed into law to prevent Presidents from blocking arbitrarily the actual expenditure of public funds as required in approved legislation. The word “arbitrarily” is important here, because the law has always been flexible enough to authorize such blockages and delays. It simply mandates that these actions to meet certain conditions.

But the law also sets out certain procedures for remedying these situations, and guess what? Quickly turning a claimed violation into an Article of Impeachment isn’t one of them. Or even close.

What’s supposed to happen legally is that an arm of Congress, the Government Accountability Office (GAO), determines whether a violation occurred. (It did.) And then the Comptroller General (the GAO’s head) is supposed to “bring a civil action in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia to require such” funds to be spent.

The case was never brought to court, however. And why not? Because the Democratic-controlled House had already impeached President Trump by that time! In fact, the GAO report didn’t come out until scant hours before the Senate impeachment trial began (on January 16).

The impeachment articles contained other charges of course, but the impoundment law allegation deserves emphasis because it was the only claimed legal violation for which a clear procedure for going forward was specified – in the statute itself.

The House unmistakably ignored that procedure. Meaning maybe we need an impeachment proceeding for the House leaders?

Im-Politic: Why It’s Time to Probe the Bidens

Tags

Burisma, corruption, election 2020, Hunter Biden, Im-Politic, impeachment, Joe Biden, Lindsey Graham, Mykola Zlochevsky, Obama administration, The New Yorker, Trump, Ukraine, Viktor Shokin, Yuriy Lutsenko

Yesterday morning, South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham made clear his determination to investigate the activities of Hunter Biden in Ukraine. That’s good news for two closely related reasons. First: The decision by the son of former Vice President and current Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden to work for a big, politically connected company in that notoriously corrupt country was pretty central to the recently concluded (for now?) Trump removal effort, and there are still lots of loose ends that need tying up.

Second, no one has yet adequately explained why Biden Junior continued to earn tens of thousands of dollars monthly from Ukraine energy company Burisma, and why the company remained in business, for the entire time that Senior was supposedly pushing hard on behalf of the top stated Obama administration priority of ending the graft and similar abuses that had long hampered Ukraine’s economy and transition to real democracy.   

Junior’s lucrative service on Burisma’s board strongly influenced the impeachment effort because of the major role it played in spurring President Trump to seek Ukraine’s help in probing a matter that was certain to affect the Biden Senior’s chances of winning the White House. 

The President and his supporters claim that looking into the Bidens was justified because the big bucks Junior he made from Burisma at the least looked like a classic conflict of interest, and at the most could have corruptly influenced American policy while Senior was running the Obama administration’s operations toward the country on a day-to-day basis.

And as I’ve noted, far from Senior’s presidential candidacy justifying shielding him from official scrutiny, it actually calls for special attention – unless Americans aren’t supposed to care that a future chief executive might be in some foreign oligarch’s hip pocket. That would be quite a position to take for those who have portrayed President Trump as Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s compromised puppet. The Biden connection of course logically also warrants similarly special Trump attention to Burisma, rather than to Ukraine’s many other unmistakably corrupt entities.

For their part, Trump opponents insist that the President was simply trying to smear a possible rival in this fall’s general presidential election.

It’s true that impeachment and removal supporters leveled other Biden-specific charges at Mr. Trump – for example, attacking his decision to use his personal lawyer, former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, as his main Ukraine sleuth, rather than going through standard Justice Department channels. But the first Article of Impeachment, the one alleging abuse of power, focused tightly on the claim that the President endangered America’s national security (by delaying military aid needed for Ukraine’s defense against Russia) for personal gain (improved reelection chances).

In this regard, the President’s opponents have noted that there’s no evidence indicating that the Ukraine policy of Biden Senior and the Obama administration permitted Junior’s job to influence American statements or actions. Indeed, they maintain that throughout his time as Ukraine point man, Senior championed exactly the kind of Ukraine corruption fighting efforts that threatened whatever dirty work they acknowledge Burisma was up to. And specifically, they point to Senior’s demands – clearly, by the way, reflecting U.S. policy –  that Ukraine fire a prosecutor thought to be soft on corruption and replace him with someone they considered truly committed to cleaning up the system – including the situation at Burisma.

But this is where the pro-Bidens story gets fuzzy, at best. The reason? Because more than four years after Biden demanded the canning of Ukraine Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, and after Yuriy Lutsenko came on the job, Burisma is still open for business. Moreover, the co-founder widely fingered as its corruption mastermind, Mykola Zlochevsky, is still in charge. The only price the company has paid for its alleged misdeeds was a small ($7 million) fine for tax evasion. And this four-year period of course includes the year-plus that passed between Biden’s December, 2015 ultimatum and the Obama administration’s last day in office.

As a result, Junior was paid handsomely (some $83,000 monthly at least for some period of time, according to this Reuters report) from the time he joined Burisma (in April, 2014) till his departure (August, 2019). When was Senior put in charge of Obama administration Ukraine policy? Early 2014. And Mr. Trump’s opponents truly believe that there’s “nothing to see here”? And that it’s not the slightest bit fishy about Senior huffing and puffing about corruption in Ukraine but never actually blowing that house down (or at least actually denying Ukraine the $1 billion in international loan guarantees – including to the energy sector of which Burisma was a part – he threatened to cut off unless Shokin was pink-slipped) – which left Burisma free to keep stuffing Junior’s bank account?

Then add in this tidbit from The New Yorker (not a publication often favorable to Mr. Trump). In an article leaving no doubt that Senior had long been financially stressed despite his political prominence, author Adam Entous reported, “Hunter saw himself as a provider for the Biden family; he even helped to pay off Beau’s law-school debts.”

Therefore, it’s easy to see how it would have been easy for Senior “to deal with Hunter’s activities by largely ignoring them” – as stated in the New Yorker piece linked above.  Except he didn’t just ignore them.  His aides actively rejected numerous attempts by Obama administration officials to raise concerns about the subject – including by Geroge Kent, one of the State Department officials who testified at the House Intelligence Committee’s impeachement hearings.  That sounds like they worked for someone who actively didn’t want to know.   

It’s still possible that Senior was simply an ineffective Ukraine corruption fighter when it came to Burisma, rather than one who was conveniently indifferent. But since that question remains unanswered, since Senior is still running for the White House, and since Junior’s dealings with China during Senior’s Vice Presidency also seem to have contributed to the family’s considerable rise in net worth (see that above-linked New Yorker story for these details, too) how could anyone reasonably object to the proposition that it’s time to probe the Bidens?  

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

Tags

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.

Im-Politic: The Case Against Impeachment (So Far)

Tags

Adam Schiff, Burisma, Devin Nunes, Gerald R. Ford, Gordon Sondland, Hunter Biden, Im-Politic, impeachment, impeachment hearings, Joaquin Castro, Joe Biden, Laura Cooper, Marie Yovanovitch, Office of Management and Budget, Rudy Giuliani, Trump, Ukraine, whistleblower, William Taylor

As a public service, herewith a handy-dandy guide to those widely touted Trump impeachment charges or insinuated charges that hold water so far, and those that don’t. Spoiler alert: The single alleged presidential transgression that I believe would warrant impeachment – and removal from office – comes at the end of this post. And not just because I want to create a teaser. It’s mainly because this specific transgression has received almost no attention as such. Revealingly, moreover, many of the President’s defenders have been just as seemingly inept as his assailants at focusing on what would legitimately satisfy the Constitution’s impeachment and removal requirements and what wouldn’t.

Canard Number One: Mr. Trump’s focus on investigations of the Biden family reveals a simple determination to smear a political rival. Two problems should consign this allegation to the dumpster. First, as I’ve previously noted, it can only be based on the assumption that Americans (and especially sitting or previously serving politicians) should be immune from corruption investigations simply because they decided to seek office – or seek it again. Unless you want to illuminate brightly a formula for green-lighting massive corruption, you’ll recognize the dangers of this proposed standard.

Second, this claim ignores (a) the distinct possibility that, given the Obama administration point-man role played by Vice President Joe Biden, the Ukrainian energy entity Burisma was seeking to influence peddle when it handed his son, Hunter, a highly lucrative position, and (b) the troubling questions raised both by Biden senior’s knowledge of this development and by the former Vice President’s failure to act to end a situation that at the very least created the appearance of conflict of interest.

Canard Number Two: Mr. Trump’s strong interest in investigating the Biden situation – and his statements to the effect that he cared more about these probes than about Ukraine – shows that he cares more about his own political fortunes than about U.S. national security. Anyone holding this belief apparently considers the fate of a country whose security or independence was never a prime American concern even during the Cold War is (ipso facto?) more important than possible foreign influence peddling at the highest levels of a previous administration. I’m glad I don’t have to make this argument.

Canard Number Three (Similar to Canard Number Three): The President’s assertion that Ukraine interfered against his campaign for the White House in 2016 reveals that he selfishly cares more about his own political fortunes, or about further discrediting the Russia collusion charges that have dominated his presidency so far, than about U.S. national security. As contended above, Ukraine was never regarded as a significant national security interest even when completely controlled by a Soviet regime that for decades was classified officially as a paramount threat to both U.S. and global security. Why it should be regarded as more important today is anything but clear. Moreover, Americans have spent most of the first half of the Trump presidency hearing that the greatest threat to not only their security but their democracy itself is foreign government interference in elections.  Therefore, it’s at best odd to start hearing that Ukraine interference doesn’t matter at all.

Canard Number Four: There was no Ukraine 2016 election interference. As I’ve previously pointed out, anti-Trump statements from Ukraine’s then ambassador to the United States and its powerful Interior Minister are on the record. Just as important: Nor does it withstand serious scrutiny to counter that these statement were isolated and therefore trivial – a claim made by fired U.S. Ukraine ambassador Marie Yovanovitch during her open impeachment testimony last Friday. Would senior officials like these felt free to speak out so blatantly if their views weren’t widespread Ukraine governing circles? And does it stand to reason that no one reporting to them played any such roles?

Canard Number Five: President Trump was trying to “bully” Ukraine. Unfortunately, international relations still remains a realm where the law of the jungle is much more common than the rule of law as Americans know it. So tough tactics are both nothing new and often needed.

Canard Number Six: President Trump sought a quid pro quo from Ukraine. An alternative description of this charge: “President Trump wanted Ukraine to do something for the United States in return for the United States doing something for Ukraine.” It’s actually true that many of Mr. Trump’s critics strongly oppose such an approach to U.S. foreign policy, denigrating it as “transactional” and presumably not worthy of a truly great nation. But this position – a hallmark of the globalism that the President ran strongly against, and continues to oppose strongly in word and often in deed – stems from a belief that the highest priority of U.S. foreign policy should be to preserve the alliances, institutions, and other relationships whose creation defined so much of post-World War II foreign policy.

That’s an entirely legitimate point of view. But it’s just as legitimate – and, as I’ve written, far more realistic – to seek to ensure above all that these arrangements continue promoting American interests on net, to monitor them on an ongoing basis, to press for change when they fail this test, and to abandon them when their potential to do so is judged to be exhausted. So not only is there nothing intrinsically wrong with seeking quid pros quo in foreign policy. The world as it is makes them unavoidable.

Canard Number Seven: Mr. Trump was bullying Ukraine and/or seeking a quid pro quo by threatening to withhold military aid approved by Congress and signed into law. Here we get closer to impeachment charges that do deserve scrutiny. But this allegation still qualifies as a canard – to date, anyway – because it leaves unanswered the central questions of whether the “bullying” or any type of improper pressure took place or the “quid pro quo” was pressed for reasons that “rise to the level of impeachment” or not – or that even come close. And most of the President’s opponents and supporters have done an equally poor job of keeping their eyes on these balls.

Revealingly, even the answers presented that seem to sink the President deep into hot water don’t support a serious impeachment case. Here, for the reasons stated above, I’m deliberately leaving out the allegations that Mr. Trump was illegitimately trying to find some dirt on Biden, and/or reinforcing the legitimacy of his own 2016 victory.

Nevertheless, what gave Mr. Trump the authority to establish even substantively legitimate conditions – however explicitly or implicitly – on the Ukraine aid package? To which the first response is, “What’s meant by ‘established conditions’?” Let’s say that the President’s accusers are entirely correct and that the disbursement of the aid was delayed. So what?

In the first place, there’s nothing in the law stipulating any specific date for releasing the funds other than the end of the fiscal year, which fell on September 30. And as all agree, they were released by then. In other words, from all appearances, there was no Ukraine aid suspension in the first place.

Moreover, all the evidence available so far also demonstrates that the Trump administration’s aid delay decision itself followed the law – although somewhat belatedly. According to Defense Department career official Laura Cooper – in remarks that have not yet been challenged – in her closed door testimony to House investigators, a suspension of Ukraine aid would not be illegal either if the administration had formally notified Congress of a “rescission” of the funds or of a decision to redirect (“reprogram”) them for other purposes. She added that she made these points to Trump administration officials at a July 31 meeting. By late August, though, the Associated Press reported, House Appropriations Committee staff members received this notification from the White House’s Office of Management and Budget.

In the second place, what’s intrinsically illegal or even improper about Mr. Trump either asking for an add-on, or even threatening to deny the aid if the Ukrainians didn’t agree to conduct the investigation?

One explanation I found compelling was offered by Yovanovitch’s replacement as chief U.S. envoy to Kiev, William Taylor, in his closed door October 22 testimony to House of Representatives investigators. Taylor stated that he was told by U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland – an Oregon businessman and major Trump campaign donor – that the Trump decision owed to a practice from the President’s business career:

“When a businessman is about to sign a check to someone who owes him something, he said, the businessman asks that person to pay up before signing the check. Ambassador [Kurt] Volker [another long-time diplomat, who had served as a special Ukraine envoy in the Trump administration] used the same terms several days later while we were together at the Yalta European Strategy Conference.”

Not that Taylor himself found the reasoning compelling. But although he claimed that the “the explanation made no sense” because “the Ukrainians did not ‘owe’ President Trump anything,” and certainly has a right to this opinion, it sounds like more a reflection of what might be his own overly precious view of the proper way to conduct American diplomacy than like an objectively devastating critique of Mr. Trump. Someone with a less gentlemanly perspective might well have concluded that the President was simply trying to press an advantage to secure an objective he believed furthered U.S. interests that were at least as important as helping Ukraine resist Russian designs.

Which is where one widely cited problem with the anti-Trump narrative comes in. To begin with, it’s been difficult to figure out when the Ukraine aid hold was actually put into effect, but the reference in this article in Politico (an early account of the decision to “last summer” (the summer of 2019) seems about right. (The New York Times subsequently pegged the date as “early July,” but neither claim has been confirmed.) While questioning Yovanovitch during her public appearance at the House of Representative impeachment hearings, House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Devin Nunes identified July 18 as the start of the hold). The Times also contends that the Ukrainians found out about the freeze “by the first week of August.”

Even if this finding is correct, however, it’s clear that one of the strangest episodes in the history of blackmail and quids pro quo in general must have taken place. For the President evidently had decided to hold Ukraine’s military future for ransom but never told Kiev it was being extorted. Indeed, the Ukrainians didn’t even learn at that time – roughly a month after the suspension had gone into effect – that they were being placed over a barrel through any official administration channels. They seem to have found out via leaks, at least according to The Times story linked above. It was not until September 1 that the policy was communicated officially to its supposedly intended target– by Sondland in a meeting with a top aide to Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky. And even Sondland’s language was strangely vague.

Now it’s true that starting in early August, the Ukrainians could have begun taking these leaks, put them together with whatever they knew about Trump personal attorney Rudy Giuliani’s activities in their country and Mr. Trump’s unmistakable interest in a Biden probe, and detected a message about a gun being held to their head. But the surreptitious nature of these efforts could have also indicated that the administration’s resolve on this matter was anything but firm, and that some modest gestures would have gotten them off the hook. In fact, in his closed door testimony, Taylor himself indicated at his closed door House appearance that he would have been satisfied with Ukraine making the public investigations announcement sought by Mr. Trump through its Prosecutor General, rather than its President. So despite his later headline-making characterization of the link as “crazy,” he was obviously prepared to let it slide for a pittance.

Which is where a second widely cited problem with the pro-impeachment narrative needs to be considered: The aid went through on time, and no one in the Ukraine government made any investigations-related announcement at all.

Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff from California, who’s leading the impeachment efforts, has a ready retort: As he stated at the open impeachment hearing he chaired last Friday, the Trump administration had no choice, because it was being pressured by members of both the House and Senate to release the hold, and because it had received the whistleblower’s report and realized that the (impeachment?) boom was about to be lowered. And Schiff’s Texas Democratic colleague, Joaquin Castro, argued at the October 22 public hearing that “attempted freeze” (my phrase) should be considered a crime because attempted murder is a crime.

But again, the legislation appropriating the aid mentioned no deadline other than the September 30 deadline for all appropriations measures. That deadline was met – by September 11, meaning that the delay lasted at most a little over two months. What the President’s critics are calling blackmail might have been nothing more than a case of trying to take advantage of leverage over a foreign country to achieve a goal (investigating high level corruption by a previous administration) understandably viewed as legitimate by the President – a practice prohibited by exactly no U.S. law. Schiff’s charge is also easily rebutted with the distinct possibility that the Trump administration saw the September 30 deadline coming and decided that securing a public Ukraine commitment to investigate the Bidens simply wasn’t worth the candle.

But however flawed these widely used anti-Trump arguments, based on what’s known so far, the President’s critics do have one potentially stronger impeachment arguments to make. The first would involve a charge that the President was knowingly persuaded by Giuliani to fire Yovanovitch as ambassador to Kiev in May because she was in the process of finding out about Giuliani’s own efforts to make money in Ukraine for his other clients (or even for the President?) in illegal ways.

A big problem with this charge is that, although Yovanovitch did impute these motives to Giuliani in her opening statement at last Friday’s public hearing, she offered no evidence to support her allegation. Indeed, she agreed with a Republican staffer’s question that she was replaced by a Trump administration appointee who was a “man of high integrity” who would not “facilitate” Giuliani’s supposed objectives – none other than William Taylor. She also testified that she had never met the Giuliani associates whose motives she denigrated, and didn’t know whether their ostensibly crooked ambitions were being “frustrated” by whatever anti-corruption policies she says she was pushing.

In addition, it must be noted that this personal corruption charge has received almost no attention from impeachment supporters in Congress or elsewhere in American politics and society.

All of which appears to mean that pro-impeachment and/or removal arguments depend on proving a proposition from Schiff that itself is convoluted and confusing enough to verge on incoherence and even flim-flammery – whether we’re talking purely legal/criminal standards or not.

Specifically, even though the hold was lifted in time to meet the statutory requirement, the President reversed course only involuntarily (either for fear of being exposed by the whistleblower’s complaint or of dangerously antagonizing influential House and Senate members who supported the aid). Therefore, for either some of the two months, or most of the two months, or all of the two months during which the aid suspension lasted, Mr. Trump demonstrated that his intent was uninfluenced by any legitimate concerns (like ferreting out non-Russian 2016 foreign election interference or Biden family corruption) and as a result was solely corrupt – and met impeachment and/or removal standards.

Of course, no one can rule out further discoveries of significantly worse Trump deeds. But unless they’re made, a House vote to impeach would amount to nothing more than an affirmation of former President Gerald R. Ford’s 1970 contention (when he was House Minority Leader) that “An impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history.”

And the all too likely result? A normalization and weaponization of this process that even the Trump-ly Deranged shouldn’t want to see.