Tim Talks Politics - The Weekly Brief, July 20, 2018
The Weekly Brief - July 20, 2018
HELLsinki
Okay, I'm sure you all expect that much of this week's newsletter will be taken up with events in Helsinki. Who am I to prove you wrong? It's Friday, but it seems like President Trump met with President Putin just yesterday given the level of coverage, outrage, and general losing of the mind that has occurred in the last few days.
What is going on? Largely, it was comments from President Trump at a public news conference with Putin that set it all off. That’s all been covered, and the walk back is being attempted, so I want to consider consequence. What will be the - wait for it - fallout?
Certainly, if the threat from Russia is as serious as some people think, then a legitimate question is raised as to whether this is an impeachable dereliction of duty on the part of the president. But that all depends on how you're looking at the situation.
If you're looking at election meddling as an act of war as some do, then Trump’s comments would indeed seem impeachably treasonous. However, there's a big difference between a hot war and a cold war. Even during the Cold War, America had normalized diplomatic relations with Russia and sought to use those channels and every back-channel to avoid disaster.
As they often do after significant meetings like this, Brookings Institute did a quick check in with multiple experts to get their takeaways. What was noticeable to me was the decided lack of alarm or sense of impending doom from any of them.
That's not to say that experts view the Helsinki summit and Trump's behavior without concern, frustration or even anger. They do. However, there does seem to be a fairly wide gap in perception between mass journalism and foreign policy practitioners and scholars.
The consensus among these experts seems to be that Trump's diplomacy is watching a slow-moving train wreck (Jonah Goldberg calls it “Trumpism on the international stage”), but major policy initiatives have largely gone unaffected, and second and third level diplomat contacts between America and other countries remain strong. It's an interesting contrast to the more popularly known narrative surrounding Trumpian diplomacy. The way scholars at Brookings put it: Liberal institutions are indeed under threat…. Like they always have been. That’s not a call for indifference, but ongoing vigilance, and pushback against broad executive power.
The context for the reaction to Trump’s friendliness with Putin, of course, is the ongoing investigation into the possibility of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 election. In a fresh round of indictments last week, Robert Mueller drew an ever more detailed picture of what Russian activities looked like in the elections. This sequence of events makes the diplomatic engagement with Russia far more difficult if you're Trump.
Another interesting piece of context is the general low trust both leaders engender on the international stage. So we shouldn't be surprised that this meeting and its outcomes are generally being looked at with alarm, and maybe a degree of hyperbole. Interestingly enough, Pew Research also found that while most Americans don't trust Putin, a lot of Russians seem to like Trump. Not sure what to make of that.
If you want even more on the Helsinki summit, check out my latest post on Tim Talks Politics: Assessing Helsinki: 10 Observations of the Trump-Putin Summit.
Nurturing NATO?
In the wake of the Helsinki and NATO Summits a lot of observers have taken up the narrative that Trump’s public comments and rantings have put the transatlantic alliance way back. However, the Daily Signal notes that Trump actually sees “eye to eye” with Ukraine on certain issues, which is certainly not a pro Russian position.
AEI also argues that Trump's comments at the NATO summit are helping to strengthen the alliance. These are certainly a counter-narrative interpretation of events. Only time will tell of their accuracy. However, if you look at the communique that the assembled heads of state produced at the NATO Summit, there's reason to think that good work is still being done and the alliance is still functioning.
News Flashes
American attention was focused largely on Europe and Trump's meetings there, but the rest of the world was also moving.
After a round of elections in Europe and Latin America over the last year, elections and election politics are dominating the Middle East. Pakistan is in the midst of elections for a new prime minister with the leading candidate being Imran Khan, someone the American Enterprise Institute is not too excited about. Pakistan is one of the most troublesome partners America works with in that region of the world so new leadership can either ease parts that relationship or make it much more difficult.
And in Iraq, weeks after new elections, a new coalition government has yet to be formed. As that failure becomes more protracted, protest and popular unrest grows.
In an uncharacteristically partisan blog post at the Council on Foreign Relations, Elliott Abrams takes New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and Senator Bernie Sanders to task for their silence on the violence of the Ortega regime in Nicaragua. Seems odd timing, but the reason for Abrams salvo are new report by Human Rights Watch and the Inter American Commission on Human Rights have verified human rights abuses by the Ortega regime. This is an important anecdote as its part of the larger picture surrounding immigration to the United States. Political violence in Central American countries like Nicaragua his is a key driver for people attempting to enter the US.
And some good news:Harvard Business Review reports that a Ebola outbreak has been stopped cold in the Democratic Republic of Congo. What makes this such good news is the speed with which the outbreak was contained and the comparatively small loss of life compared with the more recent outbreak just a few years ago in West Africa.
Finally, there's a very interesting study from The Brookings Institute that finds great value in local newspapers. The basic upshot? There's a strong correlation between closure of local newspapers and increase in local government borrowing. The author's hypothesize that when there is no local newspaper to act as a watchdog, government finances get way out of whack. So, support your local rag.