The Desire to Please Dictators: Why Trump’s Crimea Gaffe Matters

Source: Observer | August 3, 2016 | John R. Schindler

Russia’s illegal occupation was not a political issue in the US—until Donald Trump made it one

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Donald Trump has done himself and the Republican party no favors with his reaction to the Wikileaks operation, however. Initially dismissing allegations of Russian involvement as a “joke,” Trump then asked Moscow to locate the more than 30,000 emails that Clinton and her staff deleted in EmailGate. While it’s highly likely that the Kremlin indeed does have Hillary’s missing emails, encouraging a hostile intelligence service to pillage the communications of fellow Americans represents a genuinely novel development in our politics.

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This was a comment he made about Crimea, the Ukrainian region on the Black Sea that was annexed by Russian forces in early 2014, setting off what I termed at the time Cold War 2.0. On Sunday’s This Week program on ABC, Trump appeared to accept Moscow’s occupation of Crimea, indicating that, as president, he would “look at” recognizing Russian rule there, adding memorably, “the people of Crimea, from what I’ve heard, would rather be with Russia than where they were.”

Making matters worse, Trump then denied Russia’s military involvement in Ukraine, stating twice of President Vladimir Putin, “He’s not going into Ukraine.” This overlooks the well-known fact that since 2014 occupied Crimea has become a major Russian military venue, with the Kremlin publicly boasting of a hundred new units stationed on the peninsula. Moscow’s forces in Crimea include the Black Sea Fleet (with a cruiser, a destroyer, four frigates, five submarines plus numerous smaller vessels), while the air force recently showcased its power in a memorable demonstration of strength over Crimea. And let’s not forget the two whole Russian army corps—nine brigades plus five regiments—that occupy a substantial chunk of eastern Ukraine and are involved in daily combat operations against Ukrainian forces.

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There are two options to explain so many errors by Trump in a few sentences. Either he is clueless about Crimea and Ukraine, being totally unfamiliar with the basic issues, and decided to pontificate on the subject regardless while on national television. Or he is consciously parroting Kremlin propaganda. There is no third choice here.

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Let’s be clear that the Crimea issue has impacts far beyond the Baltics. Our rivals worldwide watched Putin’s smash-and-grab of Crimea with the Little Green Men of GRU, his military intelligence service, with intense interest. This playbook can now be copied by other countries, particularly if President Trump won’t do anything about it.

Would Trump, as commander-in-chief, simply let China occupy Taiwan, as the People’s Liberation Army has dreamed of for decades? What about all those tiny little islands in the South China Sea that Beijing nakedly covets? These are questions that the Republican nominee now needs to be asked, plainly and directly.

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Donald Trump’s foreign policy vision, with its desire to please dictators until they hopefully behave, seems to be more comfortable with the norms of the ancients than with those of the current century. This is why Crimea matters. Trump’s concept of international relations will only encourage more aggression against the weak while quite possibly unleashing major war and geopolitical hell with it.

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