Russia’s meddling in the U.S. presidential campaign was
unprecedented in American history. Whether or not Moscow’s intervention helped
Republican Donald Trump win the White House remains unclear. Nevertheless, Trump’s
victory – and the Kremlin’s enthusiasm for it – offers proof that the
post-World War Two era is over and that millions of U.S. voters support a
broader international retreat from global integration.
Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to work
toward “constructive cooperation” in a phone conversation on Monday. But
although the two leaders are not due to meet before the January inauguration of
the U.S. president-elect, that doesn’t mean Moscow will scale back its
political machinations before then. The immediate effect of the Trump win has
been to validate Russia’s almost certain hacking of Democratic Party leaders’
email accounts. So, too, Putin’s slaughter in Syria, where the overarching aim
of his bombing campaign against the rebels opposing President Bashar al-Assad
is to thwart a solution to one of the most pressing crises facing the West. The
Kremlin is also backing the ongoing killing in eastern Ukraine and financing
right-wing groups across Europe with the same aim of sapping Western unity and
resolve. Now Trump’s election will embolden Moscow to step up such efforts to
insert itself into global affairs, which boost Putin’s authoritarian control at
home by enabling him to portray himself as a restorer of Russian greatness.
Delivering that message to the country, the Kremlin's vast
propaganda machine boosts the Russian president’s popularity by creating an
alternate reality in which actions that are isolating Russia and crippling its
long-term development are portrayed as heroic, and all deleterious effects
blamed on Western enemies. Undermining Putin’s narrative by resisting his
bullying and ultimately helping expose his actions as catastrophic for Russians
is the surest way of countering him. As a former secretary of state who did not
shy away from confronting Putin after the failure of President Barack Obama's
Russia reset policy, Hillary Clinton would have been as well placed as any
American politician to deal with the challenge.
Trump has done the opposite, of course, reinforcing the
mythologizing of Putin with his praise of the former KGB officer as a strong
leader. The U.S. president-elect has enjoyed similar success casting himself as
a champion of common people – no mean achievement for a hate-mongerer accused
of groping women. The two men, both pursuing their ultimate ends of personal
power and enrichment at the expense of the ordinary people, are natural allies.
When it comes to foreign policy, “it is phenomenal how they got to be so close
in their conceptual approaches,” Putin’s spokesman crowed after the
Republican’s election. Their views will surely diverge and the bonhomie
evaporate once Trump assumes control of Russia's designated main enemy, as they
did under former President George W. Bush, that notorious glimpser of Putin's
soul. For now, however, Trump and Putin share a common interest in the global
march from integration and democratization toward nationalism and
authoritarianism.
Moscow represents merely one threat to the trans-Atlantic
order. Unlike Russia – which lashes out from weakness – China is deeply
invested in the U.S. economy. But its anti-American rhetoric and actions in the
South China Sea aim to chip away at America’s security bulwark. Brexit poses an
even greater danger by striking a body blow to the European Union, Washington’s
most important strategic ally. And with rising authoritarianism in Hungary and
Poland further weakening the unity of a continent on which Washington relies to
further its interests and values, the decline of Pax Americana, not just the
United States, suddenly appears to be a very real possibility.
It’s not clear what Trump’s foreign policy will look like.
The reality TV star with no apparent fixed ideology or governing experience has
issued promises chiefly for their popularity with his base. Still, with
bombasts like the hardliner John Bolton – George W. Bush's ambassador to the
United Nations – on his shortlist for secretary of state, Washington appears
poised to resume its burning of European alliances. Trump has already rocked
the Western security establishment by indicating U.S. military support for NATO
would depend on member countries’ payments to the defense organization, the
cornerstone of global security since World War Two. Ditto for South Korea and
Japan in the Pacific.
Some Trump critics believe the United States may emerge from
his presidency largely unscathed thanks to the strength of its civil society
and limits on a Republican Congress and White House in a Constitution designed
to resist the tyranny of the majority. Indeed, America's moral standing has
withstood the likes of McCarthyism, the Vietnam War and other Cold War-era
catastrophes. But no modern U.S. president has signaled Trump’s level of
contempt for our most basic democratic institutions and ideals.
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