Comrade Putin

What was Putin doing with his hand wedged in the chair like that?

In Helsinki Trump went completely off the reservation and is now pretty much outside the Fort all by himself. Whether the Fort will reach him in time is an open question, and the survival of his presidency is in play as a result.

What do I think Trump wants? I think he wants full normalization of political relations with Russia, to include military cooperation including joint operations. He wants to work with Russia jointly in the war against Islamists and thereby take the pressure off the U.S. forces. Unlike presidents before him, Trump does not care about the internal politics of other countries. He does not believe that it the responsibility of the United States to be the one to stand up to all the bullies around the world. He believes that sanctions are stupid because they hurt U.S. businesses and help business from other countries whose governments don't participate in the sanctions program. Does he care about the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula or the civil war that Russia directly supports in eastern Ukraine? No, not really. He'd gladly recognize Crimea as part of Russia if Putin abandoned eastern Ukraine, or if Kiev and Moscow could work out a division of the disputed areas.

What is Trump more worried about? Some would say pee tapes, but I think it is the emergence of China as a global superpower. The U.S. national security apparatus is stuck in a habitual and reflexive adversarial relationship with Russia. It is starting to look as if they fear losing Russia as an enemy more than they relish the notion of a world with greater peace. By antagonizing Moscow through sanctions and legislation such as the Magnitsky Act, the West is pushing Russia closer to China, when they have less in common with the Chinese than they do with Western Europe, both culturally and geographically.

I have looked skeptically on Russian "hacking" of our elections, not because they didn't do it, but because it worked. They used the simplest tricks in the book and they only served to uncover the apathy and laziness of the electorate. If anything, the Russians did us a favor: as voters, we have to become more critical readers and we have to ask more important questions. Our democracy is not in danger because of hacked emails or fake Facebook ads. Our democracy is in danger because too few of us have the time or compulsion to look into the facts and would rather believe fantastic reports from the world of alt-news.

In a recent New York Times report, members of the intelligence community related briefings with Trump in the weeks after the 2016 elections in which they showed the transcripts of intercepted telephone calls and emails to Trump to make the case that the Russians had influenced the election, in part, by intercepting the emails of the Democratic National Committee. So, if I read that correctly, the U.S. was intercepting Russian emails at the same time they were intercepting U.S. emails.

Personally, I would like to see improved relations with Russia. I believe that Russia wants what is in Russia's interest the same way thay the United States wants what is in our own interest, but that fact does not preclude cooperation on many levels. The chances of making progress in hot spots around the world, improved control over fissible materials, and more stable energy price over a longer period of time would be some of the results.

Plus, we might be able to count on Russia is we ever have to confront China militarily.

So, as ludicrous as Trump looked in Helsinki, and how poorly he handled things, I kind of agree with what I think he is trying to do.