Their arguments highlighted a fundamental challenge with Trump’s pursuit of better relations with Putin: Russia has become central to the conflicts the president cites in large part by acting against U.S. interests. The Kremlin has extended support to the North Korean and Iranian governments even as the Trump administration seeks to isolate them; focused on shoring up the rule of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad rather than fighting ISIS; defied international norms by forcibly revising Ukraine’s borders; and developed new nuclear weapons to evade U.S. defenses. To say Russia can help resolve North Korea, Syria, Ukraine, ISIS, Iran, and the arms race to America’s satisfaction is a bit like counting on the soccer team you’re playing against to score on its own goal.
Trump’s puzzling refusal to criticize Putin and reckon with Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election gets a lot of attention, but it distracts from the ways in which competition between the world’s largest military powers is actually heating up. The Trump administration has provided lethal arms to Ukraine—something the Obama administration long resisted. It has escalated U.S. military involvement in Syria, bombing Assad for using chemical weapons and battling Russian mercenaries who encroached on American turf. It imposed sanctions to punish Russia for interfering in the presidential election, albeit belatedly and at the behest of Congress. Now Trump has expelled more Russian officials than his predecessor ever did. In closing the Russian consulate in San Francisco in August and Seattle today, he has wiped out Russia’s diplomatic presence on the West Coast and substantially degraded its covert capabilities in the United States. “This is absolutely [the president’s] decision,” a senior administration official said on Monday, without answering whether Trump has personally discussed the nerve-agent attack with Putin.
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