When you are a retired high level military/government person, consulting opportunities such as those abound. The same is true of those who chose to consult for the Ukrainian side, the Georgian side, etc.
It seems like a pretty big leap to say that just because someone did some consulting work for a government that they are somehow ethically compromised. Many US firms do business with Russia, the Saudi government, etc. etc. Where do we draw the line and deem these people somehow unfit to serve in government?
There has not been a principled approach to this, seemingly only finger pointing and other name calling that is reminiscent of the cold war era.
If there were any actual evidence of wrongdoing, it would be a completely different story. Surely with the mass surveillance system many phone calls, emails and other associations/links have been monitored, yet we are not seeing leaks of any troubling details, only vague finger pointing.
It would be a very serious thing if there were some sort of plot, but so far there does not seem to be one.
Worked for Trump to get elected, turnabout is fair play?
The connections alone don't mean a whole lot and the rest you have is just words. If trump was truly in the can for Russia, why wouldn't he just say bad things about putin to score more political points and distract people from his true motives?
Are we to believe that Putin would not allow trump to trash him in order to further his tangible goals?
From what I've heard, Putin is now thinking twice on whether he even wants to be associated with the Trump administration. He may have believed that men like Manafort or Bannon would keep Trump under control, only to find that his new "allies" in the White House are a chaotic mess.
Also, we would be led to believe that putin spent all this time and effort getting his boy in and now is just going to give up on him within a month?
I would ask for a source on that but considering it's nigh impossible for the west to get reliable intel (That dossier was quite something) out of Russia I'm not sure how much it would matter.
It would be surprising to me if Russia went along with US action against their ally Iran, but other combinations are certainly possible. Hell, that is too - who knows!
Here's a quote:
Trump and Putin spoke for one hour and vowed to join forces to fight terrorism in Syria and elsewhere, according to the White House and the Kremlin, signaling a potential shift in U.S.-Russian relations that have been marked by high tension.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-holds-calls-wi...
Trump said a lot of that stuff during the campaign because he likely hadn't realized the extent of the proxy wars between the US and Russia since the wall came down.
One of the main reasons the US invaded Iraq was to do so before Russia took control of the region, due to its importance to the oil supply. Russia had good relations with Saddam's regime and with Iran. When Saddam was overthrown, many of the oil industry spoils that had been going to Russian firms were redistributed to US (or coalition) firms.
Russia is currently helping to stoke discord in Syria and aligning with Iran mainly to force an over-stretched US to react. For pennies on the dollar Putin can keep the US in a middle-east quagmire, so why not do this indefinitely?
Trump may not have realized the strategic purpose that US escalation in Syria was intended to achieve, he may have believed the PR that we were involved for humanitarian reasons, etc. But he seems to have concluded that it was a money pit waiting to happen with little humanitarian upside (which is a correct conclusion, and the conclusion Russia had hoped the US would draw). HRC was determined to signal the opposite so that Russia might stop spending its pennies there.
For those who don't realize this, the decades-long Iran/Iraq war was a proxy war fought between the US and the Soviet Union with both sides having the goal of creating a dominant footprint in the middle east to keep the other side at bay and guarantee the relative stability of oil extraction. This same goal also causes the US to act to prevent any sort of large scale democratic movements in the middle-east; Al Qaida began as that exact sort of pan-Arab movement.
So if Trump is proposing a negotiated deal with Putin involving Syria and Iran, that means he's willing to consider dividing the spoils in a way that may harm US coalition allies (France, Germany, etc.) who also have firms that are heavily invested in post-Saddam Iraq and some of which would likely be displaced by a new US/Russia agreement.
Similarly, allies of the US in Europe that fear an emboldened Russia also stand to lose if Russia gains better access to cheap petroleum. Russia, on the other hand, is poised to take a big leap forward in economic output and also reputation laundering. A successful negotiation with Trump could wipe away the penalties/sanctions that Russia has faced due to Putin's brutal approach to certain domestic issues.
So Russia's goal has been a larger presence in the middle east, a laundered reputation, and possibly more (everyone fears it will attempt to re-annex more former Soviet territory).
The thing that I think HRC and Obama misunderstood is that Russia is very likely to get this whether the US wishes it to happen or not. The US (and allies) are not in a position to undertake preemptive strikes, and so all they can do is vilify Putin and create a massive PR campaign and pressure allies into sanctions, etc. Meanwhile, the US can use clandestine operations to help goad Putin into various crackdowns or overreaches that will force him to act more like a dictator and increase the chances he will be unseated due to domestic dissent.
Why didn't Obama intervene in the Caucuses or the Ukraine? Because the US does not have the will to enter into conflicts like those, and certainly does not have the will to risk nuclear conflict.
Posturing by McCain about both annexations was nothing more than a bluff, as was HRC's sudden tough talk toward the end of the campaign. The hope was that somehow Putin would fall for this bluff and that rabid anti-Russian public opinion in the US would scare Putin into thinking the US might react with force.
Seriously, this isn't going to happen no matter who is president. The question is how long it takes and how many lives are lost in proxy wars before Russia occupies a position of greater dominance in Europe. The Soviet Union was too big and plagued by infrastructure problems, but Russia itself is well placed geopolitically and has historically been a seat of wealth, culture, and regional ambitions.
What is in the best interest of the US with respect to the negotiations (hard or soft) that take place with Russia over the next decade? I'm not sure. But Obama (and Trump also) saw that there was a certain inevitability to it and that it was not worth spilling too much blood over. In spite of this, Obama carried on proxy wars in Iraq and Syria which killed hundreds of thousands of people and caused untold suffering.
Trump has claimed that he may not wish to continue the proxy wars. We should all be relieved. Rather than debating rumors about Russian meddling, etc., we should figure out what is actually in US best interest over the medium to long term and negotiate accordingly. Bluffing isn't going to work. Both Russia and the US are willing to let lots of people die in proxy wars, but neither is willing to engage in direct conflict, so we will either inflict another decade of tragedy upon the victims of our proxy wars, or we will find a less violent equilibrium.
But I don't think you should view all Middle East policy as a proxy US/Russia conflict. There is a lot more going on there, and many more independent actors.
Quite true. I was only trying to make the point that the US/Russia conflict has had a significant impact on the middle east and strongly shaped US enthusiasm for invading Iraq when it had the chance. But there were certainly other reasons, though I don't think any of them were humanitarian.
> decades-long Iran/Iraq war was a proxy war fought between the US and the Soviet Union with both sides having the goal of creating a dominant footprint in the middle east
No. Last Soviet attempt to gain a foothold in Middle East was a failed relationship with Egypt. Hint: War of Attrition followed by Yom Kippur War.
There was no major influx of military advisers or green men during Iran-Iraq war.
> The Soviet Union was too big and plagued by infrastructure problems, but Russia itself is well placed geopolitically and has historically been a seat of wealth, culture, and regional ambitions.
I have a bad news for you - Russia is about the same size as USSR and it's still plagued with infrastructure problems. And as for the culture - everybody can see the decline in post-Soviet cultural scene, especially in Russia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Union_and_the_Iran%E2%8...
From my understanding of Russian strategy, they generally don't invest too deeply in any given potential regime. They invest lightly all across the political extremes in Western countries, and then see what crops up. If they like it, they invest more heavily.
For example, say Putin would like the US to get into bed with Syria and Russia to make it more difficult for the US to speak out or otherwise act against later Russian aggression towards neighbors.
Of course that is nothing more than a nice made up story, but why shouldn't the American people support finding out what is going on?
Like, concretely, what's your hypothesis? I don't actually see you trying to say anything, but rather just sort of cast doubt and aspersions without thinking through what it means.
Tillerson was the CEO of ExxonMobil. Of course the guy in charge of one of the world's largest oil and gas companies is going to interact amicably with the guy in charge of one of the world's largest oil and gas producing countries. And of course, given his experience and perspective, sanctions cause a lot of problems in business. What exactly are you trying to say about him here? That he's a Russian spy?
Flynn is a retired 3 star general. He recently resigned for lying to Pence, sure, but no one is really making the argument that he did anything fundamentally wrong. He broke protocol by letting another country know that these new sanctions may be reversed in a matter of weeks by the upcoming administration that he's a part of. I've yet to see a lawyer make an argument that that's really against the spirit of the Logan Act, but I'd love to hear that perspective if you've seen one. But again, what are you trying to say about him here? That a 3 star general is a Russian spy?
> Combined with a very narrow focus on removing sanctions (without any talk about the violations of sovereignty of Crimea/Ukraine)
Sure, I understand your political viewpoint here, but it's just that. People are free to differ on what they think of Russia's annexation of Crimea, and the U.S. response to it.
> plenty of troubling links
Again, troubling HOW? Give me a hypothesis here. I honestly don't understand a coherent world view beneath your fear. Yes, the incoming administration is more pro-Russia than Clinton would have been. And yes, the annexation of Crimea is not automatically a deal breaker to working with them. But so what? Are you actually implying that this is all a coup and that Russia is pulling the strings of the U.S. government right now? That they've compromised a boorish, stupid billionaire, the CEO of Exxon Mobil, generals in the military, and so forth?
Oops, that was Hillary...