The Afghan troop bounty scandal, in which the Kremlin allegedly offered money to Taliban fighters to kill American soldiers and their alles, has exploded this week and exposes a key vulnerability for President Donald J. Trump and then Russia itself.
I don’t see this issue going away as it exposes key vulnerabilities for Trump.
First, if he was briefed, why was no action taken? This plays into the Trump is a Russian traitor script. Or is the guy is just incompetent?
Second, if Trump wasn’t briefed, why not? Some will argue that he was not briefed because officials were afraid to anger the president given his known bromance with Vladimir Putin, or they did not trust the president. There is the argument that the intel was not strong enough to take to the president or act on it – but then why were key allies seemingly informed?
But either way this looks like Trump’s Benghazi moment as “some people might say” that US troops (and allies) may well have been put in harms way and killed due to Trump’s inaction and his bromance with Putin.
Democrats and Trump’s opponents in the GOP (who are now many, at least in the old establishment wing of the party) will run with this. Indeed, it’s notable that John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser, is mentioned in various dispatches today.
The problem for Trump is that there are now so many people in D.C., bipartisan, that hate him and do not want him re-elected that I think we see lots of similar stories break before the elections. And I am sure there are plenty of stories of Trump yet to tell. But think here now you have the likes of Bolton, former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, former chief of staff John Kelly, all guys with serious information on Trump, and presumably with axes to grind, are ready to strike. And again U.S. voters don’t care about his sex life but they do care about the safety of U.S. troops. This is clearly his soft underbelly.
It’s hard to see this going away, and it makes a Trump defeat in November that much more likely.
What can Trump do to counter all this. This story is not going away, but Trump needs to play the line that he is not soft on Russia. Likely we will see him reach out for more sanctions – and even if he does not act then Congress will likely take action. Already various U.S. members of Congress have been dusting the cobwebs off of various anti-Russia bills which had been doing the rounds before the investigation by U.S. special prosecutor Robert Mueller. It seems likely now that some combination of these will make it into the statute book.
What is now clear though is Russia is going to be center stage in these elections.
Could Putin help Trump out by giving him some big geopolitical win? Ukraine is the obvious opportunity therein as it is in Putin’s gift. But Putin has had plenty of opportunity in the past to help his buddy Trump out and he had given him zilch. I think this reflects the fact that it’s not in Putin’s DNA to gift an opponent (and especially the USA) a victory without a cast-iron assurance of something in exchange. And especially if he thinks that Joseph Biden will win anyway. Why give up a key negotiating point with Biden now to try to save a likely doomed man in Trump? Putin is just not going to do it.
So it seems likely that the U.S. Russia relationship will sour in the run-up to the U.S. election on Nov. 3 with a high risk of additional sanctions. Sanctions could be eased/lifted if Trump wins, but I guess if Biden wins Putin should expect a lot more direct action from the US executive to counter its maligned and not so malign activity.
On a Biden win, I would expect Putin to try and up the ante and pre-emptively look for leverage and I think the most likely place therein is Ukraine where escalation in Donbas is easy for Russian forces. Watch also here Belarus where elections on Aug. 12 are likely to be stolen by Alexander Lukashenko and I would expect mass street protests and some kind of intervention by Russia.
How ironic though if Russia won Trump the 2016 election only for this issue, above all, to lose him the 2020 election.
