Trump’s Homework on Russia

U.S. President Donald Trump and his special envoy for Ukraine, Gen. Keith Kellogg, say they want to end the war in Ukraine as quickly as possible.

But both men have made recent statements demonstrating wholesale ignorance of Russia and a propensity to believe whatever is fed them by Ukraine and U.S. intelligence and what they read in the newspapers. 

Thinking that he can bully Vladimir Putin like he tries to do with everyone else, Trump a week ago thought he’d play hardball by threatening the Russian president.

“[Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky told me he wants to make a deal, I don’t know if Putin does … He might not. I think he should make a deal. I think he’s destroying Russia by not making a deal,” Trump said on his first day back in office.

“I think, Russia is kinda in big trouble. You take a look at their economy, you take a look at their inflation in Russia. I got along with [Putin] great, I would hope he wants to make a deal,” Trump blabbed on to reporters. 

Putin is not “destroying” Russia; and Russia’s economy is not “in big trouble.” Russia’s economy has been growing during the war and for a time was overheated.

The West’s economic war has backfired, as Russia has turned to a new economic, commercial and financial system led by the BRICS nations. Russia has found there new markets for its Western-sanctioned exports, particularly its oil and gas.

Then again, like most Americans, Trump is only now finding out that BRICS even exists. In that same exchange with reporters, Trump ignorantly said Spain was part of BRICS.

But he wasn’t through. Three days later Trump threatened Putin on social media:

“I’m going to do Russia, whose Economy is failing, and President Putin, a very big FAVOR … Settle now, and STOP this ridiculous War! IT’S ONLY GOING TO GET WORSE. If we don’t make a ‘deal’, and soon, I have no other choice but to put high levels of Taxes, Tariffs, and Sanctions on anything being sold by Russia to the United States, and various other participating countries.

We can do it the easy way, or the hard way – and the easy way is always better. It’s time to ‘MAKE A DEAL’.”

Trump might think he’s acting from a position of strength, but it’s actually a position of ignorance. He little understands the condition of the Russian economy or its position on the battlefield.

“He’s grinding it out,” Trump said. “Most people thought it would last about one week and now you’re into three years. It is not making him look good.” 

And then Trump revealed just how uninformed he is on a subject that he thinks he’s mastered before setting up a meeting with Putin.

“We have numbers that almost a million Russian soldiers have been killed. About 700,000 Ukrainian soldiers are killed. Russia’s bigger, they have more soldiers to lose but that’s no way to run a country,” he added.

The Ukrainians have been boldly lying about casualties since the start of the war and the U.S. government and media have just swallowed the lies whole. Now they are coming out of Trump’s mouth.

Two of the most anti-Putin sources out there — PusyRiot and the BBC — have teamed up to count the Russian war dead. It’s called MediaZona and the latest count is 88,726 confirmed dead Russian soldiers. 

Trump has said some rare intelligent things about Russia, such as his understanding of Russia’s objection to NATO’s expansion to its borders. He may well have heard that from Robert F. Kennedy Jr., his nominee for health secretary, who has shown a sophisticated knowledge of the origins of the Ukraine crisis.

But overall, Trump is seriously misinformed on Russia. Even when he tries to say the right thing, he screws it up. Few American politicians ever give credit to Russia for defeating the Germans in World War II, pretending that the GIs did most of the fighting and dying.  The Soviets actually destroyed about 80 percent of the Wehrmacht. 

“We must never forget that Russia helped us win the Second World War, losing almost 60,000,000 lives in the process,” he wrote on his Truth Social. Of course, Russia lost about 27 million people. And the U.S. help the Soviets win, not the other way around.

If Trump really wants to end the suffering in Ukraine, he needs to start studying fast. Here are two suggestions where he can start.

The Declassified Telegram

The first thing Trump should read is a declassified (after 30 years) 70-paragraph telegram written by E. Wayne Merry, a leading political analyst at the U.S. embassy in Moscow, in March 1994, criticizing American policies aimed at radical economic reforms in Russia.

Due to objections from the U.S. Treasury Department, Merry could not obtain permission to publish the telegram. It became public only after the National Security Archive filed a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

The essence of Merry’s message was that the radical market reforms of “shock therapy,” pushed by Washington and led by American advisers, was the wrong economic recipe and destructive for Russia. In the same telegram, Merry warned of the long-term consequences of these reforms, which would recreate hostile relations between Russia, the United States, and the West.

Of course, Merry’s opinions are not a sensation today since there have been many other materials about the catastrophic events in Russia in the ’90s. For example, a report of the U.S. congressional delegation from September 2000 states that after the collapse of the U.S.S.R, President Bill Clinton’s predecessors, from Harry Truman to Ronald Reagan, could only dream of the  American-Russian relations that Clinton inherited.

At the time, American values, including free enterprise and democracy, enjoyed astounding prestige and popularity among Russians. Building ties with the United States were a top priority for the Russian leadership.

Until 1993, Moscow harmoniously cooperated with Washington on an entire range of international issues, including arms control, which culminated in the START-2 treaty, reducing the nuclear arsenals of the United States and Russia by 66 percent; and missile defense, on which President George H. W. Bush and President Boris Yeltsin began negotiations aimed at amending the ABM Treaty of 1972 to account for the proliferation of ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction.

However, the Congressmen continued years of “bad advice,” which led to Russia’s complete economic collapse. The culmination of the Clinton administration’s fatally flawed macroeconomic policy towards Russia came in August 1998, when Russia’s default on its debts and the ruble’s devaluation brought it about.

By all accounts, this disaster was more serious than America’s collapse in 1929. In August 1999, in an article titled “Who Robbed Russia?” Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, who is now one of the most outspoken critics of Russia, wrote: 

“What makes the situation with Russia so sad is that the Clinton administration may have squandered one of the most valuable assets imaginable, namely the idealism and goodwill of the Russian people that emerged after 70 years of communist rule. The catastrophe in Russia may haunt us for several more generations.”

Scott Horton’s Book, Provoked

Closer to current events, Trump, or at least his negotiators, need to read Scott Horton’s book Provoked. In it, Horton describes the history of collective actions by all successive U.S. administrations after the end of the Cold War.

From the expansion of NATO to the East, the economic  policy of “shock therapy,” the Balkan and Chechen wars, the color revolutions, accusations of election interference and, ultimately, the 2014 Kiev coup, and the resulting brutal conflict in Ukraine, the book shows who is to blame and what really happened.

Here are some comments from well-known American experts on Horton’s book.

Ron Paul, former congressman from Texas: 

“Scott Horton has become an invaluable chronicler of the devastation caused by our interventionist foreign policy. In his new book, Provoked he tears the covers off the mountains of lies used to justify Washington’s embezzlement of billions of dollars and countless Ukrainian lives in a futile war with Russia.” 

John J. Mearsheimer, professor of political science at the University of Chicago:

“Provoked is manna from heaven for anyone who wants to know where the extreme Russophobia in the West came from, as well as the central role the United States played in causing the Ukraine war.” 

Col. Douglas Macgregor, U.S. Army, retired:

“Scott Horton’s important new book traces America’s journey to war and intervention through a succession of presidencies and builds a case that points to a frightening, potential final destination for the United States: isolation and alienation from most of the world. Scott’s message is simple. Stop now before it’s too late.”  

Judge Andrew P. Napolitano:

“Horton is the neocons’ nightmare. He knows their deceptions and lies and he is fearless in exposing the disasters they have wrought. Provoked is the most thoroughly researched, rationally grounded, and compellingly presented assault on war and defense of peace written in English in the post-9/11 era.” 

In the remaining time before the start of direct negotiations, a summary of these documents need to be brought to Trump’s attention for him to better understand the roots of the conflict; how to reach an honorable exit from the war and start a new page in U.S.-Russia relations that would benefit both nations and the world.

Trump better get informed before he sits down with Putin.

— Joe Lauria contributed to this article.

Edward Lozansky is president and founder of the American University in Moscow and the U.S.-Russia Forum. He is also a professor at the Moscow State and National Research Nuclear Universities.