President Trump’s policy team for confronting Russian aggression is collapsing amid impeachment proceedings, current and former officials worry.
“It is a policy disaster that all the people who have been holding it together are either gone, leaving, or taking cover,” a former senior U.S. official who has worked on Ukraine issues told the Washington Examiner on the condition of anonymity.
That observation was prompted by news that Tim Morrison, the White House National Security Council’s top official for Eurasia, will step down after testifying that other Trump appointees told the Ukrainians they would not receive security assistance unless they launched the corruption investigations Trump sought. Morrison’s exit, days after another NSC official drew fire from Trump’s allies over his testimony, continues a trend of administration officials being enveloped by the scandal even as NATO allies try to maintain a united front with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky against Russia.
“It is easy to forget here in Washington, but impossible in Kyiv, that Ukraine is still under armed assault by Russia, a nuclear-armed state,” Morrison told lawmakers in his prepared statement.
Morrison lamented that a “once-in-a-generation opportunity” to reform corruption in Ukraine and humiliate Russian President Vladimir Putin has been caught in the blast radius of the impeachment. “My regret is that Ukraine ever learned of the [security assistance] review and that, with this impeachment inquiry, Ukraine has become subsumed in the U.S. political process,” he testified.
The first casualty of the controversy was Ambassador Maria Yovanovitch, who was ousted as the top U.S. diplomat to Ukraine in May. Four months later, Kurt Volker, the State Department’s point man for the war in Ukraine, resigned after Rudy Giuliani implicated him in an attempt to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to announce an investigation into Biden.
“None of us are indispensable or irreplaceable,” Michael Polt, a former U.S. ambassador to Estonia who worked with Volker at the McCain Institute, told the Washington Examiner. “All of us can be succeeded by others to go ahead and take up the cudgels and move the policy forward.”
But the political body count is piling up. Fiona Hill, the national security adviser’s senior director for European and Russian affairs, left in June. A parade of other officials involved in Ukraine policy — such as George Kent, the State Department’s deputy assistant secretary for Europe, and Bill Taylor, who replaced Yovanovitch as the top envoy in Ukraine — have risked Trump’s ire by testifying despite objections from the administration.
The situation might change as Robert O’Brien, the Russia hawk who Trump tapped to replace John Bolton as his national security adviser, makes new appointments. O’Brien picked Andrew Peek, the deputy assistant secretary of state for Iraq and Iran, to replace Morrison. He also has hired John Ullyot, a former spokesman at the Department of Veterans Affairs, as a strategic communications adviser.
European allies, meanwhile, are proceeding with their own foreign policy efforts. French President Emmanuel Macron is trying to “reset” relations with Russia, while the United Kingdom is focused on a high-stakes fight over Brexit, said the former senior official, who recently has been in touch with European policy officials.
“The Germans are asking who to talk to,” the former official said. “The Russians now feel they have a free hand again. Catastrophe.”
