If President Trump accomplishes nothing else in his tenure as president, his success (probably unintentional) in finally convincing the Left after about a century that Russia is a problem warranting American concern ought to be considered his crowning achievement, worthy of the Medal of Freedom he will probably award himself someday.
The recently concluded Mueller investigation cost two years and tens of millions of dollars, failing to deliver the political objective many had hoped for in determining the equally predictable outcomes that yes, Russia attempted to interfere with our election, and no, Trump did not collude with them in so doing.
Almost overnight, the collusion issue turned the most pacifist, post-modern, global-citizen liberal into a fervidly patriotic defender of Old Glory, denouncing Russia and those who would act as its agents in terms that would make Sen. Joe McCarthy stand and salute. The blatantly political veneer notwithstanding, it was somewhat satisfying to watch.
What was less satisfying was watching some on the Right equivocate on the issue of Russia and adopt an attitude of indifference towards Putin’s interference in our affairs.
Apprehension and skepticism over Russia’s motives and gestating antagonism was, not so long ago, a reliably Republican concern. One recalls, for instance, the well-earned criticism Republicans directed at the Obama administration for its studied weakness toward Russia in what passed for a foreign policy, and at Hilary Clinton’s dangerously naive and feckless “Russian reset.” Mitt Romney made Russia an issue in 2012 and faced criticism in the press for being “McCarthyite.” Obama derided him in their third debate for suggesting that Russia was America’s greatest geopolitical foe, remarking that “the 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back, because, the Cold War’s been over for 20 years.”
During that Cold War, of course, conservatives were consistently the targets of the Left’s scorn, who characterized concern over the Soviet threat as mere jingoistic paranoia — or “inordinate fear,” as former President Jimmy Carter once put it. The mocking quieted substantially after the Berlin Wall was knocked down and the official reports detailing Soviet brutality in blood-curdling detail began to emerge from the wreckage of Eastern Europe.
Conservatives were absolutely correct in their convictions during the Cold War, as they were in 2012, and they would be wise to regain some of the skeptical ground ceded to political expediency in the past two years.
Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Western leaders have at intervals appeared almost desperate for Russian friendship, always hoping that a leader would emerge in the Western mold, a ready ally and trading partner heading up the world’s largest country by land mass — and which happens, by the way, to still own the world’s second-largest nuclear arsenal. But reality was always different: Russia, after all, has no history of any of those institutions that liberal Western democracies take for granted, but which, in fact, developed over centuries. Add to that the collective memory of superpower status fueling a bitter nostalgia, especially among the apparatchiks of the era, and Russian acrimony is hardly unexpected.
In any case, America cannot ignore the threat posed by Putin’s Russia. As the traditional custodians of political realism, it falls on conservatives to issue the necessary warnings — and, when needed, call out the president when his gestures to Putin flirt too closely with the accommodationist policies best left to our liberal friends, especially when pursued for ephemeral political reasons.
Then again, if Trump’s embrace of the Russian bear is all that keeps the Democrats on the right side of history, perhaps the occasional well-monitored vodka toast may be in order. Nostrovia.
Kelly Sloan (@KVSloan25) is a Denver-based public affairs consultant, columnist, and the Energy and Environmental Policy Fellow at the Centennial Institute.
