SMEARING MIKE POMPEO. The former CIA director and secretary of state has come under fire for mixing some praise in with criticism of Vladimir Putin in a recent podcast interview. That is enough, in some corners of Twitter, to be called a traitor. Other critiques have been slightly more sophisticated, like the Lincoln Project’s Steve Schmidt, who wrote that “Pompeo is an American Gerhardt Schroeder,” referring to the former German chancellor who became close to Putin and profited enormously from it. Continuing, Schmidt said Pompeo is “a self dealing blusterer whose grift, vanity and ambition has twisted him into a smiling shill for Vladimir Putin.” Denunciations quickly followed on Morning Joe.
That’s par for the course these days, when critics of President Joe Biden’s handling of the Ukraine crisis can quickly face vilification from a chorus of American voices quick to accuse other Americans of disloyalty. For example, Matthew Dowd, the former George W. Bush political strategist, tweeted recently, “If you are blaming Biden today for what Putin is doing in Ukraine please take down the American flag from your home or social media account and replace it with the Russian flag. It will help us all know where you clearly stand.”
The mob had been set off by a tweet from a woman named Julia Davis, who is a columnist for the Daily Beast. The tweet said, “Russia’s state TV is proudly showing off Mike Pompeo’s recent commentary, where he said about Putin: ‘Very shrewd. Very capable. I have enormous respect for him.'” The tweet was accompanied by a screenshot of Pompeo with Russian chyrons, but it contained no video clip and no link. There was no way to know where Pompeo had spoken and what he said, beyond the ten words Davis quoted.
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It turned out the image came from an interview Pompeo did a week ago with Harry Kazianis of the Center for the National Interest, which publishes the National Interest journal. It was a 45-minute talk. Going in, it appears Pompeo planned to discuss China, but given events, the conversation quickly turned to Russia. Or, rather, a mix of the two subjects; when Pompeo discussed American strategy, it was clear he thought about U.S. relations with Russia in terms of relations with China, and vice versa.
“President Trump’s direction to me was, let’s go tackle Iran, and tackle North Korea, and the proliferation issues associated with that, but let’s try to find an entente with the Russians that will encourage China to come inside of the historic deterrence posture that the two great superpowers had delivered for 25-plus years,” Pompeo said. It was a good plan, he said, but: “We were unsuccessful at that. The Chinese Communist Party rebuffed every effort that we made.”
Pompeo described Trump’s attempts to push Russia toward the West, “to make them a more European power,” and, therefore, to reduce the threat they posed to their neighbors. “I got to know Vladimir Putin some,” Pompeo said. “I patrolled the East German border when I was a young lieutenant. I am not naive about Russia and its desire to impact its near abroad, and their ruthlessness and their willingness to do so. But it is not the case that they present the same nature of a threat that the Chinese Communist Party does. [Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s] ambitions are hegemonic and global. Putin’s are more consistent with his own capabilities and, frankly, Russian history as well. They reach out to the West an awful lot.”
“It’s a little trite now, but very true,” Pompeo continued. “[Putin] does believe that the dissolution of the Soviet Union was a calamity — the worst one of the 20th century. As a small part of it — I was a platoon leader in Germany — I consider it one of the greatest achievements of my life. He has the inverse view of that.”
China came up constantly in Pompeo’s analysis, even as he dismissed Putin’s rhetoric as “silly.” The Russian leader’s “claim to feel threatened by NATO, or threatened by Ukraine, is largely nonsensical,” Pompeo said. “Most of the world knows it. Xi certainly knows it, too. The West has no intention of crossing the western Russian border… So, when he raises his concerns … about ill treatment of Russians in Ukraine, this is silly on its face. The worst treatment of Russians actually happens inside his own country.”
Reading Pompeo’s words — a more complete version of his words — can there be any doubt about his position toward Russia, toward Putin, and toward Russia’s current actions?
The section of the interview that Pompeo’s critics pounced on began when Kazianis, the interviewer, asked a straightforward question: “Do you consider Vladimir Putin a shrewd or a reckless leader overall?”
“Very shrewd,” Pompeo said. “Very capable. I have enormous respect for him. I’ve been criticized for saying that. No, I have enormous respect for him. He was also an interlocutor that was always well informed and deeply clear about what Russian interests were. I appreciated that. It required the same from us, from me, from my team. We had to be equally prepared and equally protective of the interests that mattered to the United States. He is very savvy, very shrewd.”
Pompeo discussed his interactions with Putin a bit more and then returned to the “shrewd or reckless” question. “I consider him an elegantly sophisticated counterpart and one who is not reckless but has always done the math,” Pompeo said. “We may disagree with his priorities, we may disagree with his math, we certainly disagree that the interests he seeks are reasonable for his country.” Summing up, Pompeo stressed that Putin’s top concern has always been, and today remains, Vladimir Putin. “His most important objective — I should have listed this first — his most important objective is that he continues to run the deal,” Pompeo said. “First and foremost, he is about power for himself, making sure that his place as the leader of Russia continues.”
Everyone can make his or her own judgment on Pompeo’s statement. I thought the use of the word “elegantly” was too much — Pompeo actually paused a moment before saying it, as if searching for, and not finding, the right word. On the other hand, listening to the entire conversation, there was no possible doubt that Pompeo was not by any stretch of the imagination a “shill” for Putin. The Twitter and cable TV attacks were, as they often are, malarkey, as Joe Biden might say.
I asked Pompeo to respond to his critics. “I was taught at West Point to be clear eyed about your enemy’s strength,” he said in a statement. “He is cunning and smart. We should — and did — crush him. If you pretend your enemy is the JV [a reference to Barack Obama’s description of ISIS as the “JV team”] he will cut your head off — oh, they did that. Joe Biden has been weak and on his back foot constantly in dealing with Putin. But make no mistake; I know who the enemy is — the question is, does Joe Biden?”
So now Putin has displayed the ruthlessness Pompeo discussed. He has invaded Ukraine, and it is not clear how far he will ultimately go. Pompeo’s perspective on events is useful, if only those attacking him would listen.
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