JULY 7, 2017
Some leading Democrats in Congress are eager to
turn the summit meeting between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin away from
avenues for improvements in U.S.-Russian relations, even if that means
deflecting it toward World War III.
On Wednesday, the New York Times reported
that “the White House announced that the meeting with Mr. Putin would be a
formal bilateral discussion, rather than a quick pull-aside at the economic
summit meeting that some had expected.” Meanwhile, Senate Democratic leader
Chuck Schumer criticized the lack of a “specific agenda” for the Trump-Putin
discussion and tweeted “the first few things that come to my mind” —
10 items denouncing Russia and not a single step to help avert a nuclear war
between that country and the United States.
What a contrast with another Democrat, former
Senator Sam Nunn, who signed a June 27 open letter that urged Putin and Trump
to focus on “urgently pursuing practical steps now that can stop the downward
spiral in relations and reduce real dangers.” The letter emphasized “reducing
nuclear and other military risks.”
But these days, apparently, the Democratic
leadership in Congress has much bigger fish to fry than merely trying to avert
a global nuclear holocaust.
The Democratic Party leaders on Capitol Hill can’t
be bothered with squandering much political capital or sound-bite airtime on
the matters highlighted by the open letter, which Nunn — a former chairman of
the Senate Armed Services Committee — signed along with former top British,
German and Russian diplomats.
The open letter offered four crucial proposals for the
meeting between Trump and Putin:
* “The starting point could be a new
Presidential Joint Declaration by the United States and the Russian Federation
declaring that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought. This would
make clear again that leaders recognize their responsibility to work together
to prevent nuclear catastrophe, and would be positively received by global
leaders and publics.”
* “A second step could be to increase
military-to-military communication through a new NATO-Russia Military Crisis
Management Group. Restarting bilateral military-to-military dialogue between
the United States and Russia, essential throughout the Cold War, should be an
immediate and urgent priority. The focus of these initiatives should be on reducing
risks of a catastrophic mistake or accident by restoring communication and
increasing transparency and trust.”
* “A third step could be to collaborate to
prevent ISIS and other terrorist groups from acquiring nuclear and radiological
materials through a joint initiative to prevent WMD terrorism. There is an
urgent need to cooperate on securing vulnerable radioactive materials that
could be used to produce a ‘dirty bomb.’ Such materials are widely available in
more than 150 countries and are often found in facilities, such as hospitals
and universities, that are poorly secured.”
* “Fourth, discussions are imperative for
reaching at least informal understandings on cyber dangers related to
interference in strategic warning systems and nuclear command and control. This
should be urgently addressed to prevent war by mistake. That there are no clear
‘rules of the road’ in the strategic nuclear cyber world is alarming.”
But top Democratic Party leaders hardly give high
priority to such concerns. On the contrary: For many months now, their
preoccupation has been to double, triple and quadruple down on an insidious —
and extremely dangerous — political investment. Party leaders have positioned
themselves to portray just about any concession from Trump in bilateral talks
as a corrupt payoff.
The House minority leader, Nancy Pelosi, was
ringing a familiar bell when she proclaimed on CNN in mid-May: “Every day I ask the
question, ‘What do the Russians have on Donald Trump financially, politically
or personally that he’s always catering to them?’”
“Given their vehement political investment in
demonizing Russia’s President Putin,” I wrote in late April, “Democratic leaders are
oriented to seeing the potential of détente with Russia as counterproductive in
terms of their electoral strategy for 2018 and 2020. It’s a calculus that
boosts the risks of nuclear annihilation, given the very real dangers of escalating tensions between Washington and
Moscow.”
Days ago, looking ahead to the scheduled discussion
between the two presidents at the G-20 summit in Germany, the home page of
the Washington Post carried this headline: “Months of Russia
controversy leaves Trump ‘boxed in’ before Putin meeting.” The tagline noted
that “whatever course Trump takes will likely be called into question.”
Powerful custodians of the USA’s hugely profitable
military-industrial complex prefer it that way. They aren’t much interested in
any course toward Russia other than antagonism if not belligerence. There is
enormous commitment to heading off the “threat” of genuine diplomacy and
rapprochement.
Elite guardians of the U.S. warfare state,
committed to what Martin Luther King Jr. called “the madness of militarism,”
certainly don’t want a modern-day incarnation of the “spirit of Glassboro” that emerged 50 years ago when President Lyndon
Johnson met at length with Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin. Standing next to
Kosygin at the end of their summit at a New Jersey college, Johnson said: “I have no doubt about it at all” that “it does
help a lot to sit down and look a man in the eye all day long and try to reason
with him, particularly if he is trying to reason with you.”
If Trump says anything like that after meeting with
the Kremlin’s leader this week, you can expect some misguided Democratic
partisans to denounce him as a Putin tool.
While many people are eager for constructive dialogue between the United States and Russia, on
Capitol Hill the efforts to prevent such a possibility are fierce and
unrelenting. Ultra-hawks like Senators Lindsey Graham and John McCain are among
quite a few Republicans doing all they can to prevent genuine diplomacy between
Washington and Moscow. But much of the most unhinged rhetoric is coming from
Democrats, often with the “progressive” label.
To sample just how far downhill the discourse has
gone in the frenzy to take genuine U.S.-Russian diplomacy off the table, consider
this tweet that a longtime member of Congress with an
antiwar past, Democrat Maxine Waters, sent out a week ago: “When Trump
goes to kiss Putin’s ring at the G20 meeting, maybe he should just return to
Russia w/ him & their favorite amb. Sergey Kislyak.”
The director of the Kennan Institute at the Woodrow
Wilson Center, Matthew Rojansky, pointed out days ago: “The momentum in relations between
the world’s two big nuclear powers is now so negative, that it really is time
to call a halt to anything that looks like further escalation or
deterioration.”
Yet that negative momentum is what many members of
Congress are trying to increase. Words like “irresponsible” and “reckless”
don’t begin to describe what they are doing.
More articles by:NORMAN SOLOMON
Norman
Solomon is executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, where
he coordinates ExposeFacts.
Solomon
is a co-founder of RootsAction.org.
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