President Biden headed off to Europe this week to meet with the leaders of rich, white-dominated countries on that side of the pond. His meeting with Putin is drawing as much interest as you might expect. Some of the recent hacking attacks and ransomware incidents have been blamed on operatives connected at least tangentially with Russia. And, of course, a goodly number of people within the broader Democratic coalition see Russia as responsible for having delivered Trump into the White House in 2016. They see all this, and more, as pieces of the same puzzle, and they want Biden to read Putin the riot act.

To the extent that the ransomware stuff can be attributed to the Kremlin, it can be seen as part of the same effort that drives their illicit involvement in our political campaigns. They want to sow confusion and internal conflict in the world’s sole remaining superpower as a means of keeping us from confronting them – that only makes sense from their point of view.

But the idea that they are having an out-sized effect on our politics is vastly overblown. We Americans are fond of conspiracy theories, especially ones that involve nefarious foreign actors. Yes, we have serious problems, but they are self-inflicted, not imposed from without.

Clinton v. Clinton

I’ve said it on this blog many times before, and I’ll say it again – I never liked Putin, even back in the early 2000s when that was kind of a minority view. But the impact of their agitation in support of the Trump campaign in 2016 was marginal at best. The biggest reason for the failure of the Clinton campaign was – wait for it! – Hillary Clinton. The biggest non-Hillary factor in her loss was the FBI probe and James Comey, but even that issue was rooted in her own flat-footedness.

Let’s face it – she was a terrible candidate from the beginning, and in spite of that, was almost elected. Regarding Trump’s win, she has no one to blame but herself.

Putin’s Favorite POTUS

Did Putin want Trump to be president? Probably, as likely any Russian leader would. It was obvious that Trump was going to make a mess out of everything from the very beginning. That comports with Russia’s long-term strategic goals viz the U.S. And yes, Trump was nice to Putin as part of his constant self-dealing (he wanted that Trump Tower Moscow), but U.S. policy towards Russia was basically the same as in recent administrations.

As Americans, we have no idea of what it’s like to be a nation in the world that has to deal with the United States. The U.S. is the most powerful military, economic, and political player on Earth, and we don’t exactly walk around on tiptoe. Basically every other nation is dwarfed by our power and influence, so they reach for whatever they can to throw us off.

In the case of Russia, the most cost-effective methods of doing that include exacerbating existing divisions between political factions and, perhaps, making commodity prices – gas and beef – go up. That’s espionage 101. We do similar things in other countries, only from a position of power.

What will Biden say to Putin? God only knows. It would be nice if he did some serious work toward de-escalation of differences, maybe reinstating the IMF treaty, etc., but only time will tell. When you have most of the power, you are inevitably tempted to wield it in increasingly arbitrary ways. That would be hard for Biden to overcome, and he shows no sign of doing so.

luv u,

jp