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Donald Trump has a thing for Winston Churchill. One of Trump's first acts as president was to restore a Churchill bust to a prominent place in the Oval Office. By doing so, he was aligning himself with a long-established Republican fixation with the World War II-era British leader. American conservatives have turned Churchill into a cult figure, whom they love to cite as an exemplar of principled resistance to tyranny.
Which, of course, he was. Yet President Trump's attempt to co-opt Churchill's legacy is looking more perverse by the day. The United States is currently confronting a dictator who has seized territory from his neighbors by force, who is openly striving to undermine liberal democracy around the world, and who defies long-established rules of international behavior. Now Russian President Vladimir Putin stands accused of authoring a brazen attack in Britain against one of his opponents.
And Trump's response? It can only be described as appeasement.
It is bad enough that Trump had the gall to congratulate Putin on his recent sham victory in the Russian presidential election. Now we learn Trump used the same phone call to invite Putin to Washington for a summit meeting, as has been confirmed by a Kremlin spokesman. It is worth pointing out that Trump made the call to Putin on March 20, 16 days after the former Russian double-agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were attacked with a nerve agent at their home in southern England. The poison used had the potential to sicken a large number of people but, evidently, the Russians had zero concerns about collateral damage.
By the time Trump made his generous overture to the Russian president, Prime Minister Theresa May of Britain had already made clear that the trail of responsibility for the attack led straight to Putin. The British were well on their way to drumming up support among their allies for a series of retaliatory measures against the Kremlin, a campaign that has now resulted in the largest expulsion of undeclared Russian intelligence officials since the Cold War. Twenty-nine countries have now taken part - including the United States, which moved to expel 60 Russian diplomats on March 26.
The charitable-minded might take this as evidence the president is seeing the error of ways, finally capitulating to the reality that Putin is a foe of everything the United States holds dear. But Trump has studiously avoided any public endorsement of his administration's action against the Russians - merely the latest in a lengthy string of cases in which he has conspicuously avoided any criticism of Putin.
Now, to make matters worse, we have learned the U.S. expulsions are not quite what they were made out to be. On March 29, Russian state television reported that a U.S. official had quietly given the Kremlin an exemption: the Russians are welcome to replace those 60 who were expelled whenever they wish, thus effectively transforming what was supposed to be a harsh deterrent into a minor inconvenience. "The doors are open," the U.S. official is reported to have said. (The British, by contrast, explicitly closed off this option, thus limiting the size of the Russian diplomatic delegation for the foreseeable future.) A reporter followed up with the State Department, which confirmed the report.
So will Trump's offer of a summit bear fruit? Perhaps not. But the mere fact he made it is already an appalling concession.
It bears repeating: Today's Russia fits the very definition of an aggressive, revisionist power. Four years ago, Russian forces invaded and annexed Crimea, which belongs to neighboring Ukraine. This was the first time since World War II that a European power has seized territory by force. Moscow continues to wage an undeclared war against Ukraine, sponsoring breakaway territories in the eastern part of that country.
(Russia is also behind several other "frozen conflicts" around the former Soviet Union, actively aiding separatists in countries where it wants to retain sway.)
And Putin is still using influence operations and cyberattacks to sow chaos in western democracies, often by supporting politicians and parties that aim to cause division and fear.
That the Kremlin continues to indulge in such behavior clearly shows that it does not have any incentive to stop. And why should it? Like the ill-fated appeaser Neville Chamberlain, Trump believes that the best response is to pander to the man who has shown that he has no interest in observing the current rules-based order. Any top-level "talks" with Putin that do not begin, at minimum, with a Russian commitment to return Crimea to Ukrainian control, to observe the sovereignty of Russia's neighbors, and to cease subversive activities in the West, will merely reward him for his transgressions.
Let's be clear: Vladimir Putin is not Adolf Hitler. The Russian president is not a genocidal maniac bent on conquering the world. Yet if Churchill taught us anything, it is that we cannot expect a trouble-making dictator to change his ways by encouraging his worst tendencies. Extending invitations and fudging punishments will get us nowhere. Deterrence is the only way forward.
Previously:
• 04/02/18: Yes, Russia's out to get us. But don't forget the Chinese