Tornado Alley (PROG)

[StephanieVanbryce]

Page Two --- As Moscow Advances, U.S. Allies Look Warily to Trump for Clarity


Western Europe hasn't been immune to the trend. In France, the leaders of the National Front, a party that wants to see the E.U. break apart, received a €11 million loan from a Kremlin-linked bank in 2014. The party's leader, Marine Le Pen, pledged in early February that she would pull France out of NATO if she wins the presidential election this spring. She is leading in the polls.

Next door in Germany, the intelligence agencies in Berlin have accused Moscow of orchestrating a "propaganda and disinformation" campaign ahead of Germany's federal elections in September. Its aim, says Stephan Mayer of the intelligence committee in the German Parliament, is to weaken Chancellor Angela Merkel's chances of re-election to a fourth term while funneling support to Alternative for Germany, a party of right-wing populists who have called for Berlin to lift its sanctions against Russia. "If you want to have freedom in the Western world, if you want to have freedom and peace in Europe, then you can do it only with Russia," says Georg Pazderski, the party's leader in Berlin.

The question is whether Trump will join that parade. At first, all indications pointed in that direction. In July, he suggested that Putin's annexation of Crimea could have been legitimate and that he would consider lifting sanctions "if Russia would help us get rid of ISIS." He has said the two sides might work together on nuclear issues. After the election, in January, Trump kept up the talk. The U.S. and Russia "will, perhaps, work together to solve some of the many great and pressing problems and issues of the World!" he tweeted.

Upon taking office, Trump initially continued his soft rhetorical line. In his hour-long phone call with Putin on Jan. 28, they discussed possible areas of cooperation, including the fight against ISIS and other Islamic terrorist organizations, nuclear proliferation and potential economic and energy deals, according to a senior White House official who listened in on the call. Similarly, the White House readout of calls between Trump and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg referred to fighting along Ukraine's border; in fact, Russian-backed forces operate deep within Ukraine, and to the eyes of some experts on Russia in the Administration, the language raised flags that the U.S. might accept Russia's territorial grab.

Trump is open to wide-ranging concessions to Russia in exchange for cooperation in some of these areas, the senior White House official says. Trump is not about to walk away from NATO, the official says, but believes the amounts that countries pay to support the alliance, which are based on decades-old economic percentages, may be outdated. "Let's renegotiate the deal," Trump has suggested, the senior official says. Trump has also told advisers he thinks that "maybe NATO should have a different mission and should focus on radical Islam," the official says. That alone would be a huge win for Moscow.

Normally, a President might request and receive a full-blown national-security briefing on a question as important as the future of Eastern Europe or a reset with Russia. Several National Security Council meetings on the topic might be needed, and a top-secret intelligence assessment might be produced. But multiple sources tell TIME there is hardly an interagency process in the improvisational Trump White House. And what does exist is disconnected from the power structure around Trump. Bannon is running his own strategic-initiatives group, unconnected to the traditional national-security structures, according to two sources familiar with it, which will generate its own assessment of Russia-policy options. In the meantime, Trump's thinking remains notional, the senior official says. But others in the Administration and outside analysts say concessions to Russia could include reducing or removing the U.S. anti-ballistic-missile footprint in Central and Eastern Europe, easing sanctions imposed for election meddling or the invasion of Ukraine, or softening language on the Crimean annexation. Trump has not yet considered the specifics of any deal with Russia, the senior official says.

Trump's inclination to do a big deal with Russia has been informed by Bannon, who has said the biggest strategic threat facing the U.S. and Europe is radical Islamic terrorism. Bannon's views are not monolithic. He criticized Putin in a widely read 2014 speech but praised his embrace of traditionalism. "Putin and his cronies are really a kleptocracy that are really an imperialist power that want to expand," Bannon said then. "We the Judeo-Christian West really have to look at what he's talking about as far as traditionalism goes--particularly the sense of where it supports the underpinnings of nationalism. Strong nationalist movements in countries make strong neighbors, and that is really the building blocks that built Western Europe and the United States, and I think it's what can see us forward." A Bannon national-security aide, Sebastian Gorka, has been less subtle in his rejection of Putin. "His nature is nothing more than a bully," Gorka said of Putin in a 2015 speech, and "he should be dealt with as bullies are dealt, and his nose should be smacked quickly and in a harsh fashion, that puts him back in his place."

Trump's newly appointed Secretary of Defense and Secretary of State and virtually the entire Republican and Democratic foreign policy establishment on Capitol Hill, in Washington and across Europe. "Tillerson and Mattis embrace the traditional view that we have had toward Russia," Corker says, but "there are other spheres within the White House that may look at things in a very different way."

Trump faces his biggest opposition on Capitol Hill. Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham have led a vocal and robust challenge to any rapprochement with Putin that would ease sanctions and instead want to impose even tougher penalties for Russia's election meddling in the U.S. Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell says he opposes lifting sanctions against Putin.

The split among Trump, his Cabinet and much of his party has led to confusion about where the U.S. stands, even within his Administration. After pro-Putin forces in Ukraine launched their attacks in late January and early February, Trump's U.N. ambassador, Nikki Haley, gave a toughly worded statement. "Crimea is a part of Ukraine," Haley said at the U.N. on Feb. 2, and "our Crimea-related sanctions will remain in place until Russia returns control over the peninsula to Ukraine." White House spokesman Sean Spicer reiterated those views in a briefing days later. But several senior Administration officials say that they don't believe Haley was speaking for the President and that Flynn was unhappy with the statement.

Trump's willful effort to ignore Russia's meddling in the U.S. election, or anywhere else for that matter, only muddies matters further. The senior White House official says Trump's opinion of Putin and the possibility of doing a deal with him are not affected by the fact that the Russian leader interfered in the core exercise of American democracy. "People could say we have meddled with other people's elections too," the official says. Trump is not aware of Putin's other efforts to subvert democracy in much of Europe, the official says.

For the millions of Europeans facing the brunt of Putin's efforts that is more than unsettling--it's terrifying. "It would be absolutely naive to underestimate the attempts of Vladimir Putin and of the Russian government to try to destabilize Western democracies," says Mayer, the German parliamentarian. "That is a clear agenda of the Russian government."

For Montenegrins, their future hangs in the balance. A vote on the country's accession is stalled in the Senate. The White House has no plans to endorse Montenegro's membership in NATO at this time, a senior NSC official says.


With reporting by ZEKE J. MILLER and PHILIP ELLIOTT/WASHINGTON


http://time.com/4672985/moscow-russia-us-politics/