Trump should worry about Putin, not Portland
The Russian dictator is directly challenging NATO--and Trump--in Eastern Europe. Trump is more concerned with a few protesters in Oregon.
In his quest to ease global tensions and win a Nobel Peace Prize, President Trump is focusing his energies on the rabid hotspot of Portland, Oregon. Trump is sending federal troops to the “war-ravaged” city because protesters near a government immigration facility represent “domestic terrorists.”
Trump is battling global mayhem all across America. He has sent federal troops to Los Angeles and the District of Colombia. Chicago and Memphis are his next targets. Trump’s approach to the Nobel seems to be bringing order to Democratic cities in the United States before tackling the intractable problems of more distant lands.
It seems a bit too easy. Trump is tackling bumptious urban areas because he can deport some migrants or disrupt a crime or two and claim an easy win. The same goes for the Trump-ordered attacks on Venezuelan boats that may or may not be ferrying drugs and are sitting ducks for the American naval firepower sinking them. Jaws is eating a minnow.
Trump, meanwhile, is pretending not to notice Russian incursions into NATO territory that seem to be Russian President Vladimir Putin’s test of Trump’s own mettle. “Putin, sensing U.S. hesitation and weakness, has clearly upped the ante and believes Trump will do little to oppose him,” foreign-policy veterans Eric Edelman and Franklin Miller wrote recently in The Dispatch.
On September 9 and 10, two dozen drones launched from Russian sites flew into Poland, a stunt Poland’s prime minister called a “large-scale provocation.” Three days later, a Russian drone flew into Romania. On September 19, three Russian fighter jets flew over Estonia. A few days after that, mysterious drones forced airport delays in Oslo, Norway, and Copenhagen, Denmark. The Danish prime minister called those incursions “the most serious attack on Danish critical infrastructure to date.”
All those countries belong to the NATO military alliance, and the terms of the alliance call for a joint military response by all of them if there’s an attack on any single one of them. Putin is probably not trying to start World War III. But he is trying to “weaponize inconvenience,” as Russia expert Mark Galeotti puts it.
Americans may think what happens in Eastern Europe can’t possibly affect them. Yet the 20th century teems with examples to the contrary and with lessons about the brutal cost of belated efforts to defang murderous dictators. Putin is already waging a “shadow war” against the United States and future inconveniences could afflict Americans through market disruptions, cyberattacks or something more nefarious.
Military analysts say Putin is probing NATO’s military vulnerabilities and testing how NATO leaders respond to the daring provocations. Putin is also likely testing whether the United States, under Trump, is still the bedrock of the alliance or more of a wavering faction that might leave Europe hanging if it really has to confront Russia.
All of this springs from Russia’s war in Ukraine, and from Trump’s own efforts to force a resolution to the conflict, which have failed. Russia’s bombardment of Ukraine has actually intensified as Trump has tried to seek a settlement, an obvious diss to Trump. Putin probably feels emboldened by indications that Trump is losing interest and wants to leave the problem to the Europeans.
Trump doesn’t need to bomb Russia. But the Putin problem certainly warrants at least as much attention as Trump is devoting to the likes of Portland. Instead, Trump seems deflated by the failure of his overhyped Alaska summit in August to accomplish anything. “I think he’s personally disheartened because he really did believe that he could fix this one in a few days or maybe a few weeks, and of course it’s turned out that’s completely a pipe dream,” Eliot Cohen of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies said recently.
Oh, there’s been some saucy rhetoric. After first saying Ukraine needed to give up some territory to make peace with Russia, Trump now says he thinks Ukraine could win back all the terrain Russia has taken since 2014. That’s probably supposed to hurt Putin’s feelings. Trump also wants Europe to put steep tariffs on imports from India and China unless they stop buying Russian oil, a convoluted scheme Europe isn’t all that interested in.
Trump is silent on more direct measures that might raise Putin’s cost of provocation. NATO jets can shoot down Russian drones, but that requires expensive missiles and jet flights to counter drones that may cost as little as $10,000. Putin might relish that mismatched expenditure. What NATO could do instead is target the launch points of any drones taking off from eastern Ukraine or from Russian ally Belarus. It could also start flying patrols over western Ukraine, with Ukraine’s agreement, to counter drones before they enter NATO airspace and put NATO jets closer to Russian assets in Ukraine.
Economically, there are more serious sanctions Ukraine’s allies can impose than Trump’s bank-shot tariff idea. They could lower the price cap for Russian oil under an existing sanctions program from $60 per barrel to $50 or even $40, which would crimp Russia’s oil revenues. There could be further sanctions on Russia’s giant energy firms and a more muscular effort to disrupt the “ghost fleet” of illicit tankers evading sanctions to deliver Russian oil. On these, not a peep from Trump.
Maybe this will all work out for Trump. Maybe voters will applaud him for tackling disorder in America. Maybe Putin will sheath his saber and stop making trouble. But when you prioritize the easy problems over the hard ones, the hard problems don’t go away. Usually, they get even harder.