We are watching a foreign policy situation unfold in real time. While the United States is trying to send signals to Russian oligarch Vladimir Putin regarding his aggressive attempts at expansion into Ukraine, what this means for the world remains to be seen. There are major players trying to figure out who may or may not take sides economically and militarily among the Western European countries and China.
CNN’s John Berman hosted U.S. Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, who served as Donald Trump’s national security adviser between 2017-2018. McMaster’s time with Trump was fraught, an experience shared by most of the last administration’s Cabinet members. A battle has been waging between neo-conservatives from the Bush and Cheney administration and the new tea party-to-Trump Republicans, and it’s a fight we are seeing play out today.
After voicing his opinions on how and why Putin is attempting to place Russia back into the upper echelons of global economic power, Berman asked McMaster whether or not Putin should be “praised.” Berman was clearly referencing the disgraced former president’s recent remarks that Putin was a “genius” for annexing parts of Ukraine.
McMaster has never been a particularly big fan of Putin, though he carried some very soiled water for a big fan about four years ago—a fan that one might argue was subservient to Putin. That being said, McMaster was very clear here: He isn’t with the Donald Trump wing of the GOP when it comes to praising a bad person, regardless of one’s foreign policy position. “It's certainly not someone to be praised,” he said.
McMaster went on to push what has always been his very hawkish position, that a Cold War-style battle might just be what the Western world needs in order to reunify. “What we ought to be encouraged by is the reaction across the free world. What Putin wants more than anything is disunity,” he said. “Disunity will lead to an ineffective response. What we have seen so far despite some exceptions across the free world with maybe initially tepid response by Germany and maybe Macron stepping into the trap of Putin's feigned desire to continue diplomatic dialogue.” It is the latter part of that statement that is likely to make many progressives cringe. It should remind folks that while McMaster is clearly throwing Trump’s unsophisticated adulation for dictators under the bus, he’s also propping up an unsustainable foreign policy position that the Western countries of the world must be threatening war as their No. 1 form of negotiation.
McMaster ended by saying that "This is one campaign in his larger effort to drag everybody else down." It sounds like a thing, but that really isn’t anything more than hawkish talk. Putin wants to consolidate his power and figure out a way to bring himself back into the global power conversation. He isn’t a nihilist, like Trump; he’s a narcissist. Unlike Trump, Putin has an intelligence level above a dung beetle. The U.S. will be bringing sanctions against Russia and over the next hours, days, weeks, and months it will become more and more clear what the rest of the world is willing to do to pressure Putin into relenting.