Theresa May's carefully worded response to the Russian attack on its citizenry (in an attempt to kill a Russian double agent living in Salisbury) which may poison hundreds in years to come, was crafted for maximum accuracy and impact by May, her foreign policy advisors, and her intelligence community. As parsed by Matt Tait in Lawfare, it exposes the shallowness and utter incompetence of the Trump foreign policy "team," which generally does nothing except stand by while Trump flails on Twitter and Sarah "Mean Girl" Huckabee Sanders glowers and lies from the press room.
Tait is a British cybersecurity expert who played a minor and unwitting role in the Russian attack on the 2016 US election. He analyzes May's response and contrasts the White House's own response. It's a short piece, linked above. I urge you to read it in its entirety even if I stretch fair use provisions completely out of shape in quoting it. (May's full response is also linked above.)
Two days ago, May said it was "highly likely" that the Kremlin is responsible for the nerve agent attack on former Russian military intelligence officer Sergei Skripal. The Brits know what nerve agent was used, one of the agents from the "Novichok" neurotoxin family. May gave Russia a deadline of Tuesday to make a "credible response" or, she said, "the UK would conclude that there has been an 'unlawful use of force' by Moscow." (The Kremlin denied all knowledge of the attack and May expelled 23 Russian diplomats from the UK as her first course of action. As noted by Timaeus in the comments, Russia rhetorically counterattacked, calling May's accusations "unfounded," threatening countermeasures if May took action, and, in the person of Trump's Oval Office buddy Sergei Lavrov, accusing May and Britain of “acting out a political drama” to mislead the rest of the world.)
Here’s what she said, as analyzed by Tait.
First, Tait notes that May wasn't speaking to the British citizenry, but to "the international community," first and foremost the United States. "Diplomacy involves careful language and signalling," Tait writes; "the language, style and delivery of the U.K.’s message requires some decoding." May delivered her speech from the despatch box in Parliament, a significant and deliberate choice. "This is the U.K. beginning its response at maximum diplomatic volume," Tait writes. In contrast, he says, the US under Barack Obama "failed to publicly attribute the 2016 Democratic National Committee hack to the Russian government until Oct. 7 of that year, and even then, the announcement wasn’t made by the president from the White House podium." As such, "it was widely seen internationally as a show of weakness by the United States." May didn't make that mistake.
Her choice of words was also careful and deliberate. She said the UK considers it "highly likely" that the Kremlin was behind the attack. Here's Tait:
“Highly likely” is the U.K. intelligence community’s highest level of confidence. Attributions are never certain, so the U.K. intelligence community never says “X happened.” Instead it says “we assess it is highly likely that X happened.” The U.K. intelligence community doesn’t get more certain than that. This too is a signal: This is the U.K. saying its threshold to be convinced of the attribution has already been made. It needs no more proof to act.
(Emphasis mine.)
May gives details about the "military grade nerve agent of a type developed by Russia ... one of a group of nerve agents known as ‘Novichok’.” By doing this, she gives credence to her assertion that Russia launched the attack. Tait notes that the UK's Porton Down facility is a world leader in forensic analysis of biochem agents. "With the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko this lab not only established that Polonium-210 was used, but also which reactor in Russia it came from."
So, when the UK makes such accusations about the source of chemical weapons, the international intelligence community believes it.
And May concludes by invoking deliberately chosen legal language that has gotten and kept the attention of NATO's foreign ministers (well, all but one, we're getting to that). She said, "If there is no credible response by the end of Tuesday, the U.K. will conclude there has been an ‘unlawful use of force’ by Moscow." Tait again:
The words “use of force” are legal terms concerning armed conflict, or jus ad bellum. She does not use them here by accident. The U.K. is stating loudly and unequivocally that the Russian government’s use of chemical weapons to murder people in the U.K. isn’t being treated as a law-enforcement matter. It’s an armed attack, and the U.K.’s response will be justified under the doctrine of self-defense.
That is fucking serious, boys and girls. Tait notes that this doesn't mean May will begin flinging nukes at the Russian bear, or send uniformed Tommies to stomp around on Russian farmland. No one wants a war, Tait asserts, and May isn't saying that's where she's going. "But these are extremely strong words from May, and foreign ministries of European and NATO allies will be paying attention."
The deadline is also a deliberate choice. May knows full well Russia would deny making the attack, or would make any real effort to help find out what exactly happened. The deadline is entirely for the U.K.'s allies, "to communicate that Russia was given an opportunity to respond and didn’t take it."
All well and good. Now. In any other US administration run by competent, functioning adults — the Obama administration, say, or the Clinton administration, or even Bush/Cheney — May’s statement would have been written in conjuction with an American response. Obama, or Dubya, or whoever, would have made his own statement alongside May’s, and the two would have operated together, presenting a unified front against the attack on a NATO member’s citizenry.
That isn't what happened. Trump refuses to say a word. Sanders gibbered and sulked at the podium, using words like "reckless," "indiscriminate," and even "fullest condemnation." But she refused to identify Russia as the perpetrator, even though May, the prime minister of our closest ally, had just done so. Here's what she said:
Look, we’ve been monitoring the incident closely, take it very seriously. The use of a highly lethal nerve agent against U.K. citizens on U.K. soil is an outrage. The attack was reckless, indiscriminate and irresponsible. We offer the fullest condemnation, and we extend our sympathy to the victims and their families and our support to the U.K. government. We stand by our closest ally and the special relationship that we have.
Mushy mush. The refusal of Sanders to name Russia as the perpetrator sent a clear signal to Russia — and America’s allies — that the Trump administration would not stand with Britain, would not dare to label Russia as the nation that attacked our closest ally. Want some real mushy mush? Here’s Trump shortly afterward:
It sounds to me like it would be Russia based on all of the evidence they have. I don’t know if they’ve come to a conclusion. As soon as we get the facts straight, if we agree with them, we will condemn Russia or whoever it may be.
Well, Britain damn well did come to a conclusion. If Trump gave a damn about anything except making Vladimir happy, and if he had a functioning, competent staff that had the courage to actually bring him information without getting on all fours to do it, he would know that Britain unequivocally, if diplomatically, named Russia as the perp. The facts are straight. And if anyone believes Trump’s “condemnation” of “Russia or whoever it may be” will have any meaning behind it, then they are fucking delusional. Sanders’s maundering about the “special relationship” between the US and Britain is nothing but vapor. The only special relationship Trump recognizes is his love affair with Putin. And that is the driving force behind the meaningless gyrations that make up US foreign policy.
Tait:
The White House’s choice of words like “reckless and indiscriminate” might sound like loud signals to people in the White House press room, but what the U.S. should be doing is speaking with the State Department and drafting a statement for the president to deliver from the podium (or at least recognize that the U.K. isn’t just giving a speech).
The U.K. just gave a speech at the diplomatic equivalent of maximum volume saying Russia’s military tried to murder someone on U.K. soil with chemical weapons. The U.K. is treating this as an attack invoking the right of self-defense, and it will respond this week when Russia inevitably fails to meet the standard of “credibly responding” on midnight at Tuesday.
These signals are too strong to walk back. Whatever it does, the U.K. will want to act this week. The White House needs to sit up and take this seriously.
It’s running out of time to decide how to respond.
(Emphasis mine.)
Tait isn't any more stupid than Theresa May. He, and she, both know that we've seen the response we're going to get from the Trump White House. It has already decided how it will respond.
So the next question is, how prepared are Britain and NATO to push back against Russia without the US — and with the US as a weak, waffling ally of Russia in any sort of diplomatic confrontation.