Repeated warnings from our intelligence community and allies that Russian autocrat and former KGB colonel Vladimir "Vlad the Invader" Putin was cultivating useful idiot and narcissist Donald "Rump" Trump as an "asset" were brushed off by our sage Beltway media savants, the FBI, and spineless and cynical Rethuglican politicians. Numerous times, Rump himself had praised Putin and questioned the usefulness of NATO, and had dismissed hard evidence that Putin's government -- in league with the nihilistic Wikileaks -- was involved in trying to influence the election in Rump's favor through hacked documents.
Russia's been emboldened by Rump's improbable election (but not by a popular vote win), so it was not a total surprise that Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov suggested to their useful idiot Rump that a "confidence-building" move would be for him to slow or stop NATO expansion and to withdraw NATO forces from the proximity of Russia's borders. Peskov is referring to NATO troops protecting the Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania (all former Soviet republics) and Poland, and a potential acceptance of Ukraine into the NATO fold. Calling NATO "an instrument of confrontation," Peskov susggested that weakening NATO would lead to a "detente" in Europe, no doubt to Russia's advantage as it seeks to bring former client states and Soviet republics back into its orbit.
Rump would be well to consider the statement that Putin made a few years ago. He called the collapse of the Soviet Union the 20th century's "greatest political catastrophe." This former Soviet intelligence officer would like nothing better that to leave as his legacy the reconstitution of that entity, albeit as a kleptocracy. He may have an ally in Rump in his mission.
(photo: A mural in Lithuania. Petras Malukas, AFP/Getty Images)
