| Ukraine and Syria messes got worse because Trump didn’t heed, or hear, warnings from his aides | ||||||||||
THE BIG IDEA: President Trump tweeted last week about his own “great and unmatched wisdom” as he defended his controversial conversation with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. It was a window into his certitude and self-confidence that belies a lack of careful study or deep knowledge of the world.
That Oct. 6 call, just like his July 25 phone conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, would have played out very differently if Trump had listened to the warnings of his advisers at the White House and appointees in the national security apparatus.
“Mr. Trump’s error, some aides concede in off-the-record conversations, was entering the Oct. 6 call underprepared, and then failing to spell out for Mr. Erdogan the potential consequences — from economic sanctions to a contraction of Turkey’s alliance with the United States and its standing in NATO. He has since threatened both, retroactively,” David Sanger reports in today’s New York Times. “The horrors that have played out with lightning speed were clearly not anticipated by Mr. Trump, who has no fondness for briefing books and meetings in the Situation Room intended to game out events two or three moves ahead. Instead, he often talks about trusting his instincts. ‘My gut tells me more sometimes than anybody else’s brain can ever tell me,’ he said late last year.”
-- Some of this is a result of Trump surrounding himself with more “yes men” than during the first two years of his administration. Jim Mattis, you might recall, resigned as secretary of defense last December after Trump initially announced he would withdraw U.S. troops from Syria.
“During deliberations in the past, Trump has repeatedly pushed to remove troops from Syria but has usually been dissuaded by top officials, such as John F. Kelly, his former chief of staff,” Seung Min Kim and Josh Dawsey reported on Sunday. “The usual argument against removing troops, according to former senior administration officials, would be that doing so would cause widespread deaths and chaos and Trump would be blamed for it. ‘Normally, convincing him he would be blamed for death and chaos could keep it from happening at least at that moment,’ one former senior administration official said. But current administration officials say many moderating officials like Kelly are gone, and longtime friends say the move is consistent with Trump’s worldview — and that he has long wanted to do this.”
Fiona Hill leaves the Capitol late Monday night after giving a full day of testimony as part of the House impeachment inquiry. (Leah Millis/Reuters)
-- Even then, though, Trump has repeatedly disregarded warnings from well-intentioned aides who appear to have been trying earnestly to keep him from making unforced errors or wading into legally perilous waters.
Fiona Hill, who was Trump’s top adviser on Russia in the White House, told impeachment investigators on Monday that Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s fixer, ran a shadow foreign policy in Ukraine that circumvented American officials and diplomats in order to personally benefit the president. “In a closed-door session that lasted roughly 10 hours, Hill told lawmakers that she confronted Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, about Giuliani’s activities which, she testified, were not coordinated with the officials responsible for carrying out U.S. foreign policy,” Karoun Demirjian, Shane Harris and Rachael Bade report. “Hill testified Monday that [then-national security adviser John] Bolton was furious over Giuliani’s politically motivated activities in Ukraine, two officials familiar with her testimony said. She recounted how Bolton likened the former New York mayor to a ‘hand grenade who’s going to blow everybody up,’ one of these people said…
“Bolton and Sondland met in early July with then-special envoy for Ukraine Kurt Volker, Hill and Energy Secretary Rick Perry. During the meeting, Sondland’s agenda for Ukraine began to become clear, when he blurted out to the other officials present that there were ‘investigations that were dropped that need to be started up again’ … Hill told lawmakers that after the meeting, Bolton instructed her to go raise their concerns about the shadow Ukraine operations with White House lawyers. Bolton said he didn’t want to be part of any ‘drug deal’ that was being cooked up on Ukraine, one person familiar with Hill’s testimony said. Hill met with NSC lawyer John Eisenberg to express her concerns about Giuliani’s activities and how they were being carried out by Sondland and Volker…”
-- It remains unclear whether or when Eisenberg passed these concerns up the chain of command. The Post reported last week that at least four national security officials sounded alarms before Trump’s call. That meeting with Sondland and the others was on July 10, for example, a full two weeks before the July 25 call in which Trump asked for a “favor,” according to the rough summary released by the White House.
Hill, who finally left the Capitol at 8:25 p.m., is the first former Trump White House official to testify as part of the impeachment inquiry. She left the NSC voluntarily this summer and appeared before Congress after a subpoena was issued, despite White House Counsel Pat Cipollone’s stated desire to block administration witnesses from appearing and his refusal to turn over documents. Eisenberg reports to Cipollone.
-- The Times has a fuller version of the “drug deal” quote that includes the acting White House chief of staff: “I am not part of whatever drug deal Sondland and [Mick] Mulvaney are cooking up,” Bolton, a Yale-trained lawyer, purportedly told Hill to tell White House lawyers, according to two people who were at the deposition. “Another person in the room initially said Mr. Bolton referred to Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Mulvaney, but two others said he cited Mr. Sondland,” Peter Baker and Nicholas Fandos report.
“At one point, she confronted Mr. Sondland, who had inserted himself into dealings with Ukraine even though it was not part of his official portfolio … He told her that he was in charge of Ukraine, a moment she compared to Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig Jr.’s declaration that he was in charge after the Ronald Reagan assassination attempt … According to whom, she asked. The president, he answered. …
“Ms. Hill testified that she opposed the idea of the July 25 telephone call … because she did not understand its purpose. While it was described as a congratulatory call following parliamentary elections in Ukraine, Mr. Trump had already made a congratulatory call to Mr. Zelensky in April after his own election. She was not told that Mr. Trump would use the call to press for an investigation into [Hunter] Biden, nor did she know about the president’s decision to withhold $391 million in American assistance to Ukraine until shortly before her departure, according to one person informed about her account.”
National security adviser John Bolton listens as President Trump speaks in the Oval Office on June 12. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
-- This should be viewed as part of a pattern. The president, no doubt, thinks his wisdom is “great and unmatched.” This prompts him to not follow traditional decision-making channels and to ignore advice from seasoned foreign policy hands, which has in turn led to some of the blunders that now cloud the future of his presidency.
In some cases, it’s not clear what information has been passed along to him. Volker, who was the special U.S. envoy to Ukraine, testified under oath that he warned Giuliani against trusting the information he was receiving from Ukrainian political figures about Joe Biden and his son. He said during his deposition on Oct. 3 that he tried to caution Giuliani that his Ukrainian sources were unreliable and that he should be careful about putting faith in their theories, but it was to no avail.
In other cases, though, aides say they’ve expressed concerns to the president directly – only to have them ignored. Tom Bossert, Trump’s former top homeland security adviser at the White House, said he personally told the president on multiple occasions that a conspiracy theory about Ukraine meddling in the 2016 election was “completely debunked.” Appearing on ABC’s “This Week” on Sept. 29, Bossert faulted the president for still bringing up the baseless idea during his call with Ukraine’s president that the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike played a role in shielding the Democratic National Committee’s server. Bossert blamed Giuliani and others outside the national security apparatus for “repeating that debunked theory to the president.” Bossert said there is no doubt that Russia behind the hack.
“It sticks in his mind when he hears it over and over again, and, for clarity here, ... let me just repeat that it has no validity,” Bossert said. “That conspiracy theory has got to go. … If he continues to focus on that white whale, it’s going to bring him down.”
There are many other examples: Trump ignored specific warnings from his national security advisers last year when he congratulated Russian President Vladimir Putin on his reelection — which experts said was rigged. A section in his briefing materials literally said in all-capital letters “DO NOT CONGRATULATE.”
Trump also reportedly refused to stop using his personal iPhone in the White House, despite repeated warnings from U.S. intelligence officials that Chinese and Russian spies are routinely listening in on his conversations.
Mattis and Rex Tillerson, then the secretary of state, warned Trump about the destabilizing repercussions that would follow if he pulled the United States out of the Iran nuclear agreement. He ignored them, and their warnings have come to fruition.
Trump ignored warnings from his top economic advisers that a trade war with China would not be “easy to win.”
Chris Christie, who chaired Trump’s transition team, has said he warned the president-elect not to hire Michael Flynn as national security adviser. Flynn only survived a few weeks on the job and has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI.
THE WORLD IS ON FIRE:
-- Trump called on Erdogan to implement a cease-fire in northern Syria, and imposed sanctions against Turkey, in response to its military aggression. Vice President Pence and national security adviser Robert O’Brien will lead a delegation to Turkey in an effort to end violence in the region. Seung Min Kim and Karen DeYoung report: “Pence said that Erdogan and Trump spoke by phone on Monday and that the president ‘communicated to him very clearly that the United States of America wants Turkey to stop the invasion, to implement an immediate cease-fire and to begin to negotiate with Kurdish forces in Syria to bring an end to the violence.’ … The sanctions are aimed at Turkey’s Defense and Energy ministries, as well as three senior Turkish officials. Among them was the interior minister, a powerful position responsible for domestic security. … Along with the sanctions, Trump also said that tariffs on steel imports from Turkey will be raised 50 percent and that the United States has halted negotiations over a $100 billion trade deal with the country.”
-- The markets don't see Trump's new tariffs as significant: The Turkish lira actually rose as markets opened. per CNBC.
-- Syrian troops loyal to President Bashar al-Assad advanced into several additional key towns across northeastern Syria after striking a last-minute deal with Kurdish fighters to help them fight the Turks, dramatically altering the balance of power inside the country. Erin Cunningham, Sarah Dadouch, Asser Khattab and Dan Lamothe report: “Kurdish authorities reached a surprise agreement with the Syrian government to return Assad’s forces to the northeast of the country. Government forces lost control of the territory amid the civil war that erupted after the Arab Spring protests of eight years ago. The Syrian deployments represent a stunning reversal for the Kurdish-led administration and allied Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which had partnered with the United States to battle the Islamic State in the area. The deal was made to allow Syrian government forces to take over security in some border areas, according to Syrian Kurdish officials, who said their administration would maintain control of local institutions. Syria’s government, however, sees the agreement as effectively killing Kurdish ambitions to establish a de facto state in the country’s northeast, said Kamal Jafa, a pro-government military analyst in the Syrian city of Aleppo.”
-- “Over the weekend, State and Energy Department officials were quietly reviewing plans for evacuating roughly 50 tactical nuclear weapons that the United States had long stored, under American control, at Incirlik Air Base in Turkey, about 250 miles from the Syrian border,” the Times reports. “Those weapons, one senior official said, were now essentially Erdogan’s hostages. To fly them out of Incirlik would be to mark the de facto end of the Turkish-American alliance. To keep them there, though, is to perpetuate a nuclear vulnerability that should have been eliminated years ago. ‘I think this is a first — a country with U.S. nuclear weapons stationed in it literally firing artillery at US forces,’ Jeffrey Lewis of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies wrote last week. For his part, Mr. Erdogan claims nuclear ambitions of his own: Only a month ago, speaking to supporters, he said he ‘cannot accept’ rules that keep Turkey from possessing nuclear weapons of its own.”
-- Erdogan’s moves have generated little public backlash or even debate back home in Turkey. Kareem Fahim reports: “Turkish celebrities and athletes have rallied behind the military. Opposition parties have been broadly supportive. Flag-waving Turks greet soldiers in border towns as they prepare for battle, and the news media memorializes Erdogan’s utterances in headlines. At the same time, critical voices in Turkey have been cowed, shouted down and in some cases detained. … Trump’s threats against Turkey — including the imposition Monday of sanctions on Turkish ministries and senior officials — were unlikely to dent Erdogan’s support.”
-- The Saudi ambassador to the U.K. accused Turkey of causing chaos in Syria, but he also said that Riyadh is losing confidence in Trump. From the Guardian: Prince Khalid bin Bander bin Sultan Al Saud “also claimed his country had much more to lose than Iran from a conflict between the two countries and wanted to behave as ‘the adults in the room’ by not escalating tensions with Tehran. He said Saudi Arabia would have further to fall if a conflict took place. Breaking with the normal Saudi diplomatic silence in the UK, the ambassador, speaking at the Royal United Services Institute defence thinktank, said: ‘The Turkish assault is creating chaos. The last thing we need is another front of chaos in the region and I think we just got it.’”
-- When it comes to Middle East policy, there’s one country everyone is talking to now: Russia. Will Englund reports: “Analysts say that American confusion, bungling and missteps — especially in the past few days — have opened the door to the Middle East for Russia. Moscow, by not talking about human rights and transparency, is a welcome change of pace from the West, they say. … But experts question whether Russia, having established diplomatic beachheads, has the means to bend the Middle East to its will. … Vladimir Dzhabarov, the deputy head of the Federation Council foreign affairs committee, suggested that Russia and the United States could jointly broker further talks between the Kurds and Assad’s government. Syria is just one item on the agenda during Putin’s visit to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The price of oil is another — both Riyadh and Moscow believe its price should not be allowed to go too high. … It is a balancing act for Moscow: Sow some friendship with one side, then the other; sow some uncertainty at the same time, get some deals done, some boots on the ground. Katz argues that Russia does not have an actual strategic goal for the Middle East. It wants to continue as a player and prevent any one side from becoming dominant.”
-- Russia said its units are patrolling the area between Turkish and Syrian forces around city of Manbij, filling a security vacuum left behind by American troops. (Kareem Fahim, Sarah Dadouch and Erin Cunningham)
-- How the Syrian crisis is playing:
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