By Zach Dorfman
14 hours ago
Americans are unaccustomed to getting news about their own government from the Kremlin. On January 30th, Russian officials disclosed that the director of the SVR, Russia's foreign intelligence service, had recently visited Washington for a meeting with Mike Pompeo, director of the CIA, to discuss counterterrorism issues. That sparked revelations, first reported by the Washington Post, that the director of Russia's security service had also met with Pompeo, and the director of the GRU, Russia's military intelligence service, had been in Washington at the same time. One former senior intelligence community official told me that having all three heads of Russia's intelligence services in Washington simultaneously was highly unusual – at best – but it is worth emphasizing that we only know about these meetings because the Russian government, and leakers within the U.S. intelligence community, informed us of them.
The same week the Russian spy chiefs' visit was made public, the Trump administration announced it was declining to enforce sanctions, begrudgingly signed by Trump in July 2017, punishing individuals for doing business with the Russian defense or intelligence sectors. This provision, the Trump administration argued, would require them to sanction Americans allies, such as India, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, who all purchase Russian weaponry. Later that same day – and mere hours before the legal deadline – the Treasury Department released a list of Putin-connected oligarchs; the list was supposed to shine light on the corrupt intersection between the Russian state and its industrial titans, but was nearly copied in toto from a Forbes Magazine list of the world's wealthiest Russians. Administration officials didn't even pretend to operate in good faith here. The oligarchs list, which was seen as a potential prelude to a new round of sanctions against the named individuals, was instead treated by administration officials as a tossed-off farce.
The fact, then, that Russia – overtly hostile to the American-led international order, a kleptocratic mafia state with a viciously effective intelligence apparatus – is the only country that President Trump appears reflexively inclined to give the benefit of the doubt, seems, under the circumstances, pretty odd. It is perfectly reasonable to argue that the U.S. should pursue better relations with Russia on points of convergence and mutual interest. It is bizarre to do so when this strategy is coupled with utter contemptuousness about most other long-standing U.S. alliances and the pursuit of diplomatic solutions to serious geopolitical challenges. And it is unspeakably more jarring when the one country with which the president seems interested in seeking a rapprochement happens to have masterminded a cyber-espionage campaign that helped ensure his electoral victory ...
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/what-is-trumps-foreign-policy-on-russia-w516634
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