Political analogies are often unfair, especially ones that invoke the overused Munich parallel. But this one is worth considering: The problem with Trump isn’t (as some critics have argued) that he’s a reckless and potentially genocidal aggressor. No, the danger is that he’s precisely what he says he is — a dealmaker who thinks he could craft agreements with despots that could bring peace and security.
Trump seems to see commitments made to smaller states as expendable in the process of making deals with the big guys. When he linked U.S. willingness to defend the Baltic states and other NATO allies to what they pay into the alliance, it was a Chamberlain-esque emphasis on national self-interest, as opposed to sticking your neck out for possibly undeserving little guys.
This idea of reaching agreements with Putin’s Russia isn’t crazy, any more than was Chamberlain’s desire to escape war in 1938. And Trump actually deserves credit for raising this issue early in the Republican primary debates. But any such negotiation must be done carefully and unsentimentally, without the mutual self-congratulation that has characterized Trump’s comments about Putin. Secretary of State John F. Kerry is pursuing his own version of a deal with Putin, in the Syria agreement announced Friday night. Kerry has concluded that there’s no way to reduce the violence in Syria without working with Moscow. But Kerry has negotiated very cautiously, with the Pentagon looking over his shoulder at each detail before he signs off. He has specified what the Russians will have to deliver, in terms of calm on the battlefield and grounding the Syrian regime’s air power, for this deal to work.
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