WASHINGTON — Russian President Vladimir Putin confirmed US President-elect Donald Trump is willing to mend ties, but key US lawmakers are striking a defiant chord against Trump's open admiration for Putin and calling for caution, if not tough action.
Throughout his campaign, Trump has argued for more harmonious relations with Moscow in spite of its aggression in Europe and support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's role in his country's bloody civil war. On Sunday, Putin, who spoke on the phone with Trump last week, told a news conference, "The president-elect confirmed he is willing to normalize Russian-American relations. I told him the same."
Lawmakers in Trump's own party spent last week warning against the the new administration cozying up to the Kremlin. Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-S.C., a Trump critic and chairman of the Senate panel that governs foreign aid held a conciliatory press conference on Nov. 15, but warned, "I worry about Russia."
"He wants to reset with Russia; maybe he can do it," Graham said of Trump. "But here's my view about Russia: They're a bad actor in the world, they need to be reined in. We need not concede Crimea. I fear if we don't let them know the rules of the road pretty early, they may go deeper into Western Ukraine."
Graham said he wants to assemble an aid package for Russia's stressed neighbors as well as hearings on "Russia's misadventures throughout the world," from Eastern Europe, to the Mideast and to its role in cyber-espionage in the US and elsewhere. The hearings would fuel a case for tougher action by the US government, Graham said.
The Obama administration formally accused Russia last month of trying to interfere in the election after American intelligence agencies and the Department of Homeland Security declared that the Russian leadership was responsible for attacks on the Democratic National Committee and the leaking of stolen emails.
"Here's what I would tell Republicans: We cannot sit on the sidelines as a party and let allegations against a foreign government in our election process go unanswered because it may have been beneficial to our cause for the moment," Graham said, adding that if true, members of the hacking organizations "should be punished. Putin should be punished."
In that vein, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's top Democrat, Sen. Ben Cardin, vowed last week to introduce legislation to penalize Russia for interfering in US elections. To answer "the cyber-attack on America," Cardin's nascent bill offers the option of expanding sanctions against Russia, some targeting those who participated in the attack—and the option of "a measured, cyber response to shine a light on those who are responsible."
In remarks to the Center for Strategic and International Studies forum on Russia Nov. 17, Cardin called Russia "a global bully." Most lawmakers of both parties, he said, "are very concerned about Russia's activities and how we try to reconcile that with statements that Donald Trump made during the course of his campaign.
"We can only hope that President Trump will seriously take the warnings and assessments from our intelligence community and security professionals into consideration as he makes his decisions on our foreign policy with Russia," Cardin said.
After Trump named retired Gen. Mike Flynn, the former chief of the Defense Intelligence Agency, as his national security advisor, Cardin voiced "serious concerns," in part based on Flynn's Russia ties. Cardin was troubled by Flynn's "relationship with RT, a television network funded by the Russian government and well-known for promoting the Kremlin's political agenda," and a paid appearance at an RT gala in Russia, where Flynn was photographed sitting next to Putin.
The House Intelligence Committee's top Democrat, Rep. Adam Schiff, also questioned Flynn in a public statement, saying, "I am deeply concerned about his views on Russia, which over the last 12 months have demonstrated the same fondness for the autocratic and belligerent Kremlin which animate President-elect Trump's praise of Vladimir Putin."
Senate Armed Services Chairman John McCain, R-Ariz., delivered a speech on the Senate floor about Sergei Magnitsky, a Kremlin critic whose death in state custody sparked American sanctions against Russia. In the Nov. 17 remarks, McCain denounced, "flagrant violations of the rule of law and basic human rights committed by the Russian government."
On the first day of the lame duck session in Congress, McCain had suggested that Putin is taking advantage of Trump. Hours after Putin gave Trump a congratulatory call, Russia announced it would resume bombing runs on the city of Aleppo—and McCain suggested a "reset" in the US-Russia relationship would be an unacceptable "complicity in Putin and Assad's butchery of the Syrian people."
"We should place as much faith in such statements as any other made by a former KGB agent who has plunged his country into tyranny, murdered his political opponents, invaded his neighbors, threatened America's allies and attempted to undermine America's elections," McCain said in the statement.
During the campaign, Trump denigrated NATO as obsolete and its members as freeloading on US defense spending. He said in an interview over the summer that if Russia attacked the Baltic states he would decide to come to their aid based on whether those countries "have fulfilled their obligations to us"—widely interpreted as a break of NATO's treaty commitment to mutual defense.
The remarks also dovetailed with Trump's vocal support for a less internationalist foreign policy and skepticism about the liberal world order. However, it's unclear how those views will guide Trump's presidency, and on Nov. 18, NATO's Jens Stoltenberg tweeted he and Trump had a "good talk," writing that the two had "underlined the enduring importance of #NATO and increased defence spending".
Asked about Trump's remarks, one of Trump's allies, Senate Armed Services member Tom Cotton, R-Ark., said the best way to deter a conflict between the Baltic states and Russia, "is to be ironclad in our support of our NATO allies."
Cotton expressed the traditional understanding that the member nations’ commitment to spend 2 percent of GDP on defense was "political commitment" and that mutual defense was "a treaty commitment"—while arguing it would be good for allies to spend more. Asked to compare his views with Trump's more transactional take on US alliances, Cotton demurred.
"NATO is not a charity, it is a security alliance that we're in for our interests," Cotton said, adding: "We can't be as safe in America without those alliance structures, which is why we've had them for so long. Donald Trump has acknowledged those alliances."
Email: jgould@defensenews.com
Twitter: @reporterjoe
Joe Gould was the senior Pentagon reporter for Defense News, covering the intersection of national security policy, politics and the defense industry. He had previously served as Congress reporter.
