Treason, no; moral obtuseness, yes.
Treason, no; moral obtuseness, yes.
V ladimir Putin’s Russia is an enemy of the United States. Period.
Putin’s Russia has helped Iran kill Americans. Putin’s troll farms blast Russian disinformation and propaganda into the American cyberworld 24/7. Putin has held innocent Americans captive for years on spurious espionage charges. Putin is conducting increasingly kinetic hybrid warfare against America’s closest NATO allies. Putin has declared the American-led victory in the Cold War and the subsequent dissolution of the Soviet Union as the greatest geopolitical disaster of the 20th century — and by invading Ukraine in February 2022, Putin launched a bloody effort to roll back that victory, beginning with the declared intention to exterminate Ukraine as an independent nation.
If successful, there is no reason to think that Putin’s geopolitical revisionism will stop there. The Baltic states, Norway, Poland, and new NATO members Sweden and Finland understand that. Donald Trump, it seems, does not, having waived “the application of such sanctions, restrictions, and duties [against Russia] provided for in the Graham Act,” claiming that the waiver is in the American national interest.
What does that make President Trump?
Article III, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution defines “treason” quite carefully: “Treason against the United States shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.” The way the Framers shaped that definition suggests that they intended the proscription against giving aid and comfort to an enemy of the United States to involve aiding and comforting an enemy with whom our country was in a declared war.
That is not the case between the United States and the Russian Federation of Vladimir Putin. So not even the most rabid Trump-o-phobe is likely to suggest that Trump’s recent diesel deal with Russia, or his suspension of the enhanced sanctions against Russian oil and gas exports under the Graham Act, or the decision to cut off Ukrainian access to Starlink intelligence data crucial in repelling Russian missile and drone attacks on civilian targets, constitute treasonous acts by the standards of the Constitution.
Putin’s Russia remains the enemy, however. So where does that leave President Trump?
At the very least, these reckless deals and decisions — which will add one day’s worth of diesel to U.S. supplies, deprive Kyiv of badly needed intelligence data and tacitly provide support for a crumbling Russian economy, thereby sustaining Putin’s brutal attempt to freeze Ukrainians into some form of surrender by destroying Ukraine’s energy infrastructure — mark Trump as morally obtuse and strategically blind.
As to strategic blindness, Ukraine has done the United States and its allies a great service over more than four years of war. Ukraine has vastly degraded Russia’s military capability, including sinking or paralyzing the now virtually defunct Russian Black Sea Fleet. Ukraine has demonstrated how to conduct and repel drone warfare and ramp up technological innovation and weapons procurement, both at a pace the Pentagon would do well to emulate. Moreover, by holding the line against Putin’s obsession with reversing the history’s verdict in the Cold War — which was not, pace some post-liberals, the triumph of American imperialism but the welcome victory of imperfect democracies over pluperfect tyrannies — Ukraine has given NATO’s European members the time to sober up and reinforce the defense capabilities they have too often neglected in the past. These contributions to American security have been well worth the cost to the American exchequer.
As to moral obtuseness, Trump seems to have a singularly blinkered and amoral concept of the American national interest, which he identifies with his own political fortunes. This ought to make even the most stringent foreign policy “realists” cringe. Beyond that, though, such craven solipsism in the face of an enemy betrays a sorry lack of understanding that the defining of the “national interest” is not value-neutral but is in fact an exercise in moral reasoning — in defining and declaring to the world the nation’s calendar of values.
The stunned reaction of our allies to the latest Trumpian tilt toward the Kremlin will give more than a few countries, and not without cause, as a strong incentive to wonder whether the United States can any longer be counted on to stand by its friends, given its apparent willingness to help its enemies. And if that is America’s settled concept of its national interest, then the future really is a Hobbesian world in which all are at war with all.
I do not believe that that is, in fact, the case. The sharp and bipartisan criticism of the president’s latest “policy” toward Russia suggests that a line has been crossed and that many previously timid congressional souls are willing to say that enough is enough. Now, however, is the time to test that belief.
NRO’s Andrew McCarthy has rightly called on Congress to repeal its tacit repeal of Article I and reassert itself as a coequal branch of government by immediately holding hearings on the administration’s latest stance toward the Russian war on Ukraine, demanding answers under oath as to what is going on with a policy that makes no strategic sense while degrading America’s moral standing in the world. Any such hearings should include Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, so that the country can see how the president’s possible successors as the 2028 Republican presidential candidate answer the question, “Do you approve of the president’s diesel deal, his suspension of the Graham sanctions, and his restriction of Ukrainian access to Starlink? Yes or no.”
That would at least salvage some necessary political clarity from this tawdry situation, which makes me embarrassed by, and for, my country.