Why Would Putin Want to Help Elect Trump?

For three months we have been bombarded with incessant claims that Vladimir Putin "meddled" to elect President Trump. Why? What was Putin's motive? How would a Trump victory better further Russian interests?

If Russia's intervention in Crimea, Ukraine and Syria proves anything, it proves Russian foreign policy is not based on ethical or moral considerations. Christian notions of "just war" and "social justice" are irrelevant. The end justifies the means. Women and children are bombed if that is the most practical way to kill opposition fighters. Russian foreign policy is pragmatic, Machiavellian, Realpolitik.

We're told Russia favored candidate Trump because his opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership and NAFTA would create world-wide financial chaos. Hillary Clinton labeled TPP the "gold standard" of trade deals before she flip-flopped. So, why was it in Russia's interest to support one over the other?


Where are Russia's economic interests? President Trump has been an incredibly successful capitalist/businessman all his life. He decries government regulation.

Beginning with "HillaryCare," Mrs. Clinton has never met a federal program or regulation she hasn't embraced. She has never run a business. Indeed, her "business" has been to have government run other peoples' businesses. Like Putin, she believes in a powerful and expansionist central government that regulates everything from health care, to the environment, to school bathrooms.

It is claimed Trump businesses have had dealings with Russia. But it was Secretary Clinton -- and her State Department -- that shipped 20 percent of U.S. uranium holdings to Russia!

We're told Trump is weak on Russia and has expressed a willingness to discuss the Crimean annexation with President Putin. Russian spokesmen, however, have expressed skepticism: Would Mr. Trump's statement still be operable "if he is elected?"

We're told that Mrs. Clinton and Putin had an "icy relationship." Reminded that Mrs. Clinton compared Putin to Hitler, and during her campaign labeled him a "bully," Putin countered dismissively, “When people cross the boundary of good manners, this attests to their weakness, not their strength. But for a woman weakness is not the worst quality.”

When Turkey shot down a Russian jet during Russia's Syrian campaign, Mrs. Clinton was asked if she would shoot down a Russian jet, were it to violate foreign airspace during airstrikes in Syria? She replied, “That would not happen, because we're going to put up a no-fly zone where the Russians are clearly kept informed." (Did we?)

When Russian jets, however, buzzed the USS Donald Cook in the Baltic, when asked what he would do, Mr. Trump replied, "Start with diplomacy ... and if that doesn't work ... at a certain point ... you got to shoot."

For Russian interests, would an "unpredictable" Trump be better than a "weak" Clinton?

Mr. Trump has pledged to "make America great again.” He has proposed a 10-point plan to spend $54 billion to rebuild the military at every level. He has pledged to build a military that "none will dare challenge." He has stated, "We strongly support NATO ... We only ask that all of the NATO members make their full and proper financial contributions to the NATO alliance."


When President Reagan ramped up military spending, the USSR collapsed. Does Putin really want a President Trump, who appears to be following President Reagan's game plan?

As early as May 16, 2016, candidate Trump was promising to expand our military to counter any Russian (and/or Chinese) military expansion. How is it in Russia's interest to have an American military that "none will dare challenge."

Mrs. Clinton's anticipated election was ballyhooed as President Obama's "third term."

For eight years Mr. Obama "deplored," "strongly condemned," imposed effete sanctions, and whined that "Russia was on the wrong side of history." All the while, Putin did exactly as he pleased militarily in Georgia, Crimea, Ukraine, Iran and Syria. The Obama/Clinton administration created chaos in Libya and Iraq, and childishly underestimated the ISIS threat. They betrayed Israel and Egypt. During President Obama's eight years, Russia engaged in unchallenged war and expansionism.

So, what was in Russian geopolitical interests? An unpredictable Trump who just might act to make America great again? Or four more years of a feckless Obama foreign policy?


Posted: QCOline.com March 18, 2017

Copyright 2017, John Donald O'Shea

On This Point, President Buchanan Was Right

What happens when the American people reject election results? Defy a Supreme Court holding? President James Buchanan, our vilified 15th president, had strong views on those questions.

Sen. Stephen A. Douglas, in an attempt to save the Union, engineered passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. That law included this provision:

"The true intent and meaning of this Act (is) not to legislate slavery into any Territory or State, nor to exclude it therefrom; but to leave to the people thereof free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of the United States."



In January 1857, the Supreme Court decided the Dred Scott case, holding that the Constitution left the question of slavery to the states. It further held that the Constitution gave Congress no power over slavery (only a duty to assist returning fugitive slaves). Additionally, it held that as Congress had no power over slavery, it could not "delegate" a power to the territories, which it didn't have. Perhaps most importantly, the court held that a slave was "property," and that under the Fifth Amendment's "due process" clause, "no person could be deprived of his ... property, without due process of law."

After the Dred Scott decision, the Douglas Democrats persistently denounced President Buchanan for adhering to the Supreme Court's Dred Scott decision.

They accused the president of "proving faithless to the Cincinnati Platform, which he had accepted, and on which he was elected."

President Buchanan's position was that even if the Cincinnati Platform had affirmed, as the Douglas Democrats insisted, the right of a territory to approve or reject slavery therein pursuant to Congressional authorization, that in the face of an unequivocal contrary Supreme Court decision, it was the President 's duty to act in adherence to that Supreme Court decision, rather than a party platform. In Mr. Buchanan's words,

"He could not hesitate in the choice (between adhering to the party platform, or to the law of the land as pronounced by the Supreme Court) under his oath [to] faithfully and to the best of his ability to 'preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.' Sad must be the condition of any country where an appeal can be taken from judicial decisions to excited popular elections! ... When [the law] is disregarded and defied by excited and exasperated popular majorities, anarchy and confusion must be the inevitable consequence. Public and private rights are sacrificed to the madness of the hour. ... To avoid such evils, history has taught us that the people will at last seek refuge in the arms of despotism. Let all free governments in the future take warning that the late disastrous civil war, unjustifiable as it was, would most probably never existed had not the American people disobeyed and resisted the Constitution of the country as expounded by the tribunal which they themselves had created for this express purpose."

Most modern legal scholars believe Dred Scott was wrongfully decided, relying on the dissenting opinion therein of Justice Benjamin Robbins Curtis.

Chief Justice Roger Taney, for the majority, had written that Negroes could not be U.S. citizens, and therefore could not sue a citizen of another state in Federal Court ("diversity of citizenship jurisdiction"). Curtis replied that Negroes were considered citizens in most of the northern states; they thus could sue a citizen of another state in Federal Court.


Taney wrote Congress had no power over slavery in the territories. Curtis responded that for 70 years, that power had been universally acknowledged by every branch of government.

Taney wrote that slaves were "property," protected by "due process." Curtis replied that - since Magna Carta (1215) -- the due process clause meant that no man could be executed, imprisoned or fined, except in accordance with the laws of the land.

Candidate Abraham Lincoln later made the moral argument slavery is immoral, and "nobody has a right to do a wrong."

At least in one respect, however, President Buchanan was right. Americans have every right to peacefully express disagreement with election results, or high court decisions.

But when Supreme Court holdings and/or election results are violently "defied by excited and exasperated popular majorities, anarchy and confusion must be the inevitable consequence."


Posted: QCOline.com March 7, 2017
Copyright 2017, John Donald O'Shea