Yes, you read that correctly. My title is “Elephant in the Oval Office.”
Scan a recent photo of the Oval Office and what do you see? President Donald Trump sitting behind his desk talking to staff. All are wearing a suit and tie – all but one. The elephant. Steve Bannon.
Out of nowhere, it seems, Mr. Bannon has become the senior policy advisor in the Trump administration. Remember the Trump/O’Reilly interview on Fox News during the Super Bowl? Mr. O’Reilly reminded the president that Vladimir Putin was a “killer.” Mr. Trump shrugged it off with an Obamaesque response. “We’ve got a lot of killers,” he said. “What do you think? Our country’s so innocent?” Where did that come from? It didn’t originate with Mike Pence who recently told President Petro Poroshenko that the U.S. does not recognize Russia’s Crimea grab. Nor did it come from Reince Priebus or any of his staff. It certainly didn’t come from Nikki Haley, our ambassador to the U.N., who openly excoriated Mr. Putin in her maiden speech. So who’s left? The elephant.
Who is Steve Bannon? In the February 13 issue of Time magazine, the cover story – “The Second Most Powerful Man in the World?” – was devoted to the man. “Democrat by heritage and Republican by choice,” writes the author David Von Drehle, “Bannon had come to see both parties as deeply corrupt…” and “seemed to relish the opportunity to clean out the old order and build a new one in its place.” According to a number of sources, “Steve’s not willing to take no for an answer. He’s a sponge. He’s very bright. He listens. And he’s a strategic thinker, about three or four steps down the road…”
Not everyone is charitable, however, about Mr. Bannon, a Navy veteran, a conservative radio show host, who holds a Harvard M.B.A. “He is legitimately one of the worst people I’ve ever dealt with,” declared one acquaintance. “He regularly abuses people. He sees everything as war. Every time he feels crossed, he makes it his business to destroy his opponent.” Another colleague described him as “One of the worst people on God’s green earth.” Mr. Bannon allegedly told one person that he was like Lenin, ready to “bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s Establishment.”
Mr. Bannon reportedly played a major role in the first immigration ban roll-out, one of the worst moments of Mr. Trump’s presidency thus far. How important Mr. Bannon will be in the future depends on Mr. Trump. Will Mr. Bannon morph into the White House Svengali, President Trump’s Rasputin?
For Ukrainians, the big question is the president’s relationship with Mr. Putin. In the past, Mr. Trump has been effusive in his praise of the murderous dictator, and that troubles most of us. Does the Russian president have an elephant in his office? My choice is Alexander Dugin. In a column titled “Dugin’s Evil Theology,” which appeared in National Review Online, Robert Zubrin wrote, “Dugin is the mad philosopher who is redesigning the brains of much of the Russian government and public…” Mr. Dugin’s core idea is that “‘liberalism’ (by which he means the entire Western consensus) represents an assault on the traditional hierarchical organization of the world…” The American empire is the leader of this consensus as well as the globalization movement. America needs to be destroyed. Mr. Dugin proposes a kind of “national bolshevism” for Russia based on the ideology of Moscow as the third Rome and other messianic Russian delusions. For Mr. Dugin, “the West is the realm of the ‘Antichrist.’ ” Some commentators believe that President Putin’s current efforts to undermine the European Union, NATO and Western ideals reflect the Dugin formula for Russia. Echoing Mr. Dugin, Russian Foreign Affairs Minister Sergei Lavrov recently called for a “post-West world order.”
Despite their apparent disdain for the existing world order, it would be a stretch to suggest that Messrs. Bannon and Dugin are soul mates. Mr. Bannon may have dreamt of a Leninist destruction of the Establishment, but it will remain just that for now, a dream. Our system of checks and balance will make sure of that. Not so the dreams of Mr. Dugin’s Russia, where checks and balances don’t exist.
Will Ukraine survive during a Trump administration? Absolutely. We have friends in high places who know the truth about Russia’s designs on Ukraine – Vice-President Pence, U.N. Ambassador Haley, and Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham to name but a few. The Trump administration is getting its bearings as I write this. President Trump himself has already made clear that Crimea belongs to Ukraine. Ukrainian Democrats need to chill. All will be well, especially if Mr. Bannon is shown the door.
Vigilance is required when it comes to President Putin, however. The New York Times recently reported a back-channel plan for Ukraine and Russia courtesy of Trump associates. Mentioned are: Andrii V. Artemenko, an anti-Poroshenko gadfly linked to the disgraced Paul Manafort; Felix H. Sater, a Trump business associate; and Michael D. Cohen, the president’s personal attorney. Included in the so-called “peace plan” was a proposal to lease Crimea to Russia for a period of 50 years. Some Internet commentators have already labeled this “Trump’s plan.” Really? You don’t think Mr. Putin had anything to do with this?
The tragedy in all of this is that few American are familiar with Russian history. Since its founding in 1137, the raison d’être of Moscow has been expansion by aggression, occupation, oppression. Nationalism, Orthodoxy and autocracy have been the guiding geopolitical principles of Russia for centuries. Mr. Putin’s behavior is not new. Every leader of Russia – tsar, commissar, president – has been an autocrat. The Third Rome concept is centuries old. So is the notion of a messianic Russia.
It’s time Americans recognized the real Russia. It’s time we remember that Mr. Putin is a former KGB agent and that his former employer recruited only the best and the brightest to fulfill Russia’s mission.