CSNbbs

Quote:Before Donald Trump won the election in November we were warned: He is a Russian stooge. He is a fascist. He will upend the protocols and traditions that make governing possible. This is not normal.

Now that we are approaching the 100-day mark, it’s worth noting that the president is defying the expectations of his resistance. And while there is plenty to oppose in Trump’s young presidency, he is neither the Siberian Candidate nor the second coming of Mussolini.

Let’s start with Russia. The FBI is still investigating whether and how his campaign may have colluded with Moscow’s efforts to influence the presidential election. And yet in terms of actual policy, Trump has settled on a much tougher line with Russia than how he campaigned or in his first few weeks.

In the first month of Trump’s presidency, there were legitimate concerns he would attempt a grand bargain with Russia. He boasted that it was an asset that Russian president Vladimir Putin liked him. And he went out of his way to spare Putin from the harsh criticism he reserved for just about everyone else.

But there has been no reset. In fact it’s fair to say that Trump has been much kinder to China, Russia’s traditional Asian rival. Trump ended any chance for the multilateral trade deal with China’s neighbors known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership. He dropped his threat to revisit the One-China Policy that requires the U.S. not to recognize Taiwan’s sovereignty. More recently, he has said he won’t pursue China for currency manipulation, and tells us he is pleased by China’s cooperation against North Korea during the current nuclear crisis.

Instead, Trump is treating Russia in practice the way he promised in the campaign to deal with China. His government has supported Montenegro’s membership into NATO. Russia not only opposed this, but in October Russian agents were involved in a failed coup against the country’s prime minister who supported Montenegro’s accession to the treaty organization, according to a Montenegrin prosecutor.

The Trump administration last week rejected a request from Exxon-Mobil to get a waiver to explore energy exploration in the Black Sea with a Russia concern, despite the fact that he chose Exxon-Mobil’s chief executive officer, Rex Tillerson as his secretary of state. You may remember him as the guy who won the Russian Order of Friendship in 2013.