James Gulick: Putin’s game

I have just read with interest the Aug. 8 column “Trump’s fictional bromance with Putin” by Timothy O’Brien concerning Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.

It closed saying, “the real danger in this political season ... (is) that Trump is running his foreign policy shop in the same way he ran his business in Russia over the years: as improv. Putin, on the other hand, is playing the great game.”

We must ask, why would Putin say nice things about Trump and aid his campaign? What is Putin’s “game”? We can bet our bottom dollar that Putin does not have U.S. interests at heart.

The answer is clearly that Putin thinks that a President Trump would be a disaster for the U.S., greatly weakening its position in the world as well as sinking NATO, giving Putin a much freer hand in Europe. Trump has already signaled that.

Why Trump wants to give aid and comfort to Putin is harder to understand. Apparently Trump has no idea what value real friends are, such as those the U.S. has in the prosperous democracies in Western Europe. He does not understand how much NATO has aided them and their security, and thereby our own.

This story was originally published August 13, 2016 at 6:00 PM with the headline "James Gulick: Putin’s game."