Donald Trump’s Napoleon Complex

Donald Trump may have a Napoleon complex, although he is certainly no Napoleon, with nowhere near the intellectual brilliance or leadership skills.  Likewise, Trump is not diminutive in height, although he has small hands and so have alleged small other parts.  The only true parallels is that Russia may be a shared undoing of both.  In Napoleon's case it was the Russian winter that destroyed the Army.  With Trump, it will more likely be money laundering, endless lying about Russian ties and collusion with Russians during the 2016 presidential campaign.  New intelligence releases for example confirm that Jeff Sessions lied about not communicating with any Russian but in fact was inn communications with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.  A piece in Politico looks at Trump's endless Russia problem which, with luck will be his undoing and that of Mike Pence as well.  The only constant with the Trump regime is that everyone in it seems to be a pathological liar.  Here are article excerpts:

You could say that President Donald Trump dropped his guard to the New York Times while speaking to three of its top reporters at midweek. Restrained only by White House spokeswoman Hope Hicks—which amounted to no restraint at all—he riffed about his exasperation with Attorney General Jeff Sessions for recusing himself from all Russia matters, and came inches from accusing former FBI Director James Comey of blackmail.

But the big reveal came when Trump’s subconscious coughed up the subject of Napoleon as he unloaded about his recent Paris trip. Emptying his gullet of what might be his greatest living fear, he recounted the story of Napoleon stranded in Russia, cut off from reinforcements, frozen in by winter, and fighting to retreat.

The Times interviewers were mute on whether Trump shuddered when mentioning frigid Russia, but the prospect of an icy entombment of his own making can’t be far from his mind, especially with the Washington Post’s breaking news on Friday night that Sessions did talk about the Trump campaign with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, despite his previous denials.

Manacled to Russian money, Russian financiers, Russian lobbyists, Russian condo clients, Russian lawyers, former Russian spooks, a Russian diplomat, Russian oligarchs, and Russian hangers-on, Trump dreams of escape from the Land of Putin. Pinned down by special counsel Robert Mueller, who employs lawyers seasoned in prosecuting money launderers, Trump lashed out in the interview, affirming that he would sack the special counsel if the investigation explored his family’s finances exclusive of Russian meddling in the election. Rather than going down with Emperor Donald, his officers and infantry have started to desert. First to peel off was Marc Kasowitz, his personal attorney, and legal team spokesman Mark Corallo. Then, on Friday, press secretary Sean Spicer called it quits after Trump appointed Anthony Scaramucci White House communications director. The desertions aren’t likely to end there. An anonymous White House source told Politico that Scaramucci’s hiring “was a murdering of Reince [Priebus] and [Steve] Bannon” who had vowed “the Mooch” would get the “job over their dead bodies,” so the hire makes Priebus and Bannon short-timers. If Sessions had any self-respect, he would have surrendered his stripes weeks ago. Now, that intelligence intercepts indicate that he may have lied about his contacts with the Russian ambassador, the gentleman from Alabama is likely to find his stripes ripped from his uniform. Trapped by all things Russia, sheltered by only by his family and closest associates, Trump suffers from more guilt-by-association relationships than you can count without taking off your shoes and socks. In recent weeks the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, POLITICO, Bloomberg News, the New Republic, the Daily Beast, the Washington Post and other outlets have tried to diagram the cat’s cradle of Russian entanglements. So many names inside the Trump camp connect to Russia or Russian moneymen. As Mueller’s lawyers use subpoena power to track Trump’s paper trails and Junior, Kushner and Manafort make scheduled appearances for questioning on Capitol Hill next week, the same Moscow cold that defeated Napoleon may seep into Trump’s bones. What story will history write for him? Impeachment? Pardon? Or, like Napoleon, exile?

Will Ukraine Be Putin's Waterloo?

doing what fits with one's per-conceptions - or megalomaniac impulses - doesn't play out well in the long runs.  Ask Napoleon and Hitler who both invaded Russia and in the long run set the stage for their own demise.  In the case of Vladimir Putin, rather than seeking to invade eastward, he seeks to seize territory in a westward expansion, perhaps in an effort to recreate the failed Soviet empire.  According to a piece in the New York Times, Germany's Angela Merkel made the following remark after speaking with Putin by telephone:

Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany told Mr. Obama by telephone on Sunday that after speaking with Mr. Putin she was not sure he was in touch with reality, people briefed on the call said. “In another world,” she said.

With pundits and politicians making all kinds of claims and statements, a piece in The Guardian suggests that Putin may have overplayed his hand and may, in fact, be headed towards his own Waterloo.  Here are highlights:

But this crisis is Putin’s Waterloo, not ours.

Which brings us to perhaps the most bizarre element of watching the Crimean situation unfold through a US-centric lens: the iron-clad certainty of the pundit class that Putin is winning and Obama is losing. The exact opposite is true.

Putin has initiated a conflict that will, quite obviously, result in greater diplomatic and political isolation as well as the potential for economic sanction. He’s compounded his loss of a key ally in Kiev by further enflaming Ukrainian nationalism, and his provocations could have a cascading effect in Europe by pushing countries that rely on Russia’s natural gas exports to look elsewhere for their energy needs. Putin is the leader of a country with a weak military, an under-performing economy and a host of social, environmental and health-related challenges. Seizing the Crimea will only make the problems facing Russia that much greater.

For Obama and the US, sure, there might be less Russian help on Syria going forward – not that there was much to begin with – and it could perhaps affect negotiations on Iran. But those issues are manageable. Meanwhile, Twitter and the opinion pages and the Sunday shows and too many blog posts that could be informative have been filled with an over-the-top notion: that failure to respond to Russia’s action will weaken America’s credibility with its key allies. To which I would ask: where are they gonna go? If anything, America’s key European allies are likely to fold the quickest, because, you know, gas. And why would any US ally in the Far East want Obama wasting his time on the Crimea anyway?

You don’t have to listen to the “do something” crowd. These are the same people who brought you the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, among other greatest hits. These are armchair “experts” convinced that every international problem is a vital interest of the US; that the maintenance of “credibility” and “strength” is essential, and that any demonstration of “weakness” is a slippery slope to global anarchy and American obsolescence; and that being wrong and/or needlessly alarmist never loses one a seat at the table.

As for some of what Putin's adventure in Crimea may cost, Andrew Sullivan notes:

Its stock market and currency are in free-fall this morning, but a full-scale invasion of Ukraine would mean a mutual bloodbath, effectively destroying Russia’s standing in the world, tearing up its relations with the major powers, including, possibly China, and rendering it a rogue, primitive, paranoid power, whose elites would be cut off from the global trade and financial markets they rely on. There must be some faction in the Kremlin able to see this, even if it only occupies a small part of Putin’s mind.

It seems to me that the Western-based financial assets of the Russian oligarchy should be the first targets for potential retaliation. Timothy Snyder explains why:

Russian propaganda about depraved Europe conceals an intimate relationship. Tourism in the European Union is a safety valve for a large Russian middle class that takes its cues in fashion and pretty much everything else from European culture. Much of the Russian elite has sent its children to private schools in the European Union or Switzerland. Beyond that, since no Russian of any serious means trusts the Russian financial system, wealthy Russians park their wealth in European banks. In other words, the Russian social order depends upon the Europe that Russian propaganda mocks. And beneath hypocrisy, as usual, lies vulnerability.

Soft power can hurt. General restrictions on tourist visas, a few thousand travel bans, and a few dozen frozen accounts might make a real difference. If millions of urban Russians understood that invading Ukraine meant no summer vacation, they might have second thoughts.

Putin has frittered away any benefit of the doubt he once might have had. We have many cards to play. Putin has one: military force. But if he uses it, he will be in a full-scale war within his own region of influence. Whatever else that is, it is not a demonstration of strength. It’s a sign of profound weakness.