At War with Ourselves, page 19
NOTHING RUINS a Fourth of July holiday quite like a North Korean ballistic missile test. Dan Coats called me before midnight on the third to share indicators of an impending launch. Matt Pottinger called at 3:06 a.m. to tell me that a launch had occurred. It appeared to be an unprecedented intercontinental ballistic missile.
I spoke with Secretary Mattis for ten minutes around 5:30 to coordinate a principals committee meeting, obtain his guidance, and share the instructions I had given Pottinger. The Policy Coordinating Committee, comprising Pottinger and the assistant secretaries of relevant departments and agencies, would draft options by early afternoon and get them to the principals by 3 p.m. I jumped into the Suburban for the short ride to the White House.
As soon as I arrived, I made a series of phone calls to coordinate our response. At 7:20 a.m., Matt, Allison, and I outlined the purpose of the principals meeting to ensure a common understanding of the launch, clarify objectives, and ensure that our response advanced our overarching policy goals. At 7:36, Secretary Mattis affirmed the time line and our approach. At 8:03, I checked in with Chung Eui-yong in Seoul, after his national security council meeting in the “Blue House,” the Republic of Korea presidential residence. He told me that the Moon government was not ready to call the missile an ICBM. I responded, “Eui-yong, just because you don’t call it an ICBM doesn’t mean it’s not an ICBM.”
At 8:19 a.m., I called Trump to brief him on the launch, get his approval on the objectives, and hear his guidance. He told me he wanted us at “maximum pressure” and to use this as an opportunity to further restrict resources available to Kim’s regime. He agreed with our recommendation that Tillerson put out the official statement, which noted that “Global action is required to stop a global threat.” The statement affirmed that the United States “will never accept a nuclear-armed North Korea.”1
Even though Trump had agreed that Tillerson should issue the statement, the president could not resist responding personally to Kim Jong-un, tweeting:
It was another example of an unconventional tweet reinforcing policy. It was all there: maximum pressure, allies, burden sharing, and Beijing’s ability to coerce Pyongyang.
At 10:07, I hosted a principals call to convey the president’s guidance. Noting the president’s order to “get to maximum pressure” on Pyongyang, I suggested that it was time to employ secondary sanctions on Chinese and other banks involved in illicit financial flows to the Kim regime. Treasury had actions ready, but Tillerson had slowed them down. The actions included sixteen targets related to the evasion of DPRK sanctions, the most significant of which was the designation of the Bank of Dandong as an institution of “primary money laundering concession” under Section 311 of the USA Patriot Act.
By the early afternoon, the Policy Coordinating Committee, an interagency group that NSC senior directors convene at the assistant secretary level, had sent out a matrix with objectives and the critical actions each department was to take. I checked in with Mattis at 2:34 p.m., and then with Pompeo at 2:42, before we assembled the principals committee for final approval and coordination of the response. I chaired the meeting in the Situation Room with those able to attend. Others joined by video.
When Nikki Haley summarized her efforts to pursue additional UN Security Council sanctions, Tillerson was unenthusiastic and dismissive. Rather than propose actions such as interdiction of DPRK ships engaged in smuggling, Mattis spoke only of diplomatic pressure. He and Tillerson feared that escalating tension with North Korea might lead to war. But we had all agreed that maximum pressure was necessary for Kim to conclude that he was safer without the weapons than he was with them.
This was all following a familiar pattern. Tillerson and Mattis’s actions to reduce tensions with North Korea rather than ratchet up the pressure on Pyongyang were bound to further strain my relationship with them. Their actions were also at odds with what Trump wanted. We should have been working together to convince other nations to increase the pressure on North Korea, and we would have an opportunity to do so during the trip to Europe and the G20 conference. But the energy it took to keep our own team aligned would remain a distraction.
* * *
THE NEXT day, I got to the White House at around 5 a.m. to drop off my bag and read intelligence prior to the short helicopter flight with the president to Andrews Air Force Base. As Air Force One took off, I joined Trump for a call with President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi of Egypt to discuss the Gulf crisis. Despite the interruptions of his Independence Day weekend, Trump was in good spirits. I told him he would have an enthusiastic crowd for his major speech at the Warsaw Uprising Monument at Krasinski Square. After Gary and I reviewed the trip with him, he walked to the midsection of the plane to mingle with the staff.
As we arrived at the Royal Castle (Zamek Królewski) in Warsaw, I thought of Poland’s tortured history. The castle, like Poland itself, was severely damaged in 1939, in the Nazi and Soviet invasions. It was almost completely destroyed in the cataclysmic battles between German forces and their erstwhile Soviet co-conspirators in 1945. Unlike the vast majority of European nations that had largely disarmed under the assumption that Russia was no longer a threat, the Poles had strong memories of brutal attacks, dismemberment, and traumatic occupation at the hands of the Nazis and the Soviets during World War II and subjugation to the USSR during the Cold War. The Poles understood the importance of a strong defense.
As the crowd assembled for Trump’s speech, our delegation met with Polish president Andrzej Duda and his team in the castle’s Knight’s room. In their discussion, Duda focused on the threat from Russia, reinforcing what Trump had heard from Presidents Sauli Niinistö (Finland), Iohannis, and Poroshenko. He took out a map to highlight the threat from Russian forces in the city of Kaliningrad and requested that U.S. troops be permanently stationed on Polish soil. He raised the prospect of joint U.S.-Polish battalions with long-range precision strike capabilities—the U.S. HIMARS rockets that would, years later, prove invaluable to Ukraine’s defense.
I had told Trump how Poles had been disappointed in 2012 when President Obama denied missile defenses for Poland in an effort to reassure Putin. A little more than a year later, Putin invaded Ukraine. Now was the time, I told him, to deepen defense cooperation with Warsaw, as a way to deter further Russian aggression. Duda and other leaders helped disabuse Trump of the idea that Vladimir Putin was a misunderstood leader who would abandon his revanchist agenda if only he were reassured.
We then walked with Duda to the Great Assembly Hall, where Trump greeted other Polish leaders and the leaders of Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia, who were in Warsaw to attend the second summit of the Three Seas Initiative. Trump shook hands, taking in the room’s columns, chandeliers, and mirrors as he sat down to applause.
“Thank you. I greatly appreciate it. This is a beautiful room, I must say. I love beautiful rooms, and this is one of them.”
His prepared remarks expressed U.S. support for “a new future for open, fair, and affordable energy markets that bring greater security and prosperity to all of our citizens.” Alluding to the need to break Russia’s stranglehold over the Three Seas nations, he urged the assembled leaders to “continue to diversify your energy sources, suppliers, and routes” and “ensure that your infrastructure, like your commitment to freedom and rule of law, binds you to all of Europe and, indeed, to the West.” Trump portrayed the United States as a critical part of the solution to energy insecurity and overdependence on Moscow, pledging to support “a commonsense approach to protecting natural resources—one that responsibly balances economic growth, job creation, and energy security.” In retrospect, after Russia’s massive reinvasion of Ukraine in 2022, it is obvious that Trump’s counsel was prescient and should have been heeded with a greater sense of urgency.
As we entered Krasinski Square, I thought that the speech Trump was about to deliver was well suited to the moment. He warned Russia to stop its global destabilizing activities and affirmed U.S. commitment to Article 5 of the NATO treaty. The lines that I fought hardest to get into the speech were meant to strengthen the transatlantic relationship and allay concerns that Trump viewed the European Union as a competitor that should be broken up: “A strong Europe is a blessing to the West and to the world. One hundred years after the entry of American forces into World War I, the transatlantic bond between the United States and Europe is as strong as ever.” The speech went on to celebrate the cultures and principles that bind the United States to Poland, the rest of Europe, and the West.
It was a clear celebration of universal values and rights that transcended geography or ethnicity, but Trump’s critics could not resist the urge to cast his speech as “racist” and “an alt-right manifesto.” It was predictable but disappointing that a speech echoing President John F. Kennedy’s 1963 “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech or Ronald Reagan’s 1987 “Tear down this wall” speech became, for these critics, when delivered by Trump, “a dog whistle for white nationalists.”2
If Putin was momentarily concerned about Trump’s strong counter to his claim that Russian illiberal nationalism was the best defense of the West, he could find comfort in the vitriol and divisions apparent in those criticisms.
* * *
SOON AFTER we arrived in Hamburg, we traveled to the Hotel Atlantic Kempinski for a meeting with Angela Merkel and her team. Despite claims to the contrary in the press, Merkel and Trump had a good rapport and seemed to enjoy chiding each other.
Trump said something like “Clearly you think NATO is fantastic, so why aren’t you paying up?”
And Merkel responded with something like “You are the world superpower, that should make you proud. China wants to be the superpower and will become that if you vacate your position.”
Trump then turned to me and asked, “How many troops do we have in Germany?”
“About thirty-five thousand, Mr. President, plus rotational troops in Europe as part of the European Defense Initiative.”
He then asked Merkel pointedly, “Why are we defending you against Russia when you are not paying and [when you’re] burning gas that is giving cash to the Kremlin?”
Trump was right to chide the chancellor. She had assumed that Putin could be placated. Trump was also correct when he told Merkel that her economic model of exporting goods manufactured with low-cost energy from Russia was “unsustainable.”
Merkel and Trump both used the perception of tension in their relationship to appeal to their political supporters. After the meeting in Hamburg, Merkel indirectly chided him: “Whoever believes the problems of the world can be solved by isolationism and protectionism is making a tremendous error.”
After we returned home from Hamburg, Merkel would let me know that comments aimed partly at me and an op-ed I had coauthored in the New York Times had been necessary to appeal to her political supporters and the many Germans who disliked President Trump. I understood completely. If she needed to criticize me to help herself in the forthcoming election, “it was a service I was happy to provide.” I was more concerned about what she and Trump seemed to have in common: the assumption that a close relationship with Vladimir Putin could forestall future Russian aggression.
* * *
ON TO the G20. Trump attended the initial plenary session and then had others—including, controversially, Ivanka—sit in for him while he conducted meetings. Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan insisted on an unscheduled meeting, during which he ranted about “140 trucks” supplying the mainly Kurdish SDF in northeast Syria.
But the most anticipated moment—by the press and by Trump—was the meeting with Putin. To prepare the reflexively contrarian president, I told him several times over the previous weeks what Putin wanted out of the meeting and what Putin wanted Trump to say:
Putin wanted sanctions relief; he would hold out the prospect of economic and trade opportunities.
Putin wanted the United States to abandon Ukraine; he would portray Ukraine as corrupt and unworthy of support while claiming that it had always been part of Russia.
Putin wanted the United States and our allies out of Syria and Afghanistan; he would say that we were wasting money and perpetuating wars.
Putin wanted to divide Americans further and drain the remaining confidence in our democratic institutions and processes; he wanted Trump to make statements indicating that he believed Putin and disbelieved the U.S. intelligence community, to perpetuate Russiagate and amplify the vitriolic discourse in American politics.
My basic message during the final prep meeting at the Hamburg Messe convention center was “Do not be a chump.”
I told Trump how Putin had duped Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. “Mr. President, he is the best liar in the world.” I suggested that Putin was confident he could “play” Trump and get what he wanted—sanctions relief and the United States out of Syria and Afghanistan on the cheap—by manipulating Trump with ambiguous promises of a “better relationship.” He would offer cooperation on counterterrorism, cybersecurity, and arms control.
I could tell that Trump was getting impatient with my “negative vibe.” I said what I needed to say. If he was going to be contrary, I hoped he would be contrary to the Russian dictator, not to me. I left the room as Putin and Lavrov arrived.
The readout from the meeting revealed the string of lies and deceptions I had anticipated from Putin. Unsurprisingly, he claimed that Ukraine had been a part of Russia since the sixteenth century; that he had to protect Russian speakers in the east from Ukraine’s campaign of ethnic cleansing. He also played down North Korea’s ICBM test, claiming that Pyongyang was not close to developing a nuclear weapon or an ICBM. We should not worry about Kim, Putin advised, because the regime would resolve itself if we just opened the border and got the North Korean economy going. I took this deception as a positive sign that maximum pressure was working. Putin was concerned about potential U.S. and allied military action against Pyongyang—especially after our strikes on Syria three months earlier.
On Syria, the Russian leader went beyond false promises on Iran and safe zones to predict that Assad would transition out of power. Beyond offering a “cyber working group,” Putin gave Trump “his word” that he had never looked at any of the classified information Edward Snowden, an American citizen he was harboring in Russia, had stolen and given to WikiLeaks. As Tillerson and Trump told me about portions of the meeting, I wondered how either of them had been able to keep a straight face.
To appeal to Trump’s optimistic interpretation of the U.S.-Soviet alliance during World War II, Putin showed Trump a video of Russia’s Northern Fleet salvaging the USS Thomas Donaldson, a 7,200-ton Lend-Lease ship that a German U-boat had sunk in the arctic in 1945, before it could deliver its cargo of Sherman tanks. The idea was to evoke the memory of the United States and the Soviet Union as allies during World War II and to keep alive the pipe dream of conciliation with Putin’s Kremlin as the best way to advance both countries’ interests.
Putin used his time with Trump to launch a sophisticated and sustained campaign to manipulate him. Profilers and psychological operations officers at Russia’s intelligence services must have been working overtime. Even as the meeting stretched into its second hour, Putin did not run out of material. To suggest moral equivalence between U.S. interventions in Latin America and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Putin cited the “Roosevelt Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine, a foreign policy declaration by U.S. president Theodore Roosevelt in 1904–5 stating that the United States could intervene in a country’s internal affairs if that country were engaged in chronic wrongdoing.
At the dinner later that evening, as the two leaders squared off for a long conversation, Putin handed Trump a list of ideas for collaboration, including the development of an amusement park near Moscow. I wondered if Putin hoped the list would leak, or if he planned to leak it later, to revive stories of Trump’s failed pursuit of business deals in Russia, feed the Russian collusion narrative, weaken Trump, and divide Americans further.
Putin got the desired effect from the meeting and the dinner. The press focused almost exclusively on whether Trump had raised the issue of Russia’s attacks on the 2016 U.S. election. But Trump had encouraged the media’s preoccupation with the subject. At a news conference in Poland a day earlier, when asked if he would state unequivocally that Russia had meddled in the election, Trump said that “other countries” could be to blame and “nobody knows for sure.” When reports emerged of his long conversation with Putin at dinner, it fed the collusion narrative further.
I wished that Trump could separate the issue of Russian election meddling from the legitimacy of his presidency. He could have said, “Yes, they attacked the election. But Russia doesn’t care who wins our elections. What they want is to pit Americans against one another and reduce our confidence in our democratic institutions and processes.” He might also have pointed out that those who fed the “not my president” and Russia collusion narratives were doing Putin’s work for him.
