Misconceptions about the Trump-Putin Nexus
Many people, and also I, have wondered about how to explain how the connection came about between Trump and Putin, the Russian government and “Russians” in general (in scare quotes because often they are technically not Russians in an ethnic sense or citizens of the Russian Federation).
In a post to come, I will try to develop a tentative account of the “Trump thing.” In many ways, the story has to be vague because a lot of details are not known. I am rather confident, though, that I get the main parts right, which does not rule out that I also make mistakes. As far as I can see, my explanation is in accord with what we know, and in many regards better than other explanations that I have seen so far. Still, it depends on how good my arguments are. Information that may come out later may also invalidate my reasoning.
In this post, I would like to write about some common mistakes that many people make in my view when analyzing the “Trump thing.” This will then serve as a backdrop for my explanation of events. But I hope it is also interesting in and of itself. Even if my story does not hold up, you can see why others have problems, too.
Human Action, Not Human Design
My first point turns around a very important insight that Friedrich von Hayek liked to stress (whom I criticize elsewhere for other things): If you observe a rather regular outcome, the reason for this need not be that someone designed it that way. It can also be the case that many people inadvertently produced the result because they were working in the same direction. Hayek used the phrase, borrowed essentially from Adam Ferguson, that something can be “by human action, but not by human design.”
If you do not appreciate this insight, you may look for design where there is none. For example, it is by now well-known that Donald Trump’s environment is saturated with “Russians.” An easy mistake here is to think that this is so because someone planned it that way. But an explanation with “human action” alone seems more plausible.
Trump is a celebrity also in Russia. I would think that he was a living specimen of how someone with a Communist upbringing would imagine a true capitalist, a real-life J. R. Ewing. Getting close to him would hence be validation for people who wanted to be important capitalists, too. That would make them converge on Trump.
In addition, Trump has pursued a line of business that attracted certain people who wanted to bring their money into the safe US or maybe launder it as well. And Trump has also deliberately targeted such an audience for a long time, eg. by working with someone like Felix Sater.
So, even without any input from Putin, it is entirely possible you would find many “Russians” around Trump. And that would happen all by itself without a grand plan behind it. Actually, people who are interested in laundering money might do this exactly to avoid scrutiny from Putin, not on his orders.
This does not preclude that “human design” was also involved. Maybe certain people were told from some point on: “It would be good if you could get close to Donald Trump or bring other people into his universe.” For the later stages of the affair, I find that plausible. But it need not have started in this way. Putin might just have found that he had good access to Donald Trump because it was already there without his doing.
Not Everything is a Conspiracy
Closely related with this point is another pitfall, namely to expect a conspiracy behind everything, especially a meticulously planned conspiracy over the long run. I find it plausible that there was a conspiracy by rather few people and with a limited agenda at certain points in time, maybe even a succession of such conspiracies that might also have branched out. However, on the whole it makes no sense to me that the general pattern of “Russians” in the Trump universe is the conspiracy.
Connections between Trump and “Russians” would be so easy to spot. Quite on the contrary, if you could plan it to the very details, you should try to keep the nexus as secret as possible and avoid an appearance that even the most braindead journalist could “uncover” because it is pretty much out in the open. That’s also why I don’t think these people were all some “channels.” If you wanted a direct line to Donald Trump, you could give him some device to send encrypted messages over to Moscow and receive instructions.
Again, all this does not preclude that existing connections were also used to deliver messages or negotiate some details. But that then came probably after the fact, and the network was not designed for this purpose. I have written more about the last two points in my post: “Theories About a Conspiracy and “Conspiracy Theories”.”
Money and Ideology, not really Coercion and Ego
Another mistake I see very often is too misunderstand how Trump could be handled by Putin. There is a coarse categorization for why someone might work for a hostile foreign government which goes by the acronym MICE. This is the abbreviaton for Money, Ideology, Coercion, and Ego. I have written more about this in my post: “How to Handle Donald Trump.”
My argument is that far too much weight has been given to coercion and ego as means to influence Trump. I would not exclude that they also played a role, but probably a minor one. The main way to get Trump to do something is money. That has been in the spotlight, but often with the wrong focus in my view (see the next point).
What is mostly overlooked is ideology. That is understandable: It seems like a contradiction in terms with an unintellectual person like Trump who probably has no coherent ideology he could articulate. But then he certainly has a worldview, which I would define as a intuitive understanding of how the world works. I explain my general thinking and terms in this post: “Worldviews, Narratives, and Ideologies.”
Donald Trump has very strong views and opinions. My reading is that he thinks the world is a continual “struggle for existence” where only the strongest survive. Winning is morally good, and losing morally bad. Morals otherwise are a sham and can be disregarded.
His idea of how institutions should work is that there should be none. Rules are only for suckers and are meant to keep the winners from winning. Relationships should be organized on a feudal pattern, with personal loyalties. Those high in the hierarchy deserve unquestioning subservience. Those below them may get some protection in return if they are useful.
Power is central in this worldview. It shows that you are a winner and can make others dance to your tune. Having power has consequences, though: intellectual and moral corruption, hollowing out a sense of objective truth and objective morals. I have written about the mechanisms how this plays out in my post: “Power Tends to Corrupt.”
Since Trump probably learned his worldview and the embedded Darwinian morals already as a child, I assume there was never much that could be hollowed out with him. What little there might have been should have been eroded over time when he held power over others from an early age.
How Trump Thinks about Putin
What baffles many is that Trump is not consistent on most things, but very consistent when it comes to applauding Putin and doing his bidding. The suspicion appears to be that there is some script in the background that Trump is reading from, and it was supplied by Putin. Or that he is paid by the talking-point.
I don’t think that it works that way. Here is my hunch how Trump’s worldview developed:
When the Soviet Union existed, his knowledge probably fit in a nutshell. Communism was the worst system imaginable. Not so much because people were oppressed and killed off by the millions, but because Communism went against Trump’s Darwinian worldview: Winners could not make it there, and losers ruled.
When the Soviet Union collapsed, there was a phase of internal disarray. I don’t think Trump was much interested in that. But he saw an opening to do business in Russia. What he learned from listening to people was probably that the system was very corrupt and you needed protection. Corruption in and of itself would not be a problem for Trump as long as he could make it work for himself. But having no protections barred him from taking advantage of the situation.
Then comes Putin in 2000 who monopolized power. That alone would impress Trump because it shows that Putin is a winner, too, and hence good. Also the feudal structure of his system would seem congenial to Trump as would the lack of constraining rules. That’s actually how it should work in his view. If you hear admiration in his words, it probably is because Trump is really floored.
Russia recovered from the slump before, realistically because oil prices went through the roof, not because of anything Putin did. There were a few good years in the early 2000s that mostly benefitted oligarchs who had made their peace with Putin and had succumbed to him. That meant even better opportunities for Trump. But he still did not have the protection he needed.
From talking to his clients who would be the same oligarchs, Trump would hear good things about Russia. That if you had protection from Putin, you could can make a lot of money in no time. But Trump still couldn’t enter the fray. And that’s how he began to work on gaining Putin’s attention and goodwill. From Putin’s perspective, Trump was perhaps not even on the radar initially.
As already noted, there is probably also an ideological attraction for Trump here if you understand it as a worldview: He is impressed because Russia seems to him as the opposite of Communism. The strong are able to win and they do. He should, too. Putin is a great leader who has done great things for his country. Obama is a loser, also some kind of Communist, who oppresses good people like Trump who have to get by from bankruptcy to bankruptcy because the system is rigged, not because he is a lousy business man.
If I am only roughly correct about this, what you hear from Trump about Putin comes from his heart (if that exists): He is truly impressed, and he knows that it can serve him well to flatter Putin. You don’t need a fancy story how Putin told him to say these things.
The Strange Consistency
Ideology in this interpretation as a worldview that is only intuitive can also explain why Trump is so consistent. He is a short-term opportunist and gambler who muddles through. But here he stays on course over a long time. Worldviews are very stubborn. And if Trump once has such a take, then he will always reach the same conclusion: Flattering Putin will unlock the door to making it big in Russia, and Putin has created a great environment for Donald Trump, which is by definition good.
The consistency here probably comes from a worldview, not from some handler dictating something to Trump all the time. He would do that all by himself because of money and ideology. Which again does not preclude also some management, eg. if Putin lets him know what would please him. Trump will hate sanctions on Russia for very personal reasons already because they are bad for his business and were imposed by a loser like Obama. If Putin wants them lifted, what’s the problem? Also Donald Trump would win bigly. And that also shows that lifting the sanctions is good.
False Conception of Who Has Leverage
The next pitfall in my view is that people have a mistaken idea of how certain business transactions work and whether they create leverage and for whom. I have written about this in my post: “Who Has Leverage over Whom?”
The fundamental misunderstanding stems from a false focus on coercion as the main way to handle Donald Trump. That’s why everything is interpreted as leverage over him that is used to force him to do what he does. But then if someone obtains a loan or an investment or buys condos and such from Trump, this does not create leverage over Donald Trump per se. The other side is on the hook, not he.
What can create leverage, though, is the expectation of obtaining further loans, investments and making more business in the future. But that is something else. This means that if Putin wants to handle Trump, he will not use blackmail, at least not as a first choice, but a series of carrots to lead Trump along some way. That should also work much better because Putin can enlist Trump himself through his self-interest.
Don’t Fall for Trump’s Boasting
A further problem is to believe Trump’s words. If you did not know this a year ago, you should know it by now. Trump will say anything that he thinks serves him. He will make things up as he goes along. This is the intellectual corruption that comes with power. And he will invent “facts” that prop his own vision up that he is a winner, even the greatest of them all.
As I have developed in other posts, it is probable that Donald Trump was never a billionaire, and even if, just barely. His claims about being worth well more than ten billion are surely false. At certain points in time, Trump faced severe liquidity problems where he could not get a few ten million together, small fry if he were as rich as claimed. That happened in 2004 and in 2008. It is plausible that Trump was effectively insolvent in early 2009 and maybe longer. I have developed my arguments in these two posts: “Trump’s Record Sale in 2008” and “Assessing Trump’s Wealth Over Time.”
Don’t be fooled by Trump’s claims that he does a lot of deals either. He certainly sells lots of condos, but that are not really deals, but only parts of one deal, so he can get a high count in this way. As I have explained in the first of the two posts, it is plausible that Donald Jr. in 2008 talked about just one deal or very few at most when he said that a lot of money came in from Russia. That deal was the sale of the “Maison de L’Amitié” in Florida to Dmitry Rybolovlev. My interpretation is that the sale served to launder money that Trump had offshore.
Misreading Putin
There is also an associated problem with overestimating Putin. My knowledge is admittedly scarce, but my understanding is that he operates in a similar fashion as Trump: Asystem of personal loyalties, short-term opportunism without a strategic plan.
I would think that the impression of consistency over time has also a similar backdrop. For one, Putin has a certain worldview that remains stable and where he will reach consistent conclusions even if he never has a strategy. In addition, there are simply facts that persist over time, and even opportunistic decisions will then look like a plan if you react to them over and over again. There is also a certain apparatus behind Putin that is sluggish, and this again will lead to consistency over time.
“Human action, not human design” is a point to keep in mind here as well. If Putin and his subservient oligarchs are hard hit by sanctions and those do not go away, many short-term activities, even without a lot of coordination will always go in one direction. If there are different people in Putin’s system with their own agendas, those can still coincide on certain dimensions.
Criminal organizations, the diplomatic service, propaganda outlets, ideologically driven oligarchs like Konstantin Malofeev, a cabal around Yuri Chaika, the Agalarovs, Igor Sechin and Rosneft, secret services, etc. may quibble on many points, but even without direction they will work together on undermining other countries and building their own structures with that purpose. Once Putin has this, he can, of course, use it all at once. But it was perhaps never designed with a specific goal in mind, it just grew that way.
So the idea that over the past decade, Putin built capabilities to hack the DNC in 2015 and 2016 to help Trump win may be wrong. It perhaps went differently. First there were hackers who built up their expertise for private reasons. Then they were scooped up by a criminal organization to work for them. And finally a secret service takes that over again.
Or some people build bots for Twitter to rent them out for whatever, eg. old-school spamming or some criminal scheme. And then they are enlisted to do it for propaganda. Malofeev builds a network on the international Right and so does Zhirinovsky, and then they serve it up to Putin. Of course, organizations directly run by the government will get their orders from above. But then they might work for different factions without an overarching agenda.
If you view it only backwards from what happened in 2016, it looks like a masterful plan that was designed to the minutiae and executed with precision. But it could also be that it just so happened because many people and groups worked in a certain direction, and it could then be brought together on the fly. This is not to say that this cannot be powerful, only that a certain awe for Putin as a great strategist is misplaced.
One indication for this are the many mess-ups. Hackers who can’t hide their tracks and use Cyrillic keyboards, memes that are mass-produced, but do not have input from people who are proficient in English, people who talk to Christopher Steele because secrecy is low, etc. That makes sense if it developed in such a haphazard way. A functioning government could be way better at that. But then that is probably not a good description of Putin’s regime.
What Does Putin Want?
Closely connected with this misunderstanding is another. If you assume a worked-out plan what you see is hard to interpret. There are many small projects that work in all directions. But if it is only that you have so and so many subcontractors who get a broad marching orders like “Do whatever undermines Hillary Clinton and what helps Donald Trump!” you should expect only moderate coordination, duplications and even that different things are at cross-purposes.
There were, for example, two hacker groups that attacked the DNC. The second was apparently unaware that the first had already broken into the system. They could have used that information, but couldn’t. Another example is how bots and trolls react to current events. You can often see a hiatus before they are able to respond, which shows some central coordination. But still, it does not seem possible to coordinate them perfectly. If you only have so much firepower you should concentrate it on one thing. But they can’t. It is spread out and there are many things at the same time, which looks like only modest coordination.
Now, one interpretation that has become very popular to explain the rather incoherent outcome is that Putin just wants to “sow chaos.” That is indeed what these operations often seem to achieve. However, I am unconvinced that that is the ultimate goal. It seems lame to me, like someone can always claim that an operation was a success. I would expect more concrete goals instead. Sowing chaos may then serve as a means, but does not look like an end in and of itself.
And it looks like Putin has rather concrete goals, namely to shift the political situation in a country in a direction that is better for him. Realistically, you can only shift what is already there over the short run, not create a situation from scratch. So Putin appears to be operating opportunistically: Support what is relatively good, and subvert what is not. If there is not a really good outcome, at least go for the least bad one. If there is no realistic option, then go for a long-shot attempt instead. But I am sure that Putin wants a concrete payoff, not just some vague chaos in general.
Judging from such operations around the world, Putin has done this for a long time. It is strange how many in the US assume that it was only about the US and started just in 2016 or maybe 2015. Initially, it seemed like Putin hated Hillary Clinton viscerally and noone else in the world. But then my hunch is that all this started long before and went in all directions. I have written about this in my posts “How Far Did Russian Meddling Go?” and “It Began Long Before 2016.”
Not to be misunderstood: My claim is not that there was a masterplan that went over a decade and more. I would view this as a continuing operation to influence elections everywhere and also in the US in a favorable direction for Putin, but mostly on an opportunistic basis: What is possible at the moment with the tools at hand.
That would not preclude also some planning, eg. grooming Donald Trump for his run in 2015 and 2016, or maybe already for the election in 2012. And it is also plausible that capabilities were ramped up with each election. That can lead to apparent continuity as with a grand strategy. In retrospect, it might look like everything was prepared for Trump’s campaign long in advance. This part got serious perhaps from 2011 or 2013 on. But it was perhaps only a facet of a larger engagement. That everything seems to run towards one point, could be an optical illusion because you don’t notice the other parts.
In statistics this phenomenon is known a survivorship bias: Suppose you let fifty people throw a coin five time. There are 2⁵=32 possible outcomes. It is not improbable that one of the fifty gets five heads in a row. Now, if you throw everybody else out of your consideration and focus only on this one person, it looks like magic: How could he throw five heads in a row?
And it could be similar with Trump: He saturated his environment with “Russians”: heads, he was interesting in running for president: heads, he needed money and saw a spledid opportunity in Russia: heads, he self-indocrinated himself how Putin was great: heads, he takes the bait and really runs: heads. How did Putin do it that it all came together? The reason may simply be that he got lucky with Trump. If there had been tails, it might have been someone else that would have gotten Putin’s support. It’s maybe not like: Wow, they infiltrated Trump’s universe with “Russians” already in the early 2000s or even the 1990s or 1980s with the goal in mind that he would become president in 2016. What an incredibly long-term strategy!
— — —
So much for this post. As I have written above, it is meant as a backdrop to another post or post where I will develop a rough story of how I think the “Trump thing” evolved. In a way, I have already let on what the the main components might be and what not. And then this post is also a pretext for linking to some posts of mine that have not yet gotten the attention that I think they should.
