Is this a serious sentence. Name one new country of the past 100 years that hasn’t adopted some aspect of the US system (except maybe some of the soviet-block ones). Most have based their whole system on the US model (a presidential republic with a written constitution in which the president, Congress, and federal courts share power).
Like it or not for it’s faults US was observably the world’s most successful political system for most of the post-war period. And the obvious model for new democracies to follow.
It ain’t so any no more though, and the Donald is a big part of that. And this is clearly one of the aims of the whole Russian campaign.
I am not sure they are. I don’t think for a moment they actually thought he would win. By working with Trump (or at very least senior members of his team) they thought they could discredit the US political system, and develop some compromised contacts for the future.
I definitely get the feeling of “Oh f**k, what did we just do?” from the Russians in this. They never thought for a second the bunch of jokers they were working with would end up running the White House.
The former British colonies have, for obvious reasons. But most of the others have adopted the US system, and even those that adopted parliamentary systems took a lot from the US too (e.g. written constitutions, US-style supreme courts)
Let’s see a few randomly chosen from the wiki page of new countries:
Rwanda- Presidential republic, with bicameral legislator and written constitution
Tunisia- Somewhere between the US and parliamentary model, but definitely heavily influenced by US system (elected president appoints prime minister). Semi-presidential model, written constitution.
South Korea - Presidential system with written constitution
And as I mentioned even those new countries that use a parliamentary model have “followed the US experiment” w.r.t things like a written constitution and US style supreme court. Even Britain has followed the “US experiment” to some degree by adopting a the written EU bill of rights* and replacing the law lords with supreme court.
It’s not so much a question of what sort of democratic structure they adopt, but more whether they follow the spirit of democracy in how they go about actually running things.
It doesn’t matter if you’re voting directly for a President, or voting for a Member of Parliament from a party that will then select a Prime Minister, what matters is, do you believe that your vote will actually matter? Do you believe that the loser will concede power to the winner, do you believe that the winner won’t immediately turn around and use their power to utterly crush their opponents?
There’s quite a few countries out there which appear democratic, but in which the system doesn’t really work the way it’s supposed to work. For 75 years or so, the US held itself out as an example of how a system of free elections should work, with transparency in the voting process, and smooth transitions of power between administrations. Now, that’s all been tarnished.
Yeah, I’m sure they were surprised by his win, but it was never really about winning or losing a particular election. It was about getting people (both in the US and outside) to stop believing that US democracy actually works. So long as he doesn’t end up nuking the shit out of someplace, his win probably works in their favor, but it was never really necessary. 4 or 8 years of Hillary bashing, following on the 8 years of Obama bashing, would have also done damage to the US electoral system.
That’s assuming that Kushner and his attempt at a Russian back-channel are the “biggest beans” the Russians have on the Trump Admin.
I can think of someone higher in the Trump Admin than Kushner, whom the Russians might have some dirt on. Maybe this is a warning to that person to toe the line or meet Jared’s fate …
Some pundits have been saying that this can’t possibly be part of a deliberate ploy by Kislyak (specifically, K. saying something he’d know would be picked up by US intelligence), because the Russians would never do anything that might lead to their puppet being booted from the Oval Office. But I’d maintain that they’d be perfectly willing to see Jared get in trouble. Trump would then stay on, chastened, scared, and more eager to please them.
I think you’re imagining way too much twelfth-dimensional chess here. Your theory depends on Kislyak talking secure channels to his Russian bosses knowing he’d be intercepted (a reasonable suspicion for him), AND knowing that the intelligence services would leak it to the press (not remotely a reasonable assumption), AND knowing that this would be a huge story.
I think it’s much likelier that K knew he’d probably be overheard, but figured, so what? Soon Trump will be in charge of the intelligence service, this’ll never get out. The way this went down–with the intelligence services and law enforcement agencies being out of the president’s control, rather than being his scalpels, and with the free press reporting a story that could take down the president–is exactly how things would work in Russia, ON OPPOSITE DAY.
I suspect that the Russian oligarchs, and their servants, are still having trouble believing the FBI and NSA and CIA could be so out from under the thumb of Trump, and I suspect they’ll continue to underestimate the degree to which these agencies are independent.
I agree, and it’s one of the few bright spots on our scary horizon.
I think your first and third points are a given. As for the second, K could get it leaked to the press himself, should he so desire.
I’m not deeply invested in the ‘Russia is sending Trump a message’ theory, but I still think it remains in play, mostly because it’s so unlikely that Kislyak would have said something to Moscow that he’d have wanted kept secret from US intelligence.
He wouldn’t necessarily need it kept secret from US intelligence, because he’d figure they were working for Trump (or would be so soon that it wouldn’t make a difference), and they’d do his bidding. Of course the employees would keep the boss’s secrets.
Again, I think the Russian state, especially with Putin at the head, has such a different relationship between intelligence services and the president that what happened here might be inconceivable to a Russian staffer. Keep in mind, the Russian intelligence service likes to assassinate people with thorium, almost certainly at Putin’s behest. Setting up a back-channel communication? Those potatoes, they’re small.
Edit: this, like much of what’s going on, seems to me to fall under the “never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by stupidity” law. Used to be called Hanlon’s razor, but maybe we should rename it Trump’s Law?
This just begs the question… aren’t we on a different side than Russia when it comes to Syria? What kind of cooperation did he have in mind for Syria? Helping pick out which civilians to gas?
Of course that sounds ridiculous. But… Flynn was on Turkey’s payroll and Turkey is ran by a dictator who backs al-Qaeda affiliated militias in Syria. He attempted to carry out an illegal kidnapping of Fethullah Gülen on behalf of Erdogan. Who really knows who Flynn was working for. It’s really hard to believe that he had America’s well-being in mind at any point recently, it’s even harder to trust that he wanted a secret line to Russia for America’s benefit.
Bad news for Jared. Trump has “total confidence” in him. Pretty sure that Trump had “total confidence” in Manafort, Flynn, and Comey before parting ways with them. Kiss of death.
Dude, South Korea - the political system has catastrophically failed 6 times in 6 decades. It is now on its 6th Republic, with a newly impeached/replaced President, and trying to cope with a political system imposed on it after the war by the USA via the UN. Prior to this constitution it was under US Administration for 4 years.
Yep, Rwanda. Otherwise I have no idea what you’re citing…
Congrats on having Rwanda following the US constitutional model. The USA shod use that as a strap line.
Just pointing out that this was a BLATANTLY false statement (bolding mine):
Not only have many, many, new countries based their entire form of government on the US system (I choose those three at random from the wiki page of new countries, their success as a democracy or otherwise is irrelevant). Almost ALL new countries have in fact followed the “US experiment” to some degree. The idea of a written constitution, which is the main distinguishing feature of the “US experiment” (as opposed to Britain’s traditional unwritten one) is pretty much universal in new countries.
In fact the Britain itself has followed the “US experiement” in recent years by adopting a written bill of rights, and a US-style supreme court instead of the law lords.
I don’t mean to be rude but you don’t understand what you write about. There was a British ‘bill of rights’ - in 1689. The most recent version was imported wholesale from European Law, written mainly by British lawyers and called the ‘European Convention on Human Rights’. There was a more recent proposal - now dropped - to replace the European law with a domestic version.
You don’t seem to understand the law either; what you describe is a name change - it removes an ambiguity. They remain Law Lords, appointed from within the profession and not by politicians.
