Open Skies Today, (Who Knows What Else) Gone Tomorrow
For a lame duck President, Donald Trump sure is moving a lot of chess pieces around the board all of a sudden. Trump has switched up his typical daily comments to the press, riddled with bluster, to limit himself to tweets where he explains his next steps to remain in power through cryptic statements and painfully unjustified allegations of election fraud. The news is now driven by the actions of those doing his bidding, who we then later find out were in contact directly with him in some way beforehand.
Michael Cohen’s testimony in Congress explained the Trump method of instructing people to lie and cheat for him without ever expressly making the request. “Mr. Trump had made clear to me, through his personal statements to me that we both knew were false and through his lies to the country, that he wanted me to lie,” said Michael Cohen, while under oath. Cohen went on to confirm, “There was nothing that happened at the Trump Organization…that did not go through Mr. Trump with his approval and sign-off.”
Cohen further explained the Trump modus operandi: “Mr. Trump did not directly tell me to lie to Congress — that’s not how he operates.” Cohen went on to explain how he knew that Trump was really telling him to engage in unethical and possibly criminal activity, but that it was always implied and never direct. “He would look me in the eye and tell me there’s no business in Russia and then go out and lie to the American people by saying the same thing,” said Cohen.
This understanding of how Trump conducts business is critical to understand when Trump has started “laying low” like this. We are left to decipher his intention now, and we are left with only a string of actions by those acting on his behalf within the courts, and with Republican loyalists involved in certifying election results in pivotal swing-states.
The intention of this switch-up is to cause more anxiety and apprehension about what Trump intends to do leading up to Biden’s inauguration — to keep the public distracted, so that Trump can enact a series of measures, meant to cripple the United States. He is figuratively rigging the explosives all around the Oval Office, taking great effort to place land mines everywhere, for the moment that he is Constitutionally hauled out of his legal sanctuary.
On Sunday, The Wall Street Journal published an article detailing the latest proof of Trump’s calculated long-term backup plan to lay waste to what was taken from him should he lose the election. The Trump administration formally nixed the Open Skies Treaty, an agreement between the United States and its allies, that monitors the surveillance activities of all countries involved and has existed for nearly three decades, since the end of the Cold War.
This plan was devised back in May, when the Trump administration served notice that the US would withdraw from the treaty in six months. They cited Moscow’s refusal to comply completely with the terms of the treaty as the excuse for backing out. This withdrawal was put into motion at a time when everyone was understandably distracted by the election, and exhausted from the Trump news cycle — an intentionally concocted process of subterfuge that seeks to tire out the media and the public in order to keep the real motives covert.
“Russia didn’t adhere to the treaty. So until they adhere, we will pull out,” said Trump in May, giving reporters only a brief explanation for such a hefty decision. “But there’s a very good chance we’ll make a new agreement or do something to put that agreement back together.” Trump provided no further details other than to reiterate a contradictory conclusion that Washington and Moscow had a strong relationship. With this simple statement, Trump was able to give Putin an obscured signal, just like type he used to give Michael Cohen, that explained his intention and gave direction without implication — Trump has switched roles and is now Putin’s full-time fixer.
In a show of good faith, Trump is dismantling a program that has been detrimental for Russia in terms of conducting and expanding their program of reconnaissance intelligence. Thirty-four countries participated in the agreement, which was negotiated in 1989 and put into place by the George H.W. Bush administration with ratification in 1992 — participants include the US, Canada, European Nations, Russia and the Ukraine.
Now, nearly thirty years later, the OC-135B planes from the program are being designated as “excess defense articles,” which means they can be given away to foreign partners or sold at cost and the camera equipment from the aircraft is being liquidated and given to allies. The new digital cameras that were intended as an upgrade and custom made for the program, thus already paid for by the government, will now be transferred to other units within the Air Force.
It seems that most people within the intelligence agencies were on board with the treaty recently, along with a plan to continue the program and the investment required. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told Congress in May of 2018 that staying in the treaty was “in our best interest.” Shortly after Mattis left the Pentagon due to a falling out with Trump, the administration’s opposition to the treaty took a sharper turn, and hardened.
This latest move also follows a series of steps taken by the Trump administration to dismantle post-Cold War arms-control protections. His actions have also resulted in the demise of the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty and created an uncertain fate for the New START accord on US and Russian long-range nuclear arms, set to expire in 2021. Trump has taken an active role in weakening US military safeguards against Russian interference and aggression, a concept that could make Trump not only an active Russian asset, but a full-fledged Russian operative.
The distraction of Trump’s ongoing ridiculous election fraud claims and laughable statements made by members of his administration, such as referring to “Trump’s second term,” are also serving to obfuscate other recent, detrimental foreign policy decisions. Trump has purposely made the economic pressure campaign against Iran more complicated to unwind politically and procedurally, and that will additionally constrain Biden’s options and weaken his transition.
Under currently existing, Trump-induced policies, the potential new targets that have already had sanctions placed on them are now going to be more difficult to contain. In the event that the next step of punishment needs to be taken, and someone needs to be blacklisted, there might be hesitation in utilizing this deterrent, because removing a blacklist classification has been made intentionally difficult. This creates a dangerous situation, because the new imposed rules could make the US military hesitate to pursue the appropriate reaction. Since such sanctions are issued with justifying details, officials seeking to remove sanctions have to make the politically challenging case for delisting them.
Additionally, the Trump administration said it would reduce troops in Afghanistan and Iraq to 2,500 in each country last week, and these cuts are due to go into effect before Biden can take office. Trump is also attempting to embed loyalists within the National Security Agency (NSA), who have proven themselves and their willingness to subvert the law. Trump is trying to put his White House lawyer Mark Ellis, who assisted Trump with moving his incriminating Ukraine call with President Zelensky to a secret server, in the position of top attorney for the NSA. This is a choice that would be difficult for Biden to remedy, as he would not be able to replace him without a legitimate charge of misconduct.
The issue of how Biden will be able to correct many of the actions of the Trump administration will come into play, particularly with this latest withdrawal from the Open Sky Treaty. In order for Biden’s new administration to rejoin the treaty, it is possible that a two-thirds vote on the ratification would be required, and this will be difficult to accomplish with a Senate that is equally divided.
It might be possible to argue that the legitimacy of the withdrawal is suspect based on how the process was conducted. The Trump administration defied legislation, which required a consultation with Congress four months before withdrawing in these circumstances. In this event, Biden could declare the intention to continue within the program or he could just rejoin unilaterally, without the consent of Congress.
The Biden Administration would then have to field all of the legal challenges that came in, but the issue of whether a President has the power to break a treaty without the approval of Congress has yet to be decided by the US Supreme Court. The Court has declined in the past to interfere in these matters specifically, but the latest Trump appointments could cause a swing in precedent, so there is no real way to predict an outcome.
The loud noises Trump is making about the election, and the bumbling attorneys intentionally sent into court on his behalf, are meant to draw attention away from him, and the actions that he has undertaken to sabotage his own country. Many people within the Trump administration are now coming dangerously close to the legal concept of sedition, which is a felony punishable by fines, and up to 20 years in prison for inciting revolt or violence against a lawful authority destroy or overthrow it. (Sedition has the same ultimate effect as the crime of treason without the limiting parameters of Article III, Section 3, that basically require a component of war to charge the offense.)
In attempting to punish half of the American electorate for voting against him, Trump has effectively punished the entire world — an action that will have lasting consequences for generations, even for his own family. Regardless of the damage Trump is able to permanently inflict upon his own country, that he swore an oath to protect and preserve, the inevitable time and effort it will take to remedy any of these destructive policies will steal precious resources from the overall task of governing the nation. The people who will pay the ultimate price for this will be Americans, as well as other countries who must to stumble through these new obstacles in order to find their correct course, again.
Amee Vanderpool writes the SHERO Newsletter and is an attorney, published author, contributor to newspapers and magazines and analyst for BBC radio. She can be reached at avanderpool@gmail.com or follow her on Twitter @girlsreallyrule.
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This piece makes it undeniably clear that Trump works for Russia, that he is, in fact, a traitor. For the past four years, we have been under the thumb of a man - and the many Republicans in Congress who propped him up - who has one design: to punish this country because, IMO, he owes Russia and Putin more than we can even imagine. He is as close to a Manchurian candidate as one can be. Although I believed all of this, to see it summarized here in print still chills me. Recovery from his ongoing - and worsening - treasonous activities is going to be more than Biden can manage, so electing a Democrat for president and Democratic control of the Congress for the eight years after Biden is crucial.