Michael Anton has written an excellent article, “The Empire Strikes Back”, published in The Claremont Review of Books, which is vital reading for the Trump impeachment, now being debated in Congress as I write. The controversy over impeachment centers on aid to Ukraine. President Trump doubts whether the United States should risk conflict with Russia over Ukraine. “He worries about the possibility of the United States getting drawn into war with Russia.” Mr. Anton agrees with the President. Ukraine is not a vital security concern for America, though it is for Russia, and the American people have little interest in it. “The country just isn’t that important to us for the same reason that Canada and Mexico are not that important to Russia. . . But with a broken immigration system, porous southern border, wage stagnation, rising health care costs, declining living standards and lifespans, and nearly two decades of war from which they have, to say the least, not much benefited, is aid to Ukraine on anyone’s top ten list? Top 100?”
Unfortunately for the President, the executive branch’s agencies and bureaucracies have become a fourth branch of government, the administrative or “deep state.” (Here Mr. Anton relies on the important research of Professor John Marini.) The members of this group favor a policy of confrontation with Russia over Ukraine, and they are determined to act against the president for his failure to follow their advice. In so doing, they ignore the fact that they are strictly subordinate to the president. Mr. Anton was himself a member of the National Security Council, and based on his insider’s knowledge of that group, he holds that it was wrong for Lt. Colonel Vindman, the “country officer” for Ukraine on the NSC, to complain about the President’s call to the Ukrainian President. In so doing, he exceeded his authority.
12:29 pm on December 18, 2019
