First, in a historic Rose Garden speech on Thursday, President Donald Trump — against the advice of world leaders, major American companies, and even many in his own Administration — announced his intention of pulling the US out of the historic Paris Climate Agreement. The landmark 2015 pact is signed by nearly 200 nations and was crafted as part of a 20-year U.N. effort to decrease greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming, in hopes of avoiding the worst effects of man-made climate change.
Trump's announcement has largely been met with worldwide derision from China to India to Russia to the EU and back here at home. And his announced intention of "renegotiating" a different deal was quickly nixed today by France, Germany and Italy. We offer extended experts from Trump's remarks announcing his intention to withdraw, some much-needed fact-checking, and a look at where the tortured decision — which will take four years and another Presidential election — leaves the US.
But, as that unfortunate history was being made today, we also take a look back at historic parallels for the recently reported, and seemingly bizarre, attempt by Trump's son-in-law and top adviser Jared Kushner to create a secret back-channel line of communications with Russia during last year's Presidential transition.
Princeton University political history professor and author Julian E. Zelizer, joins us to describe two different similar back-channels created with two different countries (including one to Russia — actually, then, the Soviet Union) by Richard Nixon, both during his campaign and his transition.
One such line of secret diplomacy, Zelizer explains, turned out to be hugely successful for both the US and USSR alike. The other…well, it didn't turn out so well, even as we've only learned details about both in recent years. Zelizer also describes the recent history of diplomatic back-channel diplomacy by Presidents other than Nixon and Trump, offers a few other uncomfortable parallels for the current President, and explains why Kushner's purported scheme to use Russian facilities to speak with the Kremlin is so bizarre, even, apparently, to the Russians themselves.
"Part of the idea that both Richard Nixon believed in, and his top National Security Advisor, Henry Kissinger, was that there needed to be a new approach to handling US relations with the Soviet Union," Zelizer tells me. "The key to doing this was simply opening up the lines of dialogue. (Kissinger) sets up a back-channel, as it was called, to the Soviet ambassador, which is top secret. He believed this had to be done around the existing government bureaucracy. They were worried about leaks, they were worried about political push-back."
"Nixon was totally paranoid and frightened about the existing bureaucracy in the State Department, and to some extent in the Defense Department, and was really determined to try to do things — which would ultimately lead to his downfall — on his own. And to have these kinds of communications without the official government knowing what he was doing, and subverting him."
Sound familiar? In that case, as Zelizer writes at CNN, it was actually a huge success that eventually resulted in the SALT I Agreement to limit nuclear weapons in both nations. The other Nixon back-channel was far more nefarious, dealing with his campaign's attempt to scuttle peace talks by Lyndon Johnson in Vietnam before his election.
In both Nixon cases, it took years before we even learned about any of it. In the more recent case of Kushner and Russia, Zelizer notes, "There's a lot of uncertainty, both about context and the substance of this effort, which is why it is something that's raised a lot of suspicions and is the focus of an investigation. It's not the back-channel, it's what this back-channel was meant to do and why it was being put into place — if it's true." Finally, Desi Doyen re-joins us for special, breaking Green News Report coverage of, well…see if you can guess.
You can find Brad's previous editions here. And tune in to radio Sputnik three hours a day, five days a week, at 5 pm GMT.
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