Yesterday the Attorney General released a summary of Robert Mueller’s investigation. One major point was that Mueller could find no evidence of collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign in 2016.
This is a little puzzling, since a surprising number of people in Trump’s orbit had contact with Russian officials or operatives—and lied about it to investigators, which is a felony. However, let’s take the Attorney General’s statement at face value for now.
Why would there necessarily be collusion, if by collusion we mean a close working relationship, with periodic communication on the tactics and intelligence required to defeat Hillary Clinton?
Given that Putin and Trump agreed on the need to establish a billionaire state in America, and that both had workable plans to accomplish that goal, why would they need a close operational relationship? That would only increase the risk of discovery.
The collusion, in other words, was inherent to their shared ideology. They didn’t need to collude on tactics, and so they didn’t.
But despite the “lack of collusion” that Republicans will crow about in the coming weeks, before Trump’s inauguration the U.S. had a policy of opposition to Russian expansionism, and today we have a pro-Russian foreign policy. And Putin has a blank check to do as he likes in Syria, the Ukraine and perhaps soon in Afghanistan, the Baltic states and Poland—not to mention murdering people in England and beyond. Putin didn’t need to “collude” with anyone to subvert an American election with the goal of electing Trump.
For the first time ever, America has a foreign policy that is substantially influenced by Russia. This is an extraordinary change.
And yet, there was no “collusion” that investigators could prove. Was Trump exonerated, or did Putin just cover his tracks well enough to avoid compromising his most important asset?
Likewise, Trump didn’t need to collude with anyone to see Russia as a model for the kind of society he wants to create in America: an authoritarian kleptocracy with a civil society based on Mafia values and a civil discourse dominated by paranoid nationalism; in other words, a billionaire state.
Ruling classes do not need to conspire, typically. They do not need to meet in candlelit basements or speak over the phone in code, because they share the same goals and values—they think the same way.
Shared ideology can replace most spy tradecraft.
The Socialist Investor 