An opposing government using covert measures and secret agents to infiltrate the United States government seems like something straight out of “The Manchurian Candidate.” However, that idea is becoming more and more topical.
To be perfectly clear, I am not suggesting that Donald Trump and his team are secretly working for Vladimir Putin. The FBI found no direct links to Russia within the Trump campaign in 2016, but indirect links are another story.
Jeff Sessions, attorney general, met with Sergey Kislyak, a Russian ambassador to the U.S., twice during the presidential campaign.
Rex Tillerson, former secretary of state and former ExxonMobil CEO, did business with Rosneft, an oil company owned mainly by the Russian government, and has a personal relationship with the company’s president. Tillerson also did business with Gazprom, a Russian energy giant, owned by the Russian state.
Michael Flynn, former Trump national security adviser, who resigned after giving an inaccurate account of his contact with Sergey Kislyak. Flynn also appeared on and was paid by RT, a Kremlin-funded propaganda network, and as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2013, paid a visit to GRU’s headquarters, Russia’s military intelligence agency.
I could go on. According the the Washington Post, CIA officials concluded in late 2016 that the release of hacked emails by people with ties to the Kremlin aimed not only to undermine faith in US elections, but specifically help Trump get elected.
However, the greatest concern about Trump’s relationship with Putin is not that he is being secretly influenced by the Kremlin, but rather that the two are very hot-headed, unpredictable individuals. If the two were to go toe-to-toe, not only are they both prone to make miscalculations, but having surrounded themselves with colleagues with a conspiratorial view of the world, the risk runs even higher of miscommunication and mistakes being made.
The combination of inaccurate information from misinformed colleagues and impulsive decisions is dangerous in even just one world leader, let alone two.