IN THE FAST-MOVING Ukraine affair now engulfing President Donald Trump, the main focus of attention is naturally on the political impact at home. But the collateral damage of Mr Trump’s actions, and of the Democrats’ impeachment inquiry into them, extends far wider. In particular, it is likely to have a toxic effect on America’s diplomacy, in a number of ways.
Following a whistleblower’s alert, the president faces accusations that he exerted pressure on Ukraine to find dirt on Joe Biden, until recently the clear Democratic front-runner for next year’s presidential election. On September 25th the White House released a partial account of a telephone call in July between Mr Trump and the recently elected Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky. In it, Mr Trump urged Ukraine to investigate Mr Biden’s son, Hunter, who sat on the board of a Ukrainian oil company at a time when Mr Biden was vice-president. Days before the phone call, Mr Trump had halted military aid to Ukraine that had been ordered by Congress.
Most obviously, the scandal is unsettling for Ukraine. Its dealings with America will now be viewed through the prism of the leaked conversation between the presidents, and of Mr Zelensky’s unfortunate sycophancy. (“You are a great teacher for us”, gushes Mr Zelensky, a former comedian. “Yes you are absolutely right. Not only 100% but actually 1,000%”.) Suspicion will hang over any new initiatives between the two countries, including diplomatic efforts towards a settlement with Russia to end the war in eastern Ukraine. The State Department’s special envoy for Ukraine, Kurt Volker, who was said in the whistleblower’s account to have advised Mr Zelensky on how to “navigate” Mr Trump’s demands, resigned on September 27th. Mr Zelensky’s critical remarks about President Emmanuel Macron of France and Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, may linger, too.
America’s own relationship with Germany has already taken a battering under Mr Trump. Now it has suffered a fresh blow. In his call with Mr Zelensky Mr Trump bad-mouths Mrs Merkel and Europeans more broadly: “Germany does almost nothing for you,” Mr Trump says. “When I was speaking to Angela Merkel she talks Ukraine, but she doesn’t do anything. A lot of the European countries are the same way.” America has given Ukraine $1.5bn in military aid since 2014. Support to Ukraine from Germany has in fact been worth €1.2bn ($1.3bn), and that from the European Union has amounted to €15bn ($16.4bn). Bild, a mass-circulation German tabloid, commented that relations between Berlin and Washington had “finally hit their low point”.
More countries could get caught up in the affair. The whistleblower suggested that the transcript of the call with Mr Zelensky was not the only one to have been stored in a system normally reserved for highly classified information, even though it contained “nothing remotely sensitive from a national security perspective”. Adam Schiff, chairman of the House intelligence committee, said Democrats will push for the release of details of Mr Trump’s conversations with other leaders, including Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president. Russia, through a Kremlin spokesman, has already warned against any transcripts of Mr Putin’s talks with Mr Trump being made public. The American president has in the past aroused suspicion by apparently going out of his way to conceal details of his discussions with Mr Putin from his own senior officials, even reportedly removing the notes taken by his interpreter. CNN has reported that the White House also went to unusual lengths to limit access to the transcript of a call with Saudi Arabia’s powerful crown prince, Muhammad bin Salman. What began with Ukraine could quickly drag in some of America’s most sensitive relationships.
For leaders and diplomats everywhere, the drama is a reminder, yet again, of the heightened risk in the digital age that what they assume to be private communications will end up becoming public. In theory, the effect on diplomacy could be chilling. In July a British newspaper, the Mail on Sunday, revealed critical assessments of Mr Trump in the dispatches of Sir Kim (now Lord) Darroch, Britain’s ambassador to Washington; Mr Trump responded by calling him “wacky” and a “pompous fool”. Frozen out by the Trump administration, the ambassador resigned. William Hague, a former British foreign secretary, commented that if diplomats were removed from their posts whenever their communications became public, “you would never have any honest report from any ambassador in the world.”
True, international diplomacy survived the massive release nine years ago of more than a quarter of a million diplomatic cables provided by Edward Snowden to Wikileaks. In 2017 transcripts leaked of Mr Trump’s conversations with the then leaders of Mexico and Australia. This produced some voyeuristic excitement but no lasting damage. Yet for diplomats and political leaders every new high-profile incident is bound to add an extra pinch of paranoia.
As for America’s diplomatic corps, which has been severely strained under Mr Trump’s presidency, it faces further troubles. Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state, must now respond to a subpoena from congressional Democrats demanding documents. Other senior diplomats will no doubt be brought before the House committees looking into impeachment.
In New York last week Mr Trump was recorded telling a gathering of American diplomats from the country’s UN mission that those who provided information to the whistle-blower on the Ukraine matter were like “spies” and that in the old days America had a way of dealing with such “treason”—which sounded to some like witness intimidation. That sets a tone of vindictiveness and suspicion for America’s diplomats, whose morale Mr Pompeo sought to boost a year ago by talking of the “department of swagger”. A witch-hunt could instead turn it into a department of daggers./The Economist
