In 1933, when U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt wanted to normalize relations with the Soviet Union, he told Joseph Stalin that the Kremlin would first have to knock off its subversive activities inside the United States. Likewise, when President Ronald Reagan wanted to ease Cold War tensions, his Secretary of State, George P. Shultz, made it clear to Mikhail Gorbachev that Soviet spooks must stop spreading lies about AIDS being caused by U.S. bioweapons research.
U.S. President Donald Trump seems to want to follow his predecessors in improving relations with the Russians. But instead of demanding that the Kremlin curtail its skullduggery, his administration is unilaterally disarming — offering a quid with no quo. Since returning to office, he has gutted agencies that serve as bulwarks against foreign meddling.
For example, the new administration has fired FBI officials who were involved in criminal cases against Trump, depriving the bureau of dozens of its most experienced agents, as well as removing or reassigning top officials at the FBI’s national-security group and intelligence division. At the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, at least 17 employees tasked with protecting electoral integrity and combating disinformation have been sacked under the guise of returning the agency to its original focus on critical infrastructure (never mind that electoral systems fall into that category).
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