The Benefits of a Trump-Russia Conspiracy
One of the most prominent news stories of the early days of the Trump presidency is the alleged conspiracy between officials in the Trump administration and members of the Russian government to help him get elected. The allegations that Russian intelligence agents interfered in the 2016 election are not going away, despite a lack of clear evidence for such claims. Relationships between senior administration officials and Moscow have come under intensified scrutiny in recent weeks, following Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey, who was investigating such connections. But so far, what collusion is known to have occurred did not violate any laws.
As expected, the political and pundit classes are divided along ideological lines. Democrats and establishment Republicans are determined to find a scandal, while Trump supporters insist that this is a conspiracy theory and witch hunt. As usual, the sharpest argument on the issue is going unexplored by the chattering classes: that such a conspiracy, if it has occurred, would be beneficial. Therefore, let us consider the positive results that would occur if a conspiracy between Trump’s campaign and/or administration and the Russian government is proven, as well as the benefits of such collusion.
Un-Intelligence Agencies
If investigators find an improper connection between Trump and Russia, it will thoroughly discredit all of the US government’s intelligence agencies. A foreign power managing to successfully conspire with a presidential candidate in order to install someone who owes them favors at best and is their puppet at worst is exactly the kind of event that those agencies are supposed to prevent. A failure of that magnitude would signal that the leading positions in the US government are vulnerable not only to foreign interference, but to a hostile takeover by agents of a foreign government by means of a Manchurian candidate. Should this be the case, it would be clear for all to see that the government in general and the office of the Presidency in particular are too powerful.
To fail to prevent a declining second-rate power like Russia from altering the outcome of an election should finish off the American people’s trust in these agencies. Their trust has already been diminished by the revelations of Edward Snowden and the general failure of these agencies to do much besides entrap ‘terrorists’ of their own manufacturing, so such a spectacular failure might be the last straw. In a world where centralized statist means of security are increasingly ineffective and decentralized private alternatives are necessary, such a revelation could provide the impetus for a complete rethinking of the provision of security.
Preventing War
As the quote frequently misattributed to Lenin goes, “The best way to control the opposition is to lead it ourselves.” If Trump is compromised by Russian influence, as the conspiracy theorists claim, then war between the United States and Russia becomes pointless from a Russian perspective. Why engage in hostilities with a nation when one has influence over its leadership, but not enough influence to overcome the disparity in military capability? More progress can be made from their position by working with a friendly American president who is compromised by them.
In the world today, there is no greater potential threat to American and Russian citizens than a war between their governments, as each side has nuclear weapons and the great advantage that the United States enjoys in conventional military firepower would encourage Russia to escalate to a nuclear exchange. Of the two major presidential candidates, Clinton was the most bellicose toward Russia and its client state in Syria, and her interventionist position on the Syrian Civil War had great potential to bring American and Russian forces into direct conflict with each other. In the estimation of a competent Russian policymaker, it was in the best interest of Russian citizens (and everyone else, for that matter) for Russia to interfere in the US presidential election to help Trump win, especially by means that would create a sense of reciprocation once Trump is in office. Given the stakes involved, increasing cooperation between the United States and Russia is more important than the means used in so doing.
Delegitimizing The System
Those who hope for the accusations against Trump to be true may not appreciate the logical conclusions of the result they anticipate. If Donald Trump, why not anyone else? If the Presidency, why not any other office? If 2016, why not any other election year? Such a scandal would call into question the democratic process in the United States at every level. Senators, governors, mayors, county commissioners, and all of the rest would be at least as suspect, if not more so. Though such offices lack the power of the Presidency, the resources needed to infiltrate and commandeer such offices are far fewer. These offices could be used to accomplish particular foreign policy goals of Russia, China, or another rival power, such as hampering the construction of a military base in a particular state or blocking funding for anti-ICBM defense systems. Given the power that state and local governments have over the daily lives of citizens, a few solid plants in key positions could do significant damage.
If the process for selecting politicians is compromised, then the laws they pass and policies they enact are compromised a fortiori. The chaos injected into American political life by this realization is scarcely imaginable. Reams of legislation and regulation would need to be examined and possibly invalidated on the grounds that they were not properly ratified. Politicians and judges would be scrambling to figure out the correct precedent to set for dealing with such an event. Should they be in error (and they likely would be), their perceived legitimacy would be greatly diminished. Leaving dubiously passed laws and regulations in place would taint the perceived validity of the whole United States Code and federal regulations, while examining them all would take entirely too much time. The third option of eliminating many of these policies would provide a rare opportunity to repeal a large amount of burdensome legislation and regulation.
Additionally, all of the appointments the politicians have made would come into question, from department heads all the way up to Supreme Court justices. This would call all of their decisions into question as well. When someone points out that these politicians and judges have a conflict of interest because they themselves might be compromised by foreign influence, the American people might even get to witness a Mexican standoff of “Are You A Soviet Spy?” between government officials, which would be thoroughly entertaining, if nothing else.
Should Congress try to impeach Trump over a revelation that his election was compromised by Russia, it is likely that he would respond by declassifying and speaking about all of the underhanded means that they have used to bribe their way into their House and Senate seats, as well as any other scandals in which they might be involved. The American people would suddenly learn that the system is far more hopelessly corrupt than they ever imagined. Tu quoque may be a logical fallacy, but it has tremendous moral and emotional weight. If Trump went down, he could take many members of Congress with him when the 2018 midterm elections come.
Though everyone in the establishment would consider these events to be unthinkably dangerous, for libertarians this chain of events would be nothing short of glorious. Though it might endanger Americans in the short term to have such a government failure, it would provide an excellent opportunity for market actors to step in and provide more effective services. The loss of faith in democracy would allow for more libertarian forms of governance to be considered with less public hostility.
Conclusion
Regardless of the actual facts of the case, a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Russian government would be beneficial to Americans on multiple counts. The aftermath of such a revelation is impossible to predict, but no one could reasonably conclude that more statism is the answer. Thus, let us hope that the conspiracy theorists are correct. Such a sharp line of argumentation has gone completely unexplored by the establishment media, and one may speculate that this is due to a combination of their role as propagandists for the US government, a lack of insightful boldness, and the damning implications of such reasoning for the status quo political arrangement.
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