Sen. Risch, head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, seems clueless about Russia

When our elected officials return from Washington, it’s not always easy to get the whole truth and nothing but the truth, as the saying goes. Sometimes party loyalty tends to obscure the truth in reports from our public officials.

That was certainly not the case recently during the government shutdown, when Rep. Mike Simpson apologized to his constituents for the failure of their elected leaders and broke ranks with his own party in voting for a Democratic-led bill to reopen the federal government. He also “questioned the wisdom of President Trump using Army Corp of Engineers funding” to help build the border wall.

Lest you think Simpson is the norm for Idaho’s congressional delegation, Sen. Jim Risch’s recent presentation to the Boise Chamber of Commerce proves otherwise. On Russia, where President Trump and the senator seem to have warm spots in their hearts for the autocrat, Putin, and his regime, Risch declared that Russia is the most overrated country on the face of the planet and “these guys are all bluster.”

All bluster? That is not how former Republican congressman and President Trump’s director of national intelligence, Dan Coats, saw it when he verified that Russia “conducted an unprecedented influence campaign to interfere in the U.S. electoral and political process” in 2016. Then last year, eight U.S. intelligence agencies, including the CIA, said that Russia was still trying to influence and disrupt the 2018 midterm elections. Last August, Microsoft confirmed that new Russian hacking by its main intelligence agency, GRU, created fake internet domains to mislead two conservative organizations — the Hudson Institute and the International Republican Institute.

All bluster? That’s not how former Defense Secretary James Mattis saw it when he accused Russia of failing “to guarantee the removal of chemical weapons in Syria,” or how former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley saw it when she accused Russia of using its veto six times to prevent the condemnation of use of chemical weapons in Syria.

Nor is it “bluster” when Russia sends a Russian national and gun rights activist to infiltrate the conservative movement and the National Rifle Association as an agent of the Kremlin. She pleaded guilty to conspiring with a senior Russian official to influence U.S. policy during the 2016 election.

Nor is it bluster when Russia sends a Russian agent into the West to murder their former spies with nerve gas agents. Or rolls its tanks into Ukraine and annexes Crimea. While Risch dismisses Russia as one of the most overrated countries in the world, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warns of a “full-blown military escalation” between Russia and the West.

No objective analysis of the nuclear threat can dismiss Russia as one of the most overrated countries in the world, when Russia and the U.S. own 90 percent of the nuclear weapons on the planet and have the ability to wipe out millions of their citizens. Putin’s scariest saber-rattling came last year when he announced a new hypersonic missile that travels at two miles a second. Just last week, Russian TV listed U.S. military facilities that it could hit in less than five minutes, including the Pentagon.

The reaction from U.S. Air Force Gen. John E. Hyten, commander of U.S. Strategic Air Command, shows how off-base Risch’s comments on Russia are: The general said that America does not “have a defense that could deny the employment of such a weapon against us.”

Risch’s simplistic assessment of American foreign policy regarding Russia is particularly troublesome given his chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In another Cold War era, Republicans were Russia’s harshest critics. Apparently, President Trump’s handling of Putin with kid gloves spooks politicians such as Risch for fear of offending that sacred base of Trump’s. Consequently, Idahoans pay the price with misguided and timid leadership in the U.S. Senate.

Placing party loyalty above the objective assessment of the nation’s well-being has serious consequences for the functioning of a democracy. If President Trump cannot be held responsible for his actions, we have begun the slow and steady slide toward autocratic government. The latest example is the premature opining of key Republican members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, including Risch, that there is no evidence of collusion between Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and Russia.

That is at odds with comments by Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, who said the investigation is still ongoing and the committee still has to interview witnesses. Meanwhile, the chair of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Adam Schiff of California, claims that there is “ample evidence of collusion.”

Here we have a perfect illustration of how the reports Idahoans get from elected officials like Risch are framed by a partisan agenda that tells only one side of the story. The point here is not that one party has it all right and one does not. The point is simply that Idahoans seldom hear more than one side of the story, and that does not make for a truly informed citizen.

As we head toward the 2020 election, Idahoans who attend presentations such as the one Risch delivered to the Chamber of Commerce will have to come armed with questions that penetrate the partisan bias that prevents citizens from objective assessments of the nation’s well-being. Otherwise, Idaho will not only be a long distance in miles from our nation’s capital, but also a long way from the truth about the state of our republic.

This story was originally published March 1, 2019 at 5:36 PM.