Alfonse D'Amato

Remembering back channels that helped save the peace

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There seems to be no end to the media obsession with the relationship between President Trump and the Russians. The latest charge is that during the presidential transition, his son-in-law and trusted adviser, Jared Kushner, sought “back-channel” contacts through communications with Russia’s ambassador to the U.S.

Leaving aside for a moment that the Russian ambassador is hardly a back channel, let’s assume that Kushner was indeed trying to establish a process for communicating with Russian officials outside the usual diplomatic and intelligence channels. A look at some pertinent historical analogies might be helpful here.

Take the example of John F. Kennedy’s transition in late 1960, as he prepared to enter the White House after his election. Like Trump, Kennedy relied on a close adviser and family member — his brother Robert F. Kennedy — to quietly reach out to a Russian correspondent stationed in Washington who also, not coincidentally, served in Russian intelligence.

This meeting took place at a particularly tense time in U.S.-Soviet relations, when the two major superpowers warily eyed each other’s every move. JFK wanted to establish a direct private link to the Russians to express his hope for an improvement in relations that might reduce the chance of military conflict.

As Kennedy would painfully learn in the first few months of his administration, he had good reason to be wary not only of the Soviets, but also of his own national security apparatus. The infamous Bay of Pigs invasion, launched in Cuba in 1961, was a holdover project of the CIA that had been hatched in the waning months of the Eisenhower administration to remove Fidel Castro from power. It was based on seriously flawed intelligence and poor military planning, and led to a disastrous defeat for the invading forces.

We can be thankful that JFK learned quickly from this fiasco. Thereafter he retained a healthy skepticism of professional intelligence and military sources. That would come in handy just a year later, when the U.S. was again enmeshed in an exceedingly dangerous confrontation with the Soviets, the Cuban Missile Crisis. Kennedy managed to avoid a potentially disastrous nuclear war with Russia by constantly questioning the intelligence he was receiving and standing up to some particularly trigger-happy American generals who favored a pre-emptive strike on Soviet nuclear missiles that had been placed in Cuba.

Historians agree that a key element in Kennedy’s success in avoiding a nuclear holocaust was his private back-channel communications with the Russians, well outside the normal diplomatic routes. JFK once again relied on his brother Bobby and a private citizen, John Scali, a respected journalist with good sources in the Russian embassy in Washington. Throughout the back-and-forth negotiations on the missile crisis, Scali kept open a line of communication to RFK that helped defuse the crisis and avoid war.

I offer these historical examples because it isn’t fair to judge Trump’s overtures to the Russians in a vacuum. Just as JFK did in 1960, Trump has inherited a situation fraught with tension between two nuclear superpowers. And whatever you might think of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Trump understands instinctively (again, like JFK before him) that engaging in constructive communication with Russia might prevent destructive conflict.

One can only imagine what terrible consequences might have been avoided if there had been effective back-channel communications with some of the vexing leaders who have confronted the U.S. in more recent times. Perhaps there was someone who could have effectively debunked the CIA’s “slam dunk” assertion of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and opened a line of communication with Iraqi military leaders. Maybe there was someone who could have communicated more effectively with Syria’s leadership so we could have avoided drawing meaningless red lines in the sand.
Yes, we live in dangerous times, but those who find a way to open dialogue with our foes are not the danger. The real danger is being straitjacketed by institutions and ways of doing things that fail as often as they succeed. On this, the 100-year anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s birth, it is especially fitting to remember that what’s past is prologue.

Al D’Amato, a former U.S. senator from New York, is the founder of Park Strategies LLC, a public policy and business development firm. Comments about this column? ADAmato@liherald.com.