​Whistle-stop tour

By Anne Krapu

PART I: Europe

“I don’t think [Rubio] can beat the dynamic duo...the Clintons. I want someone with experience. We’re at war.” – Dog the Bounty Hunter on Fox News, 2015.

We cannot afford to put our national security at stake by electing Donald Trump. I feel so strongly about this that even though I don’t personally like Hillary, I am essentially a single-issue voter this cycle, and that issue is security. Dog is not someone which whom I usually agree, but I respect that he does have a brain underneath that terrible mullet.

“But Anne, BENGHAZI!” As someone who has gone through the initial rounds required to work for the State Department, I will tell you that post-9/11, you must be willing to accept dangerous postings. Mistakes may have been made in Libya, but those events were hardly outside of the realm of possibility, and the folks who were there, like the CIA contractors, also assumed that risk. The situation was extremely sad, but not an existential threat to the USA.

Russia: With recent revelations regarding Russian intruders running around the DNC’s servers, it’s safe to say we’re back at undeclared war. The nice thing about essentially being in unchecked power for north of fifteen years for Putin, is that in such a situation, you can run lengthy brainwashing campaigns. When I was living in Siberia in 2012, I was bombarded with anti-Hillary ads on state television portraying her as a puppet-master of the international order, seeking to hold down mother Russia. Now, there’s a campaign going on to make Lenin and Stalin hip again.

Pussy Riot can’t stop this alone. Unless you want to see some weird 21st century version of duck and cover, and the nuclear hysteria that led it to it, don’t vote Donald Trump. Pitting one narcissistic sociopath against another at the highest levels of foreign relations between nuclear powers is a definite loser here.

Ukraine: The effects of the violation of Ukrainian sovereignty by Russia in the eastern region of the country in 2014 broke my heart when I was working in Kiev earlier this year. Russian hackers had also crashed the power grid in the capital less than a month before I landed.

Ukrainians haven’t had to deal with a hot war since WWII, and losses by the Soviet Union, then an ally against Hitler, were far more catastrophic than our own. Hyperinflation is out of control. When I was in Kiev in 2011, the Hryvna was 11 to the dollar. Now it is hovering around 25. Babushkas are selling F*UCK PUTIN merchandise alongside their pickles and crochet work in the metro stops. The trains are carrying recent military recruits to the front lines and back again from the central train station, and my first reaction was that these boys should not have to fight alone, or at all. If we care about respecting the idea of international sovereignty at all, a harder stance against Russia in the Ukraine is in order.

Baltic States: I never worked here (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania), but I did spend a decent amount of time getting to know the region. Past deportations to the gulags are still fresh in national memory. In Estonia, I was legitimately disturbed while touring a prison that had been used by both Stalin and Hitler. The temperature in the execution chamber was ten degrees colder than any other room in the complex, and there was no good physical explanation for it.

Fatal purges by the Soviet Union to Siberia never received as much attention as the Holocaust, but the trauma remains. I found this abundantly clear when visiting the Latvian museum of the Gulag and Deportations. Meanwhile, in Lithuania, I explored the only KGB station in existence open to the public now as a museum.

For Donald Trump to have insinuated that we would not defend these allies is a travesty, and emboldened Putin further. Not taking a harder line in the Ukraine against Putin’s expansionism is alarming reason for the Baltics to be incredibly nervous. This new threat is sure to stir up old feelings, and one can’t really blame the Baltic states for being on edge. As allies, we must protect them, or risk giving Putin a huge second victory, bolstering the idea of disrespecting national security when it suits your cause.

George W. Bush remarked that he had looked into Putin’s eyes and seen his soul. George W. Bush has also has kept a very low profile since leaving office. Either he is continuing the self-portrait painting he had always wanted to do, or what he saw of Putin’s soul has infested his mind with such nightmares that he’s staying quiet on this gaffe for his own sanity. Okay, probably not, but I wouldn’t blame him.

Kosovo: The main drag in Pristina is named “Boulevardi Bill Klinton” and runs past a statue of… Bill Clinton. The women’s clothing shop named “Hillary” next to the plaza is a nice touch. Kosovo is a lot less gritty now and the UN presence was hardly visible as of 2014, when I was there last, representing a major change from 2011. That said, the unemployment rate is atrocious, wages are abysmal for those that work, and many of Europe’s “economic refugees” are Kosovar and straining German social services especially.

We should make a point of accepting some of these economic refugees to take some pressure off of Germany as part of a special visa scheme – Yes, Donald, they are Muslim, but they often fly our flag with their own out of gratitude for American/NATO intervention against Serb war crimes. That kind of sentiment is in short supply outside of our borders these days.

Regardless of our differences in citizenship, religion, political affiliation, or any method of categorization, Trump represents a clear and present danger to the safety of Americans and the lives of our allies abroad.

Part II on the Middle East and Africa will follow next week.