Weekly Mind Dump: The Problem with Diplomatic Freebooters

Trump and Musk have been carrying out their own foreign policy with Putin behind the White House's back. What's their agenda and what to do about them?

There’s nothing more of a pain in the ass for those who work in foreign policy than diplomatic freebooters whose hubris and gargantuan self-confidence leads them to see themselves as all-knowing and divinely-blessed messianic saviors of the planet, who simply decide to carry out their own foreign policy, the government be damned.

Two particularly egregious examples currently are Donald Trump and Elon Musk.

In his latest book, War, Bob Woodward reports a Trump employee told him that the ex-president has been carrying on direct conversations with Vladimir Putin since he left office, amounting to perhaps seven phone calls over the last four years. Since Trump always shoos away staffers during such calls, their content is not known. This behavior fits a pattern. When he was president, Trump sometimes excluded U.S. officials, including State Department interpreters, when he met with Putin. At one point, he even confiscated a State interpreter’s notes and destroyed them.

This week, it’s been revealed that Elon Musk is playing the same game. He has been discoursing directly with Putin for years. Again, the subject matter of the calls is not publicly known. But bear in mind two things: 1) Musk has been pushing the Putin line on Ukraine consistently since Moscow’s invasion of that country; and 2) right after one call with Putin in 2022, Musk pulled the plug on the Starlink satellite system’s use for the Ukrainian military in actions in Russia-occupied Ukrainian territory, suddenly rendering Ukrainian armed forces blind. Musk’s stated reason was that the system was not intended to be used in war zones. Putin reportedly also asked Musk not to activate his Starlink satellites over Taiwan as a “favor” to Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

Traditionally, ex-presidents, politicians and high-stature private individuals consulted with government officials before and after meeting with foreign statesmen, in accordance with the norm, “politics stops at the water’s edge.” But Trump and Musk evidently feel this doesn’t apply to them, being the norm-busting a-holes they are.

Diplomatic freebooters cause no end of aggravation for government policymakers. In fact, it’s technically a violation of the Logan Act of 1799. But only two people have ever been charged with violating this law, one in 1802 and the other in 1852. Neither was convicted.

With the Logan Act being toothless, there has been no lack of amateur self-styled genius statesmen who’ve plunged unauthorized into the diplomatic arena. Henry Ford came up with a cockamamie — and aborted — scheme in 1915 to end World War I. William Randolph Hearst met with Hitler in 1934 to convey “American views” with no sanction by his government. And, of course, Rudolph Giuliani’s mucking around in Ukrainian politics led to Trump’s sacking of the highly competent U.S. ambassador with consequent shame and embarrassment for the U.S.

I dealt with such interlopers twice in my diplomatic career. In the mid-1980s, independent presidential contender Ross Perot financed a covert mercenary operation using U.S. military veterans to “rescue” American POW’s allegedly imprisoned in communist Laos. As U.S. Consul in northeastern Thailand, I had the responsibility of dealing with this insane action. In the end, the Thai government quietly evicted the bumbling Rambos from the country.

Right after that I was reassigned to Washington as senior country officer for Afghanistan during the Soviet Union’s invasion and occupation of that country. Armand Hammer, a wealthy American industrialist, son of Russian immigrants and long a darling of the Beltway power set, made it his mission to earn a Nobel Peace Prize for himself by negotiating a settlement of the conflict. Hammer drew on his connections with Soviet leaders to insert himself into sensitive negotiations between Washington and Moscow to bring an end to the Soviet occupation. We in the diplomatic trenches regarded the octogenarian diplomatic neophyte as both meddlesome and suspect. He merely added fog and confusion. His efforts, of course, went nowhere. Years after his death, lo and behold, the FBI determined that Hammer had been a KGB agent of influence for seven decades.

Funny how so many of these freelance diplomatic initiatives on the part of Republicans over the years are revealed to have suspicious links to Russian influence operations. Trump and Musk are no exceptions. They are being played by Putin.

So, what can be done about them? First, as long as the government doesn’t use the Logan Act against them, not much. Second, almost nothing is known publicly about Trump’s and Musk’s shenanigans dealing with Putin directly. All that we can rely on, as in previous cases, is that their amateurism and treachery will ultimately be revealed with consequent negative impact on their reputations, such as they are.

The opinions and characterizations in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily represent official positions of the U.S. government.