By David Cruz
Correspondent
Sen. Bob Menendez sounded very much like a cold warrior from another era.
“Let me be clear. Russia is certainly not a partner. In fact, I would go so far as to say they are adversaries,” he said.
But Russian military aggression into Eastern Ukraine and its annexation of Crimea — and the allegations of Russian hackers interfering with the U.S. elections — had Menendez, the ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, reacting forcefully. Flanked by members of New Jersey’s Ukranian-American community, with whom he met this morning, the senator talked about his meeting yesterday with Secretary of State nominee Rex Tillerson. He said the former ExxonMobil CEO is a bright man of substance but said implementing a foreign policy is not like negotiating drilling rights.
“In foreign policy, very often, it’s not that simple, it’s not so transactional,” he said. “Getting a country to do something that they don’t want to do, whether it’s joining you in an alliance to fight ISIL or to send troops to Afghanistan or to provide sanctions against Iran or anything else that they may not want to do for their own interests, that’s a whole different skill set. That is not a simple commercial transaction, so I did not get the sense from Mr. Tillerson that he has that understanding.”
As for Russian interference in U.S. elections and the president-elect’s briefing today from the intelligence community, Menendez says it’s critical that Donald Trump — who this morning called the hacking allegations a “witch hunt” — listen and modify his point of view.
“I think it’s incredibly important for the president-elect, who will have to depend upon these very same intelligence sources to deal with challenges globally — far beyond Russia — that if he undermines their credibility, when he seeks to use their information in the future as a basis for action somewhere in the world, the world will say wait a minute you said that they were not credible, why do you say they are now? So this is very consequential and I hope he takes some time to re-calibrate,” he said.
After his meeting with intelligence officials today, it looked like the president-elect might have begun the re-calibration process, acknowledging their evidence that Russians had breached DNC servers. But then he called for an investigation into the leak of that intelligence report to the press. Clearly, the relationship between the president-elect and just about everybody else will continue to be complicated.