Rep. Ed DeLaney: Trump, Indiana Republicans are dealing with amnesia

The U.S. Navy spent a lot of money teaching me Russian. That effort took up all of the year 1968. The Navy then gave me administrative work, but I put the language to work translating for a CIA-run organization. I later worked with Indiana Department of Commerce officials on business development efforts in Russia as it reformed. I monitored Russian elections in the 1990s in delegations led by U.S. Sen. John McCain, one of my heroes. I have visited the Soviet Union and then Russia some 30 times.

Until now, I never had to learn the Russian word for “gloat.” Today, the Russian press is full of gloating. It witnessed, as the world did, the complete reversal in our foreign policy exhibited by Donald Trump’s undercutting of Ukraine after Russia invaded it and made war on its people. Russia clearly lost the Cold War to a coalition of Democrats and Republicans in the United States working with our European allies. We preserved peace in Europe, rolled back the Iron Curtain and liberated a host of countries in Eastern Europe without any combat.

Now we are walking away from that victory. We are surrendering in a war we won. The Republicans in Congress are either cheering the Trump-Putin alliance or sitting on their hands.

Trump said one thing of real interest when he and his vice president ambushed the president of Ukraine in the Oval Office. Trump raised the risk of World War III. That risk had been obviated by all the veterans who served between the end of World War II and today. The risk has arisen anew because Putin invaded Ukraine, setting up the first international war in Europe since World War II. Russia, which masquerades as a great world power, has proven incapable of defeating the democratic and pro-Western people of Ukraine, a much smaller country with no pretenses of being a world power.

Why join hands with a tyrant and kleptocrat who is running a rotting and corrupt “empire” built on dreams of restoring a tyrannical past? In part, the cause is our refusal to look at history. Do Trump and Vance even know that when we walked away from Europe after World War I, we got tariffs, a world depression and World War II? What am I to say to those who thank me for my service? I for one do not regret what I did.

This amnesia of history is now bleeding into the Indiana General Assembly. We are forgetting why we have federalism and how it must work. We are utterly confused as to the proper role of our state officials. We are taking on duties that belong to Washington while ignoring the duties to our own people.

One example will suffice. Indiana did not have any need for a foreign policy until recently. We have begun to pass bills pretending to protect Indiana from threats to state-based “critical infrastructure” by “foreign interests,” including controlling companies or citizens from China and Iran. Curiously, the list of threatening countries includes Russia, the object of Trump’s admiration. This looks like a national security concern under the purview of the national government.

House Bill 1032, which is now in the Senate, seeks to restrict businesses from these threatening countries and gives our state attorney general authority to investigate, enjoin and penalize violators. Even if our attorney general avoided ethical lapses and staffed up for this task, all he could do is poach on federal territory.

It is time for Washington to try to preserve the fruits of our victory in the Cold War and for Indiana to take care of its responsibilities, not to pretend to have a foreign policy.•

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DeLaney, an Indianapolis attorney, is a Democrat representing the 86th District in the Indiana House of Representatives. Send comments to [email protected].

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