OPINION:
Looking back on the 500-year history of the Roman Republic, it can be seen that one sign of its decline was when its great leaders no longer toiled for their country but rather for themselves. A man of modest origins such as Gaius Marius (157-86 B.C.) could parlay a political career into great financial benefit. After a term as praetor urbanus, Marius went to Far Spain as propraetor, in which capacity he took command of the Spanish silver mines. He ran them well, to the great benefit of Rome. But he also skimmed enough off the top to amass immense wealth for himself, which he then used to maintain ongoing political influence (it helped him, for one thing, to marry into the venerable Julian family). He was elected consul seven times, more than any other Roman.
Marius comes to mind with a perusal of the recent New York Times article titled “Cash Flowed to Clinton Foundation Amid Russian Uranium Deal.’’ Much has been written about the appearance of a conflict of interest that emerges from the details of the story. Russia’s atomic energy agency, Rosatom, wanted to buy a Canadian company with uranium-mining stakes “stretching from Central Asia to the American West.’’ This Canadian company’s executives needed to sell, as their stock was plummeting. But the transaction required approval from a high-level U.S. committee because the country’s uranium interests were deemed to be a matter of possible strategic significance. The committee, whose members included then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, eventually signed off on the deal. Meanwhile, the global foundation run by her husband, former President Clinton, was raking in millions of dollars in donations from people associated with the Canadian company. Within the same time context, the former president was invited to give a speech in Moscow, for which he was awarded $500,000 — “among Mr. Clinton’s highest’’ speaking fees, says The New York Times.
The newspaper emphasizes that it never found evidence of a clear quid pro quo. If this doesn’t constitute the appearance of a conflict, though, the term has no meaning.
But let’s focus for a moment on the merits of the case — whether the United States should relinquish its control over uranium mines within its own borders. Then the matter takes on an even more troublesome aspect.
Canadian businessmen have no stake in whether the United States maintains control over strategic minerals such as uranium. Neither, certainly, do Russian officials bent on cornering as much of the global uranium market as possible. When, in January 2013, the Russians finally gained control of the Canadian company, the Pravda website heralded Russian President Vladimir Putin’s latest triumph with the celebratory headline: “Russian Nuclear Energy Conquers the World.’’
But Americans do have a stake in that question, since uranium clearly is a strategic asset, with implications for national security. Thus, one might ask: What is a former U.S. president doing hobnobbing with executives of foreign companies bent on transferring U.S. uranium interests, located on American soil, to Russian bureaucrats?
Of course, whenever such a question emerges, there are always arguments for why it really isn’t harmful to U.S. interests to allow such a transaction to proceed. The New York Times piece quotes people explaining why the committee of jurisdiction, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, was justified in approving the deal. The committee, it was said, had been assured that uranium pulled from American soil would remain in America. And, after all, noted others, when the deal was approved the United States was attempting to foster better relations with Russia.
However, it appears that nuclear material from U.S. uranium mines has, in fact, been shipped abroad, some of it reaching Western Europe and Japan. And those days of “detente’’ with Russia have morphed into a starkly adversarial relationship between Russia and the West, which has raised concerns, as The New York Times puts it, “about European dependency on Russian energy resources, including nuclear fuel.’’
It’s heartbreaking to see a former U.S. president so blithely associating himself with such developments, taking masses of money for himself and his foundation from people whose financial interests seem contrary to American strategic interests.
When Harry Truman relinquished the presidency in 1953, he headed back to Independence, Missouri, in his Chrysler New Yorker, with 11 suitcases jammed in the car. He had no pension from his White House or congressional years, and took from his military pension only $112.56 a month. He stayed at $5-a-night motels and ate lunches that cost just 70 cents. He had no intention of “commercializing’’ the presidency, as he put it, by accepting lucrative business deals or speaking fees. His great hero was the Roman Cincinnatus, the patriot farmer who assumed command in his country’s hour of peril, then returned to his plow when the emergency had passed. Truman revered George Washington as the quintessential American Cincinnatus.
Biographer David McCullough notes that, as Truman prepared to relinquish “the most power ever vested in a single human being in all history until then,’’ he wrote in his diary that Cincinnatus knew not only when to lay down power but also how. Truman was a student of history, and he knew that men such as Gaius Marius had destroyed the spirit of Cincinnatus in the Roman Republic. And today, in our republic, men such as Bill Clinton are destroying the spirit of Harry Truman and George Washington.
• Robert W. Merry, longtime Washington journalist and publishing executive, is the author of books on American history and foreign policy.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.