Washington has its own rules, although, like most rules involving power, nobody bothers to write them down.

One of them is this: a foreign country can spend years being almost completely invisible in Washington until, suddenly, someone discovers it can be useful in a political fight at home.

And just like that, everybody becomes an expert.

Enter Chris LaCivita, straight from Trump’s political orbit and, rather inconveniently, into the American headlines for his consulting work in Republika Srpska.

The suggestion that LaCivita’s work amounted to some mysterious Balkan intrigue is rather grander than the facts require. American political consultants from both parties have worked in the region for years. The Balkans, however, possess the curious misfortune of becoming interesting to American political journalism chiefly when they can be attached to a scandal at home. And if Putin can be made to enter before the final paragraph, so much the better.

I interviewed Milorad Dodik exclusively before U.S. sanctions against him were lifted. He was intent on speaking to Trump and full of praise for the American leader, enthusiastic about MAGA, anti-woke politics and its red baseball caps.

Dodik’s ties to Putin are hardly a secret. Neither, for that matter, are his ties to Israel. Dodik has cultivated relationships with Israeli officials and traveled to Israel even at moments of considerable political difficulty at home.

But that is not a lead.

LaCivita has also worked with Sali Berisha in Albania, whom I too interviewed recently. None of this came as a particular revelation to me. I have been covering the Balkans in detail for years, long enough to know that political relationships in the region rarely fit neatly into the political categories assigned to them at Foggy Bottom.

That is another rule of Washington: complicated foreign relationships are often reduced to simple labels the moment they become part of a breaking-news story.

The better story is not simply that people from Trump’s political circle were hired by Balkan leaders. It is what that proximity is supposed to buy and how much the president himself knows about the business being conducted around his name.

Perhaps foreign clients are not buying access. Perhaps they are buying the dream of access to American power.

There is nothing inherently scandalous about advising an international political client. That is how the McMansion in McLean, Virginia, gets paid for.

The question is what, exactly, is being promised and sold.

From reformer to headache

Dodik has long been treated as a “problem” by European diplomats and institutions. But his political history starts with an American alliance.

In the late 1990s, he was welcomed by Madeleine Albright as a modern, young politician. In 1998, following a meeting between Secretary Albright and the newly appointed Republika Srpska prime minister, State Department spokesman James Rubin told reporters:

“Secretary Albright felt like a breath of fresh air had blown through the room with regard to Bosnia.”

Rubin also conveyed Albright’s confidence that Dodik’s election “marks a turning point” for Republika Srpska and Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Quite a journey from Washington’s preferred reformer to one of its geopolitical headaches, don’t you think?

Republika Srpska is now spending millions on American lobbyists and political operatives connected to Trump. It makes me think that Dodik sometimes places considerable faith in what American political intermediaries tell him they can deliver. Whether that faith is justified is another matter.

An introduction is not a foreign-policy decision. Knowing someone close to the president is not the same as speaking for the president. And having the president’s ear is not the same as having his agreement.

Where the gap becomes the business

Not long ago, I was sitting with someone who made an observation that stayed with me: What people in the Balkans believe Americans are saying and what Washington is actually saying can be night and day.

Perhaps that opportunity gap is where the real business lies.

Because what is political access worth if the person buying it cannot independently determine how much access actually exists?

Look at Kimberly Guilfoyle, the U.S. ambassador to Greece, and the latest allegations involving money and access around the Trump administration. The text messages that became news raise a familiar question about the political value of knowing the right people.

There is a difference between being close to power and exercising it.

What is the price of proximity when the people buying it are thousands of miles from the White House and may never get closer to Washington than the American ambassador in their own country?

Desperate times sometimes call for desperate measures. A celebrity calls a Hollywood psychic for reassurance. A foreign leader calls anyone who can promise a path into Republican circles.

The psychic may be cheaper. And Trump may still not be at the table.

Old money, new money

This week, I have been thinking about all of this on my morning walks through Belgravia. London has an extraordinary ability to make extreme wealth appear completely casual.

Three Aston Martins parked on the same stretch of street. Bentleys and Range Rovers outside white stucco townhouses. Porters standing beneath immaculate entrances as if there were absolutely nothing unusual about any of it.

Eaton Square is almost aggressively understated until you begin paying attention. Old money. New money. British aristocracy. Russian oligarchs. Billionaires. The houses all look much the same, yet they cost far more than houses elsewhere. Perhaps that is because you are not only buying the property. You are buying admission to the neighborhood.

Vivien Leigh once lived here. George Soros owns a house on the square. And for reasons I cannot entirely explain, my nephew has decided that we should too.

I told him that this particular purchase may prove somewhat expensive. On Eaton Square, houses sell in the ballpark of £37 million.

He looked around.

“Expensive? It does not look expensive to me. It looks old. Do they have futuristic stuff inside? Do they have Tesla robots?”

And there it was. A whole theory of wealth from a new generation.

Maybe, I thought, the appearance of wealth and the appearance of influence have more in common than we think.

Not everyone who lives in an expensive house is interesting. Not everyone who knows the president is influential. And not everyone standing inside an important room has anything resembling the authority outsiders imagine.

Yet people will pay extraordinary amounts of money for the right address. The right table. The right meeting. The right introduction. The right association.

The price of proximity

Which brings us back to Washington.

The interesting question about LaCivita, James Blair and the business of political consulting is not whether proximity to Trump has value. The question is how that value gets priced. What does the client think he is purchasing? What does the consultant believe he is selling? And, most importantly, when influence is implied, does the influence actually exist?

What specific result, access or deliverable does a government expect when it hires political operatives with relationships inside Trump’s world?

That is the question worth asking.

In Belgravia, at least, the transaction is wonderfully straightforward. You pay £37 million. You get the keys.

In Washington, you can spend millions and discover that what you purchased was not power at all. It was the appearance of proximity.

The Washington Cut is Ksenija Pavlovic’s first-person diary from inside American politics, power and the White House.

the washington cut

Founder and Editor-in-Chief of The Pavlovic Today. Credentialed at the White House, the U.S. Senate Press Gallery and the State Department. Pavlovic was a Teaching Fellow and Doctoral Fellow in the Political...