Consortiumnews
Independent Investigative Journalism Since 1995
Seeing the Substance in Trump-Putin Meeting
July 12, 2017
The first meeting between Presidents Trump and Putin achieved potentially
life-saving progress on the Syrian crisis, but the U.S. media/political
world cant get past its obsession with Russia-gate, reports Gilbert
Doctorow.
By Gilbert Doctorow
The U.S. mainstream medias obsessive focus on President Trumps tone when
he asked President Putin about alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 election
and whether Trump accepted Putins denial left under-reported what was
actually achieved during the possibly historic meeting.
President Trump discusses his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin
at G-20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, on July 7, 2017. (Screenshot from
Whitehouse.gov)
To be sure, there was not all that much substance because substance normally
requires detailed advance preparation by teams from both sides, something
which could not and did not occur due to the intense pressure from Trumps
political opponents and even from several of his own advisers, who wanted no
meeting at all or a confrontational meeting as opposed to constructive
meeting if any.
That being said, there was one concrete piece of business which Russian
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov mentioned in his July 7 press briefing
immediately afterwards: a cease-fire in southwest Syria along with the
creation of a joint U.S.-Russian center for de-confliction in Jordan, where
the U.S. military coordination of the Syrian theater is located, to oversee
a return to civilian life in the southwest area.
That move appears to be a positive development, with the cease-fire holding
better than some earlier ones have and adding one more zone to the six
de-confliction areas established during meetings in Astana between the
warring parties and under the guaranty of Turkey, Iran and Russia.
It would be still better if there had been some progress on the more
dangerous zone of eastern and southeastern Syria along the Euphrates, where
U.S.-backed forces of the Free Syrian Army have clashed with Syrian
government forces and where the U.S. shot down a Syrian bomber a couple of
weeks ago, causing the Russians to cut military hot lines and to threaten to
target all U.S. and allied planes flying west of the Euphrates.
We also were told that the United States will now be taking an active role
in pressing for the implementation of the Minsk Accords for the sake of a
political solution in Ukraine, along with the appointment of a U.S. point
man for the conflict.
Although the conventional wisdom in Washington is that Russia is at fault
for the lack of progress, the reality is that Kiev has been dragging its
heels on implementing a realistic approach to fulfilling its Minsk
commitments that call for allowing eastern Ukraine, known as the Donbas, to
achieve greater autonomy and to vote for its own leadership.
Trump and Putin also agreed to set up a joint body to deal with cyber
security to ensure there will be no possible attacks on electoral processes
in either country. The Russians, in particular, sought such cooperation in
the knowledge that cyber-attacks are considered a causus belli by the
Americans. But the idea was mocked by the political establishment in
Washington, which instead wants to impose more sanctions on Russia for
alleged interference in last falls election.
More generally, what seems to have been achieved at the Putin-Trump meeting
was agreement on procedures to begin a normalization of bilateral relations,
including the early appointment of new ambassadors in both capitals. No
agreements on anything specific as yet, but the identification of
outstanding issues and the start of assignment of responsibility on both
sides to enter into detailed discussion to find solutions. If followed up
or not sabotaged by anti-Trump political/media forces in the U.S. that
could turn out to be a turning point in relations.
Historical Parallels
Before the meeting took place, journalists and pundits were looking for
scenarios from the past, which might characterize the emerging relationship
of the two presidents. Optimists, in particular, spoke of the important
example set by Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan, which led to very
significant agreements on arms limitation and laid the groundwork for the
ending of the Cold War. Donald Trumps repeated indications on the campaign
trail that he believed Putin was someone with whom he could do business was
redolent of Reagans and Margaret Thatchers views of Gorbachev.
President Richard Nixon with his then-National Security Advisor Henry
Kissinger in 1972.
But I think that this conceptualization of what may lie ahead is off the
mark. Today there is no Soviet Union, no Russian empire in Europe, and
nothing of the kind to resolve. Moreover, with all of the negative
associations in Russia regarding Gorbachevs naïve trust in the Americans
(including the economic distress that followed in the 1990s and the
aggressive expansion of NATO up to Russias borders), the Reagan-Gorbachev
parallel is a nonstarter for the Russian side.
Instead, I see the Nixon-Brezhnev détente of the early 1970s as a better
frame of reference. One of the great implementers of that détente was Henry
Kissinger, whose Realpolitik underlies Trumps America First thinking. And
Kissinger himself has been very visible in the Trump foreign policy circle.
He was with Trump when he received Foreign Minister Lavrov and Ambassador
Kislyak in the Oval Office a couple of months ago. Kissinger also was
Trumps messenger to Putin a week ago in Moscow when the former Secretary of
State had a tête-à-tête with the Russian President that Russian state
television considered newsworthy.
Nixon-era détente was all about peaceful coexistence between two world
superpowers pursuing their own national interests, not about cozy
friendship.
There are, of course, some key differences. Today, we do not have an
ideological divide driving the competition of these two countries, but we do
have heightened and even malicious competitiveness in which U.S. power
centers still see the United States as the indispensable and unipolar
superpower that can operate wherever it wants without interference.
So, the obstacle that must be cleared is to find a polite way of saying the
unspeakable in American politics, that Russia and other powerful nations are
permitted spheres of influence, rather than the entire globe being
Americas sphere of influence. At the highest level of abstraction, we are
talking about an agreement on world governance.
In the heyday of détente in the 1970s, Brezhnev offered Nixon a condominium:
if we and you agree, said Brezhnev, no one else in the world will dare raise
a finger. The Americans did not buy it. Nixon could not have accepted that
even if he wished because Congress would never agree. Putin is not offering
such a condominium, but instead is offering mutual responsibility for
governance through the United Nations and other international agencies, like
the G-20, a proposition that Trump might be willing to go for since it would
shift the financial burden for the worlds security away from the U.S. and
thus fit with his core slogan, America First.
Russian Viewpoint
In trying to understand how the Russians have assessed the Putin-Trump
meeting, as usual I have found the countrys highest-level political talk
show, Sunday Evening with Vladimir Soloviev, to be an invaluable aid.
Opinion was divided between politicians and think tank intellectuals who are
openly optimistic and those who are guardedly optimistic.
Couple walking along the Kremlin, Dec. 7, 2016. (Photo by Robert Parry)
The openly optimistic commentators believe that Trump and Putin got off to a
good start, with good personal chemistry which promises an improvement of
bilateral relations. And in general they believe that Russia did well from
the encounter, with the eyes of the world directed respectfully at their
President. The world had returned to the good old days when everyone looked
to Washington and Moscow as the arbiters of global stresses.
The guardedly optimistic commentators believe that the meeting does not hold
the promise of good relations, but may mark the end of deterioration and so
potentially averts war, which otherwise was quite possibly on the horizon.
The meeting and its longer-than-expected duration highlight the
understanding in the United States that maintaining working relations and
open dialogue with Russia is essential for world peace.
But the anti-Russian sanctions will remain and the major power blocs of the
United States and Europe on one side and Russia and China on the other will
vie for influence and keep their distance from one another for many years to
come.
It also bears mention that the Russians were bemused by the criticism of
Trump from American journalists and other attendees of the G-20 Summit for
being incompetent, something of a deranged fool. No one in living memory had
witnessed such contempt for an American Commander in Chief from his fellow
citizens. This fact curbed Russian expectations that anything promised by
Trump could actually be realized.
Another prominent feature of the G-20 was the obvious isolation of the U.S.
delegation at the conclusion of the summit when the other 19 members joined
in a common statement reaffirming their countries commitment to the Paris
Climate Change treaty from which Trump has withdrawn the United States.
The other main aspect of the G-20 in Hamburg that captured the headlines of
the U.S. and European press was the violence of the demonstrators who, as is
now customary at such events, came to curse globalization and the free trade
pacts that G-20 members have traditionally subscribed to.
An irony about the large-scale protests, which primarily targeted
globalization, was that Donald Trump is the first American President in the
modern era to oppose the free-trade principles typically espoused at the
G-20. For once the protesters had someone who shared their outlook inside
the halls of the summit.
Gilbert Doctorow is a Brussels-based political analyst. His latest book Does
Russia Have a Future? was published in August 2015.
