An extraordinary entanglement of strategic and domestic politics and of the personal and the political was on display on Monday at President Donald Trump’s summit meeting with President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki. Their encounter was dominated as much by Trump’s rejection of charges that he colluded with Russians in winning the 2016 US presidential election as by his claim that he has put their relations on a new and constructive footing.
While Trump’s critics in the US and elsewhere see nothing of substance achieved from the summit, the realities are truly different and profound. This was for the first time in over 70 years since the end of the Second World War and the start of competition and conflict between Russia and the USA that an American President and his Russian counterpart could come some so close to declare mutual rapport with each other and work for peace and stability in the world.
This has been the greatest achievement of their Helsinki summit that augurs well for international peace and stability in these volatile and troubled times in the international setting. Unfortunately, Trump’s diehard critics say it otherwise and accuse him of sell out or caving in to Putin and Russia at Helsinki. Surely these are the disgruntled quarters who could never easily accept the results of the US Presidential election this year and are still looking for any opportunity, even if foul, to tarnish the President’s image and start a case for his impeachment on wishful grounds of his secret collaboration with Russia.
Their agreement to cooperate on Syria, nuclear non-proliferation in Iran and North Korea and their exchanges on Ukraine and energy supplies to Europe bear out this claim against his domestic critics. Putin should be delighted by the positive role so bestowed on him at this time of major change in the global political order. President Trump’s positive response to Putin’s proposal that the two states should use a criminal cooperation treaty to pursue the investigation of allegation of Russian meddling in US election cuts right across domestic critics of the US President. Trump’s readiness to defend himself against his own intelligence services on the issue of Russian collusion in the 2016 election was not astonishing given the charges laid last week against 12 Russian operatives by the FBI team led by Robert Mueller. At their joint press conference, he said repeatedly he won the election fairly and brilliantly.
President Trump was testing his Republican party’s patriotism to the limit in so prioritising his own interests against the US legal process in cooperation with Putin.
Fears that Trump would compromise US and European policy on Ukraine by offering to recognise Russia’s 2014 takeover of Crimea as legitimate did not materialise. The two men agreed to continue a dialogue at the highest level, frankly recognising they have different interests and understandings on the issue. Surely such a posture cannot be dismissed off as unreasonable on either side.
A similar pragmatism was displayed on Syria, where Trump underlined his determination to protect Israel, defeat Islamic terrorism and collaborate in providing humanitarian aid to Syrian refugees now that the war there is coming to a close. More detailed contact between the US and Russia on containing Iran’s power in the Middle East region is possible and likely from this summit.
Coming after Trump last week attacked German reliance on Russian energy, his description of the European Union as a competitive “foe” on trade and his support for Brexit, this entente with Russia’s leader signals a real shift in geopolitical realities.