Trump-Putin Summit: All Things Considered
After Trump’s comments in Helsinki, it made sense to wait before passing judgement. Obviously, his performance was un-presidential and invited a bipartisan beat-down: he has only himself to blame. Democrats did advise the president to cancel the Putin meeting because of DOJ indictments of Russian GRU baddies just days before Trump flew to Helsinki. With only an inkling of what was said in private, even the ever-loyal Newt Gingrich described Trump’s press conference as “the most serious mistake of his presidency.” Just how bad was it?
When asked about Russian election meddling, Trump drifted off into a vague diatribe about the “FBI never [taking] the [DNC] server [or] the servers of the Pakistani gentlemen” – right before he (gasp!) asked his Russian counterpart for a life line: “President Putin may very well want to address it, and very strongly.” This invited widespread criticism, including charges from former CIA director John Brennan that “[Trump’s comments] were nothing short of treasonous [and exceeded] the threshold of high crimes and misdemeanors.”
Fortunately, the tincture of time will heal our national embarrassment. Trump corrected the record the next day, and Sarah Huckabee Sanders has confirmed Putin did agree to help denuclearize North Korea, corroborating what both leaders said separately to Fox News about the nuclear threat. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told senators the following Wednesday he had debriefed the president, but he would not disclose the content of the one-on-one conversation between Putin and Trump. So – what is the real takeaway from Helsinki?
Don’t expect this president to ever adopt the politesse and precision of previous American presidents. Of course this frightens the opposition party, but Trump can speak in a way that frightens even non-Democrats. He could have articulated a strategic case for engaging Putin to fight mutual adversaries, but he did not. I wonder: is there some merit in his foggy positions and verbal grenades? After all, Crooked Hillary did lose, Rocket Man Kim did stop firing missiles over Japan, freeloading Europe did spend $41 billion more on defense and job-sucking Mexico did re-negotiate NAFTA.
I am convinced President Trump cannot be judged by his words; therefore, his actions must be the true test of his patriotism. To wit, he has upheld, imposed or increased sanctions against Russians on three separate occasions. He closed Russian diplomatic properties suspected of surveilling in Washington, New York, San Francisco and Seattle, and expelled 60 diplomats after Russia was suspected of carrying out a nerve-agent attack on British soil.
Trump also approved the sale of lethal offensive weapons to Ukraine, which the Washington Post confessed will “complicate [his] stated ambition to work with Russian President Vladimir Putin.” He advised NATO countries to deny Putin oil profits and control over their energy, promising Eastern Europeans America would provide alternative sources of energy (the EU has now pledged to buy liquified gas from the US). Above all, Trump has continuously urged NATO countries to invest more to defend against its charter enemy, Russia. NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg admitted European defense spending is up because of Trump’s “leadership” and “carried message.”
It is possible Trump can privately see Putin as an enemy without publicly playing his hand. Trump inherited the Russia/Putin problem and is entitled to originate his own diplomatic approach. After all, George soul-whispering Bush and Barack re-set button Obama got nowhere with Russia, and candidate Trump did promise a new approach (“it would be nice if we got along”). As Donald Rumsfeld once advised, presidents negotiate with the foreign leaders they have and cannot wait for the leaders they might want. A responsible successor would try whatever’s necessary to correct what’s been left undone by his predecessor – and Obama’s failures have forced Trump to take “a political risk in pursuit of peace.”
In 1954, Winston Churchill told legislators at a White House luncheon, “meeting jaw to jaw is better than war” (source: Definitive Wit of Winston Churchill). He was defending a conference with the Soviet Union. Democrats should remember that FDR only tolerated Stalin’s thuggery because Nazism was the greater existential threat. Today’s existential threat is Islamic terror, but Democrat domino theorists speak as if they would risk American lives to make Crimea safe for democracy. Wrong! The Vietnam War disproved that theory at a cost of 58,220 American lives.
The Trump-Putin conspiracy is still unproven and politics have thoroughly muddled our understanding of the real Russia problem. Democrats would rather browbeat Trump over Russian election-meddling than believe Russia would help the US fight Islamic terror or pressure Kim Jong-un. Trump browbeats Obama’s intelligence holdovers for selling out America’s interests because he believes their criticism makes the Putin problem worse. Putin must be chuckling over our house divided.
Mike Pompeo is squared away and has clearly articulated the REAL Russia problem – even if Trump’s words confuse and confound. Putin told Trump in Helsinki he considered the planned NATO missile-defense shield on Russia’s western border a clear-and-present threat. And this is on top of three existing problems: (1) Russia and the USA control 90 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons, (2) START expires in three years, and (3) Russia has developed an indefensible hypersonic nuclear missile. Bush tried it his way. Obama tried it his way. Maybe Trump has a better way to keep the USA out of a nuclear war.