on many of the issues under discussion during the Trump visit. Below,
a piece form the UK Times on NATO. I have aso included the link because the
comments section is informative as well...
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MICHAEL BURLEIGH
July 11 2018, 12:01am, The Times
Trump could give Russia everything it wants
Michael Burleigh
Nato allies fear that a disaffected president will warm to Putin and unpick the postwar order
The World Cup in Russia has been a triumph of soft power. Foreign fans have been surprised by the gleaming stadiums, clean streets and friendly hosts, while TV commentators have obliged with snippets of Soviet history, without mentioning the kleptocracy that has ruled Russia for nearly two decades. That regime (or operatives it cannot control) reaches out and poisons people, fatally.
Dire predictions about the “ultra” fans of FC Spartak Moscow running amok or of police auxiliaries wielding whips against unruly crowds have proved false. As extensions of Putin’s security state, they can be turned off as well as on.
Instead, Vladimir Putin has presented “an open, hospitable and genial” Russia during the World Cup while keeping his own appearances to a minimum. He sat next to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman as Russia crushed Saudi Arabia 5-0, but then declined a seat next to the (very tall) King Felipe VI of Spain when Russia triumphed again.
There will be scarcely a pause between the end of the World Cup in Moscow on Sunday and another global spectacle, the hard power meeting of Putin and Donald Trump in Helsinki the following day. Trump chose Helsinki because Vienna is too close to Munich for comfort, with its memories of 1938. Putin meanwhile will regard Finland as home turf, one of those fake countries, like Ukraine, which somehow in 1917 escaped Tsarist rule and Russia’s cultural orbit.
The summit is to include a private session between the two presidents, with only interpreters present. Trump would not be the first US leader to fall for Putin’s feigned sincerity, though do not expect any bizarre revelations about reading the Russian’s “soul” from this all-surface president.
This is the part that most worries Nato allies, who will have noted that all Trump extracted from the Singapore summit with North Korea was a promise from Kim Jong-un to return the remains of US soldiers killed in the Korean war. In return, Trump undermined his own Japanese and South Korean allies by cancelling joint exercises on the peninsula, which is the main reason why the leaders of those two countries are booked in for a trilateral “hedging” summit in Beijing in December.
European allies worry that, fresh from a Nato summit which is likely to be acrimonious, with Trump complaining that the US taxpayer is being ripped off by Germans who produce too many Audis and not enough tanks, the president will respond to vague offers of détente by cutting training exercises, or worse.
Worse could be a general delineation of spheres of influence, which for starters could give de facto recognition to the annexation of Crimea and Russia’s special needs in the post-Soviet space. It could also mean a free hand to help President Assad wipe out the remnants of Syrian rebels the US once supported, in “deconfliction zones” such as Daraa.
The Russians might offer to respect the neutrality of Georgia and Ukraine, so that they are free to choose economic partnerships but not military alliances. Putin could also offer to restrain his Iranian friends (and rivals) in Syria, while reducing the Revolutionary Guard’s military footprint near Israel’s borders. Trump in turn might refrain from executive energy sanctions on Russia in order to damage Iran, a goal Moscow shares since it does not want competition from Iranian gas in future. Both men might also tentatively explore how to counterbalance a risen China, a challenge that must unsettle Putin as much as Trump, regardless of the cordiality of his relations with Xi.
Much will depend on how Russian policymakers assess what Trump is in a position to give, without seeming to confirm the suspicions of collusion and corruption which underpin the Mueller investigation. Arms control is a suitably technical subject susceptible to bold gestures, which are not followed up in practice nowadays.
Both leaders are busily lowering the threshold for use of “low yield” tactical nuclear weapons. The Russians are also worried by Trump’s boosting of anti-missile defences, while the Americans are rattled by Putin’s boasts this March about a new generation of hypersonic missiles that could take out much of Florida, as one video charmingly illustrated.
Helsinki is an appropriate venue for any attempt to extend the 2010 New START treaty, which limited deployed warheads to 1,550 and expires in 2021, while addressing new generation weapons. “People can sleep more soundly”, Trump could announce, as he did in Singapore.
After the Nato summit has doubtless confirmed the lack of empathy between Trump and democratically elected allied leaders apparent at the G7, the worry should be the affinity he evidently feels for a strongman who, like him, regards the EU as an obstacle to big powers bullying smaller ones individually. Putin does it through social media and mystery money, Trump with the help of his roving disrupter Steve Bannon and some of his new crop of tactless tycoon ambassadors.
Rote Atlanticism from the grandees of Nato, let alone neurotic British guff about a “special relationship”, is manifestly not adequate to the coincidence of Trump and Putin. All the density of intra-institutional ties such as the Five Eyes intelligence alliance and the rest of it could be undone by a maverick businessman who does not know when he is out of his depth.
Michael Burleigh’s updated The Best of Times, The Worst of Times: A History of Now is published by Pan Macmillan
Roger Boyes is away
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/trump-could-give-russia-everything-it-wants-n9n2ltphq
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