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US President Donald Trump on Monday met with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin for a weeklong summit in the Finnish capital of Helsinki, just 391 km from the historic Russian city of St. Petersburg. The summit was particularly important as it survived a flurry of truculent criticism, calls for cancellation, and a fanciful Trump painting as a "traitor and stooge" at home in the United States of Democrats clamor, some chary republicans and even some US executive officials like former CIA boss John Brennan
Criticism of the summit by the opposition camp (and a notable republican hawk and Russian John McCain) was visible, particularly in the backdrop of the recent investigation into the alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 US elections, by Robert Mueller and his team, who was named last year on May 17 by the Deputy Attorney General of the US Department of Justice, Rod J Rosenstein
The Mueller team revealed Friday in its evaluation of information, only three days before the Putin-Trump summit, that twelve Russian military intelligence officers working for two units of the GRU (M an intelligence branch of the Russian General Staff of the Armed Forces) was indicted for his involvement in the piracy of the Democratic National Committee and Clinton's election campaign.
Ironically and to the chagrin of Trump's detractors, the intelligence badessment team Mueller fails to identify the real reasons for the alleged Russian interference and to badess whether she had it or not not an empirical impact on the outcome of the election. Moreover, he does not know if the Americans on Trump's campaign knew that they were actually coordinating with Russian intelligence officers – giving more strength to Trump's persistent line "he said. there was no collusion. "
Keeping the flaming chess and glitches of Mueller's badessment in view, we can not stop calling such a hasty and strategic revelation of indictments as " nothing more than politically motivated. "
It is worth noting here that Robert Mueller previously worked George W. Bush and Barack Obama as head of the FBI and that charges appearing just before President Trump's summit with Putin might not be just pure coincidence.
Thus, there were scruples about the "timing" of the Mueller. the accusations and ripe speculation as to whether this could bring a devastating blow to the planned summit Trump with Putin, ultimately playing in the hands of the Democ Rats, who are still struggling to face the reality of their historic defeat in the 2016 elections at the hands of a political novice in Trump.
Despite the fate of the summit hanging in the middle of such stormy criticism, a resilient Trump, following his instincts in a dramatic demonstration of his iconoclastic disposition (which some would call Trumplomacy), came forward and met Vladimir Putin in the northern capital to meditate on a host of pressing and immediate issues; The presumed electoral interference included – and now visibly a priority.
Nevertheless, it was Trump's cautious decision, because not accepting a bilateral summit with the Russians could only have resulted in chaos, destabilization and disruption. additional diplomatic failures in some areas. the world especially Syria, the Korean peninsula, Iran and even Ukraine – mainly because of the non-cooperation between the two most powerful nations in the world.
In addition, choosing to cancel the summit would have portrayed President Donald as a failure. This would have only strengthened the Democrats' favorite narrative of confrontation with Russia to the detriment of everything, even international peace and security, solely for reasons of "politically correct".
A third less discussed issue The languid instability in the Korean peninsula and the future of the US-North Korean talks
Ardent defender of a blossoming US-Russian relations since his campaign Electoral, Trump was visibly disturbed and troubled, apparently by the recent revelations of the Mueller investigation, during a fleeting interaction with media people just before the opening of the summit with his Russian counterpart.
On the other hand, Putin; A former KGB-trained spy, who was well aware of the sensitivity and opposition surrounding Mueller's accusations, appeared strangely calm and confident – emanating from the vibrations he was ready to face with caution, but boldly, the situation. Presser after the long, convoluted and cumbersome discussions between the two parties, Putin tried to appease his counterpart and hawks in the Democrats' camp by rebaduring them that the Cold War was a remnant of the past and that it was There was not even a single whiff of ideological confrontation between the two nations, which were now facing a different set of global challenges.
Apart from that, there were two other areas where Putin seemed to have granted or promised to grant concessions to his American.
First of all, in his response to a question, Donald Trump boasted that he had been offered by Putin for the Mueller team to work together and coordinate with Moscow. investigation interference. Trump hailed it as an "incredibly important offer" and hoped subtly that it would also discourage his home opponents from alleging "collusion" between the two parties.
Putin cleverly referred to a treaty between the United States and Russia since 1999 (called Mutual Legal Assistance) on mutual cooperation in criminal matters. This, he said, could serve as a channel for continuing the Mueller investigation, particularly with regard to the interrogation of the twelve Russians accused of having surreptitiously participated in the 2016 US elections.
Second, and perhaps most importantly, Trump indirectly alluded to the formation of a trilateral front in Syria with the interests of Israel in the war-torn country, potentially protected by Washington and Moscow. Trump added that working with Israel was a good thing and that he and President Putin would very much like to see the security of Israel.
While Putin did not deny Trump's statement in Israel, he nevertheless chose to while Russia fights to maintain good working relations with Israel and Iran who happen to be their worst enemies in the Middle East.
These badurances are nonetheless attributable to Israel's spectacularly successful international diplomacy including the Prime Minister's one-on-one meeting with Putin on Wednesday in the Kremlin, while he telephoned Trump on Saturday, well before the planned summit, to present the position of Israel on Syria and Iran as clearly as possible.
What Donald has been talking about with Putin is the languid instability in the Korean peninsula and the future of the US-North Korea talks. Trump claimed to have pulled out Russia's support by helping the ongoing denuclearization talks with North Korea. A possible "Russian effect" on the talks can be palpated by taking into account Trump's post-summit remark that there is no timetable for the North Korean denuclearization process.
By Robert Mueller and his men to sabotage the bilateral talks, the Putin-Trump summit was a huge success for both parties. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that they were better than the super.
It is expected that the summit will be the first step towards the establishment of a new reset in the relations between the two powers on earth. Barack Obama was unable to achieve this
The writer holds a doctorate in international relations and is an avid reader of Soviet and post-Soviet Russian studies. He can be reached at [email protected]
Published in the Daily Times, July 24 th 2018.
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