A
walk on the wild side as Trump meets Putin at Finland station
Pepe
Escobar
17
July, 2018
US
President stirs up a hornet’s nest with his press conference
alongside his Russian counterpart, but it seems that no ‘grand
bargain’ was struck on Syria, and on Iran they appear to strongly
disagree.
“The
Cold War is a thing of the past.” By the time President Putin said
as much during preliminary remarks at his joint press conference with
President Trump in Helsinki, it was clear this would not stand. Not
after so much investment by American conservatives in Cold War 2.0.
Russophobia
is a 24/7 industry, and all concerned, including its media vassals,
remain absolutely livid with the “disgraceful” Trump-Putin
presser. Trump has “colluded with Russia.” How could the
President of the United States promote “moral equivalence” with a
“world-class thug”?
Multiple
opportunities for apoplectic outrage were in order.
Trump:
“Our relationship has never been worse than it is now. However,
that changed. As of about four hours ago.”
Putin:
“The United States could be more decisive in nudging Ukrainian
leadership.”
Trump:
“There was no collusion… I beat Hillary Clinton easily.”
Putin:
“We should be guided by facts. Can you name a single fact that
would definitively prove collusion? This is nonsense.”
Then,
the clincher: the Russian president calls [Special Counsel] Robert
Mueller’s ‘bluff’, offering to interrogate the Russians
indicted for alleged election meddling in the US if Mueller makes an
official request to Moscow. But in exchange, Russia would expect the
US to question Americans on whether Moscow should face charges for
illegal actions.
Trump
hits it out of the park when asked whether he believes US
intelligence, which concluded that Russia did meddle in the election,
or Putin, who strongly denies it.
“President
Putin says it’s not Russia. I don’t see any reason why it would
be.”
As
if this was not enough, Trump doubles down invoking the Democratic
National Committee (DNC) server. “I really do want to see the
server. Where is the server? I want to know. Where is the server and
what is the server saying?”
It
was inevitable that a strategically crucial summit between the
Russian and American presidencies would be hijacked by the dementia
of the US news cycle.
Trump
was unfazed. He knows that the DNC computer hard-drives – the
source of an alleged “hacking” – simply “disappeared” while
in the custody of US intel, FBI included. He knows the bandwidth
necessary for file transfer was much larger than a hack might have
managed in the time allowed. It was a leak, a download into a
flash-drive.
Additionally,
Putin knows that Mueller knows he will never be able to drag 12
Russian intelligence agents into a US courtroom. So the – debunked
– indictment, announced only three days before Helsinki, was
nothing more than a pre-emptive, judicial hand grenade.
No
wonder John Brennan, a former CIA director under the Obama
administration, is fuming. “Donald Trump’s press conference
performance in Helsinki rises to exceed the threshold of ‘high
crimes and misdemeanors.’ It was nothing short of treasonous. Not
only were Trump’s comments imbecilic, he is wholly in the pocket of
Putin.”
How
Syria and Ukraine are linked
However,
there are reasons to expect at least minimal progress on three fronts
in Helsinki: a solution for the Syria tragedy, an effort to limit
nuclear weapons and save the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces treaty
signed in 1987 by Reagan and Gorbachev, and a positive drive to
normalize US-Russia relations, away from Cold War 2.0.
Trump
knew he had nothing to offer Putin to negotiate on Syria. The Syrian
Arab Army (SAA) now controls virtually 90% of national territory.
Russia is firmly established in the Eastern Mediterranean, especially
after signing a 49-year agreement with Damascus.
Even
considering careful mentions of Israel on both sides, Putin certainly
did not agree to force Iran out of Syria.
No
“grand bargain” on Iran seems to be in the cards. The top adviser
to Ayatollah Khamenei, Ali Akbar Velayati, was in Moscow last week.
The Moscow-Tehran entente cordiale seems unbreakable. In parallel, as
Asia Times has learned, Bashar al-Assad has told Moscow he might even
agree to Iran leaving Syria, but Israel would have to return the
occupied Golan Heights. So, the status quo remains.
Putin
did mention both presidents discussed the Iran nuclear deal or Joint
Comprehensive Plan Of Action and essentially they, strongly, agree to
disagree. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Treasury Secretary
Steven Mnuchin have written a letter formally rejecting an appeal for
carve-outs in finance, energy and healthcare by Germany, France and
the UK. A maximum economic blockade remains the name of the game.
Putin may have impressed on Trump the possible dire consequences of a
US oil embargo on Iran, and even the (far-fetched) scenario of Tehran
blocking the Strait of Hormuz.
Judging
by what both presidents said, and what has been leaked so far, Trump
may not have offered an explicit US recognition of Crimea for Russia,
or an easing of Ukraine-linked sanctions.
It’s
reasonable to picture a very delicate ballet in terms of what they
really discussed in relation to Ukraine. Once again, the only thing
Trump could offer on Ukraine is an easing of sanctions. But for
Russia the stakes are much higher.
Putin
clearly sees Southwest Asia and Central and Eastern Europe as totally
integrated. The Black Sea basin is where Russia intersects with
Ukraine, Turkey, Eastern Europe and the Caucasus. Or, historically,
where the former Russian, Ottoman and Habsburg empires converged.
A
Greater Black Sea implies the geopolitical convergence of what’s
happening in both Syria and Ukraine. That’s why for the Kremlin
only an overall package matters. It’s not by accident that
Washington identified these two nodes – destabilizing Damascus and
turning the tables in Kiev – to cause problems for Moscow.
Putin
sees a stable Syria and a stable Ukraine as essential to ease his
burden in dealing with the Balkans and the Baltics. We’re back once
again to that classic geopolitical staple, the Intermarium (“between
the seas”). That’s the ultra-contested rimland from Estonia in
the north to Bulgaria in the south – and to the Caucasus in the
east. Once, that used to frame the clash between Germany and Russia.
Now, that frames the clash between the US and Russia.
In
a fascinating echo of the summit in Helsinki, Western strategists do
lose their sleep gaming on Russia being able to “Finlandize” this
whole rimland.
And
that brings us, inevitably, to what could be termed The German
Question. What is Putin’s ultimate goal: a quite close business and
strategic relationship with Germany (German business is in favor)? Or
some sort of entente cordiale with the US? EU diplomats in Brussels
are openly discussing that underneath all the thunder and lightning,
this is the holy of the holies.
Take
a walk on the wild side
The
now notorious key takeaway from a Trump interview at his golf club in
Turnberry, Scotland, before Helsinki, may offer some clues.
“Well,
I think we have a lot of foes. I think the European Union is a foe,
what they do to us in trade. Now, you wouldn’t think of the
European Union, but they’re a foe. Russia is a foe in certain
respects. China is a foe economically, certainly they are a foe. But
that doesn’t mean they are bad. It doesn’t mean anything. It
means that they are competitive.”
Putin
certainly knows it. But even Trump, while not being a Clausewitzian
strategist, may have had an intuition that the post-WWII liberal
order, built by a hegemonic US and bent on permanent US military
hegemony over the Eurasian landmass while subduing a vassal Europe,
is waning.
While
Trump firebombs this United States of Europe as an “unfair”
competitor of the US, it’s essential to remember that it was the
White House that asked for the Helsinki summit, not the Kremlin.
Trump
treats the EU with undisguised disdain. He would love nothing better
than for the EU to dissolve. His Arab “partners” can be easily
controlled by fear. He has all but declared economic war on China and
is on tariff overdrive – even as the IMF warns that the global
economy runs the risk of losing around $500 billion in the process.
And he faces the ultimate intractable, the China-Russia-Iran axis of
Eurasian integration, which simply won’t go away.
So,
talking to “world-class thug” Putin – in usual suspect
terminology – is a must. A divide-and-rule here, a deal there –
who knows what some hustling will bring? To paraphrase Lou Reed, New
Trump City “is the place where they say “Hey babe, take a walk on
the wild side.”
During
the Helsinki presser, Putin, fresh from Russia’s spectacular World
Cup soft power PR coup, passed a football to Trump. The US president
said he would give it to his son, Barron, and passed the ball to
First Lady Melania. Well, the ball is now in Melania’s court.
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