Brookings experts react to the Trump-Putin meeting and NATO summit
Thomas Wright, Director of the Center on the United States and Europe; Senior Fellow in the Project on International Order and Strategy: The summit today, and the visit to Brussels and the U.K. that preceded it, revealed that the president is now unbound, acting in accordance with his visceral beliefs about America’s role in the world. These date back over 30 years and include opposition to alliances and free trade, and his support for authoritarian strong men and Russia. In the first year of his administration, there was some hope that he would be contained by the so called “axis of adults.” Now, it is clear that that containment effort has failed and Trump is unbound. He has fired or ignored those who tried to manage him. The hawks that remain are cowed and compliant with his wishes—the sight of John Bolton supervising a policy of accommodation toward Kim Jong-un and Vladimir Putin is nothing short of extraordinary. The reckoning will come in the next international crisis when the United States may be called upon to act to uphold the international order only for the president to refuse or to take the wrong side. Each member of the administration must ask themselves how they can best serve the national interest—by working to limit the damage imposed by the president from the inside or by resigning and speaking out. Those who recently left, like H. R. McMaster and Rex Tillerson, are free from such conflicts and have a national duty to tell the American people what they know about the president’s real foreign policy agenda. Sunlight is a disinfectant that needs to be used with some haste.
Alina Polyakova, David M. Rubenstein Fellow in the Center on the United States and Europe: The worst scenario was avoided in Helsinki: There was no grand bargain on Ukraine, no Russian deal on Syria, and no reneging of U.S. security commitments to Europe. But it was still the Russian president who won at the summit. Without a clear agenda from the U.S. side, it was up to Russia to lead the way, and Putin certainly did that: On Ukraine, Putin repeated the (false) Kremlin line that Kyiv was to blame for no progress being made on the Minsk agreements. He also had to explain the U.S. policy on Crimea, with Trump apparently being unwilling to do so. On Syria, Putin suggested that Russia mediate a global coalition to help Syrian refugees and secure the Israeli border, which would help solidify Russia’s role as the great power in the Middle East. It’s possible that President Trump was assured of various Russian concessions in the one-on-one meeting with Putin before the public briefing, but watching from the outside, it certainly looked like Putin was holding the winning hand.
Constanze Stelzenmüller, Robert Bosch Senior Fellow in the Center on the United States and Europe: After one of the most cringe-worthy press conferences ever held by an American president (preceded by a shock-and-awe tour of Europe), it’s worth focusing on some essentials.
In terms of formal policy outcomes, the worst has not happened, because the administration has managed to wrestle down the president: The United States is staying the course on the illegality of the Russian annexation of Crimea, on the war in Ukraine, on deterrence and defense of NATO’s eastern periphery. For this, we Europeans should be grateful. I know I am.
In terms of the intangibles that hold this alliance together—shared values, mutual commitment, and trust—the damage done by the president is incalculable. One look at the delighted faces of our adversaries confirms it.
We need to decide what the president’s game is—is he playing reality TV, or destroying the rules-based international order? It matters. In the one, we Europeans are just viewers, and can simply turn off the TV. In the other, we’re vassals. Demands that are impossible to meet (such as raising European defense spending to 4 percent of GDP) suggest the latter.
So far, European leaders and policymakers have been reacting with remarkable restraint. But above all, they must act. They should close vulnerabilities (defense spending, the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline), and invest in cohesion and trust—with each other, but also with those elements of the U.S. administration that want to maintain the Western alliance. In this, Germany will be key.
Above all, it needs to be understood that the rift between those who seek to maintain republican constitutional orders, representative democracy, political pluralism, open and decent societies, and a rules-based international order and its adversaries is the single greatest challenge of our time—and it runs through all our countries. Schadenfreude is not in order.
Steven Pifer, Nonresident Senior Fellow in the Center on the United States and Europe and the Arms Control and Non-Proliferation Initiative: The history of American presidential travel has seen nothing like Donald Trump’s July 11-16 sojourn. He began in Brussels with continuing public blasts at allies for not spending enough on defense that totally overshadowed a useful set of NATO summit agreements. In Britain, America’s closest ally, Trump used interviews to criticize beleaguered Prime Minister May’s handling of Brexit and put the European Union first on his list of foes of the United States.
In Helsinki, Trump delivered perhaps the most embarrassing press conference performance ever by an American president. With Vladimir Putin standing at his side, Trump did not mention Russian aggression against Ukraine; when asked, could not name a single issue on which Kremlin action had contributed to the downturn in U.S.-Russia relations; took Putin’s denial of interference in the 2016 election over the conclusion of the U.S. intelligence community and did not say that Russia should cease such meddling or face consequences. Putin must have been thrilled. One can hope that Trump did better in the actual meeting, but is there any reason to think so?
U.S. national interests would have been better served had Trump stayed home this past week.
