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On Monday, President Donald Trump and Russia’s Vladimir Putin will hold their first one-on-one summit in Helsinki, Finland. Among other topics, President Trump and his Russian counterpart are expected to discuss Russia’s interference in the 2016 US election, an issue which President Trump told reporters at the NATO summit that he will “of course” raise. The pair is also likely to discuss the war in Syria, nuclear arms control, and Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea, though the Kremlin has insisted the issue is not on the agenda.
Writing on the upcoming summit, AEI Resident Scholar and Director of Russian Studies Leon Aron criticizes Trump’s eagerness to succeed in diplomacy with Putin, even when he has little real power to make substantive promises. He writes:
Have no illusions: at home he cannot afford any substantive “détente” with the US. For at least the past six years, the dominant domestic propaganda narrative (and the basis of his popularity) has been America’s alleged “war on Russia” and Putin’s brilliance in not only protecting the motherland but also restoring to it at least some of the glory lost in the Soviet collapse.
“You could not handle Putin – but I can!” appears to be his leitmotif…: on Crimea, on Ukraine, and on the sanctions. By dangling in front of Putin something that he,because of fierce opposition from Congress, public opinion (and almost certainly from his own top advisors), he may turn a merely hostile Putin into a disappointed Putin – who will be far more dangerous.
To arrange an interview with Leon Aron or Dalibor Rohac please contact AEI Media Services at mediaservices@aei.org or 202.862.5829.
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