The politics of four-eyed meetings

There are summits, and then there are twosome summits, as the warm-up to a hotly anticipated meeting between Trump and Putin makes clear.

IT had to come sooner or later: a face-to-face meeting between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.

The Hamburg meeting five days from now is expected to be on the sidelines of the G20 Summit. The G20 itself is still supposed to be the main event – even if it may not seem like it.

Ever since Trump’s campaign win, an assortment of critics, naysayers, neo-conservatives and Hillary camp losers had been hounding him on various counts – real, exaggerated or just rumoured.

It was ostensibly about his go-italone attitude, his perceived insensitivity over political correctness, and his supposed gloating over sexual encounters – or at least his crude (if private) boast about them.

But few of these complaints would stick.

To Trump’s ideological adversaries however, his remarks about Nato being “obsolete”, his questioning of US military intervention and his seeming indifference to continuing military support for allies were more serious.

To the US deep state and its military-industrial complex, this was highly disturbing stuff from the head of the world’s sole superpower. What would happen to the US arms industry, representing the world’s most profitable legal sector, if the US President actually meant what he said?

Thus, an otherwise innocuous statement about working with a major power like Russia against global terrorism becomes suspect, and grounds for allegations of an unseemly pact with “ex-KGB” Putin.

“Vets” (military veterans) such as Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham would then weigh in, spic- ing up the narrative with more righteous indignation against any Trump plan even remotely involving Putin.

Trump the iconoclast had effectively united the right wings of both main parties against him, as a bipartisan Establishment slid deeper into Cold War II. A bipartisan conservatism also emerged, alarmed at his wayward iconoclasm.

And the catcalls, criticisms and censure kept coming. But Trump being Trump, unfazed criticism of his decisions simply invited more unabashed, similar decisions.

As his presidential campaign heated up, he taunted his Democratic Party rivals with the fact that Putin enjoyed higher approval ratings in Russia than Obama did in his own country. To Trump, this meant Putin was clearly the stronger and better leader.

But to Trump’s more vocal critics, this “proved” that he was only a Putin stooge. For those partial to removing elected leaders through extra-electoral means, impeaching Trump became a viable option.

Putin himself watched these shenanigans with distant amusement. In January he accused the outgoing Obama administration of trying to undermine the legitimacy of President-elect Trump with false allegations.

One was a story spun by former British spy Christopher Steele, accusing Trump of consorting with Russian prostitutes as a way to discredit his chumminess with Putin. The Russian leader said people who invent such stories to taint other people were worse than prostitutes, and Steele scooted overnight.

In May, an American journalist asked Putin at a skating rink what he thought of Trump’s firing of FBI director James Comey. Putin looked amused and said it was Trump’s decision, the question itself sounded silly, and then excused himself to play a game of ice hockey.

Various concocted stories have come and gone, all designed to stigmatise Trump and his presidency. And all these were before Trump and Putin had ever met.

All that may change, perhaps only by escalation, come this Friday. Trump and Putin will finally meet, even if it may be no more than a brief exchange of pleasantries.

Given all that the US media have said and done so far, their reporting and commentary can be expected to hype the occasion even more.

But there is one party that has already been playing out the whole rigmarole for months already: the Trump administration itself. Only too aware of the likely brickbats in store, it has been extra careful to avoid any slip-ups.

In April, Foreign Secretary Rex Tillerson arrived in Moscow on a “feeler” visit, the first by a Trump Cabinet member. The State Department described it as an “exploratory trip”.

After a chemical weapons attack in Syria’s Khan Sheikhoun, Tillerson “prepared” for his trip by blaming Russia for failing to rid the Syrian government’s chemical weapons stock. Evidence later pointed to possible rebel use of the weapons, as had also transpired in 2003.

Washington blamed Assad’s Syria again for the recent attack, again on questionable evidence, responding with a barrage of 59 cruise missiles against a Syrian air base. Moscow replied by cutting a hotline with the US for avoiding midair incidents over Syria.

Tillerson’s firmness on Russia’s role in Syria soon came to be seen as “making up” for Trump’s reserve. The Secretary of State gained approval and encouragement from former State Department official Eliot Cohen, a neo-conservative in the last Bush administration.

How would all this affect a supposed “reset” in US-Russia relations? Quite a bit, if Trump’s critics nervously watching his warming to Putin’s Moscow have their way.

Another Trump appointee, Defence Secretary James Mattis, soon came into view. As with Tillerson, Mattis echoed the Establishment view that Assad was responsible for the latest gas attack.

And like Tillerson, Mattis was not hounded by Trump’s critics on some scandal or other. There would be no “Mike Flynn moment” for either of them.

As Tillerson arrived in Moscow, Mattis announced that the US air strikes in Syria would not kill prospects for US-Russia ties. He gave the assurance that the US was still focused on fighting Da’esh (Islamic State).

That might have helped somewhat in repairing recent ruptures with Moscow for Tillerson’s benefit. But for Mattis to have to give such assurances at all meant that a gesture at least was needed.

On the same day, it was reported that Trump’s children Ivanka and Eric persuaded their father to respond to Syria’s gas attack with missiles. Where officials have their limits, the Trump family is at hand to further the White House agenda.

In Moscow, Tillerson was able to meet Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov as well as Putin. In May, Lavrov paid a return trip to Washington to meet Tillerson as well as Trump.

On the same day, Vice-President Mike Pence met Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin. It was widely reported that Pence pledged “unwavering (US) support” for Ukraine’s sovereignty.

But now Kiev had been encouraged, and the Ukrainians wanted more. In June, President Petro Poroshenko wanted a meeting with Trump before Trump’s meeting with Putin this month.

It was a case of Ukraine seeking to “look East” to Tokyo. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was able to meet Trump twice, in November in New York and in February in Washington, to get his “side” in before Chinese President Xi Jinping could meet Trump in April in Florida.

Now the most anticipated meeting of all with Trump, for Trump, looms with Putin. If Trump’s conservative detractors were relieved with recent US actions over Syria and Cuba that alienated Russia, they may be anxious again as Trump seems just as keen as before on meeting Putin.

Some of Trump’s advisers wanted a low-key, no-frills meeting, but Trump reportedly wanted to pull out all the stops.

But neo-cons in particular still have a foolproof way to prevent a US-Russia détente: keep harping on Trump’s “Russia ties”.