Our view: Can Trump’s chief diplomat clarify Helsinki talks?
When Secretary of State Mike Pompeo testifies before a Senate committee today, Americans might finally get a better idea of what their president negotiated in secret last week with Russian leader Vladimir Putin in Helsinki. Or maybe not.
If any U.S. official other than Donald Trump knows what happened during those two hours he spent with Putin, it should be his chief diplomat. But that’s assuming Trump, famous for playing fast and loose with the facts, offered an unvarnished readout that went beyond what he and Putin said at their postmeeting news conference.
Putin made a show of bringing a pad and pen to the meeting. Former CIA Director John Brennan says it’s likely that the Russians secretly taped everything. Meanwhile, Trump insisted on no notetakers.
The result? Russians have been spinning the dickens out of the event, trumpeting “agreements reached” that, not surprisingly, dovetail with Moscow’s security interests. At the same time, high-ranking U.S. military and intelligence chiefs say they’re largely in the dark.
To recap: More than a week later, the American people, and even some key administration officials, don't know what Trump might have told Putin. But the Russians say they know, and they are spinning that version to their advantage.
Is this any way to run U.S. foreign policy?
Even under normal circumstances, this would be a troubling situation. But it’s particularly so in this instance, when a special counsel is looking into Russian interference in the 2016 election and when Trump remains inexplicably reluctant to criticize Putin.
Among the questions Pompeo ought to be asked at today’s hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee:
❚ How hard did the president confront Putin about past and current interference in U.S. politics and about cyberattacks, such as the hacking of American utilities last year?
❚ What’s the deal on Syria? Putin said it was discussed extensively, and a Russian defense official later asserted that Trump agreed to help fund reconstruction of war-ravaged areas from where millions of refugees have fled. But U.S. policy is to bar reconstruction assistance for regions brutally recaptured by Syrian President Bashar Assad, an accused war criminal. What, if anything, did Trump commit to?
❚ Moscow has said that the leaders discussed a referendum in areas of Ukraine held by Russian-backed separatists to determine future leadership. U.S. officials deny this happened. Which is it? And did Trump press Putin about allowing United Nations peacekeepers into eastern Ukraine, something Russia has resisted?
❚ Was there some sort of agreement to extend the 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, set to expire in 2021? That would be a good thing, if Trump isn’t hung up on the fact it was signed by President Barack Obama. And did Trump raise Russian violations of the
1987 treaty on intermediate range nuclear forces?
Even as details of last week’s summit are slow to emerge, Trump seems eager to invite Putin to Washington in the fall. An ongoing dialogue with an adversary is not necessarily a bad idea, but a Russian leader who’s conducting information warfare against the United States isn’t deserving of a warm White House welcome.
If there is another Trump-Putin summit, either in Washington or elsewhere, it’s imperative that the Russian leader not be handed the advantage of shaping the post-meeting narrative. The answer to that is simple: Make sure a senior U.S. official sits in and takes detailed notes.