| | | | The Real Danger of Trump's Putin Meeting: Smith | | There are plenty of reasons why President Trump's second meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin was a problem, argues Julianne Smith, a former deputy national security adviser, in the Financial Times. "[I]nternational summits are not wedding receptions. World leaders do not wander from table to table, making small talk."
"Most troubling is that the presidents of Russia and the U.S. met without staff and an American translator," Smith writes. "Doing so gave the Russians a huge advantage. It enabled Mr Putin to say things he might not have said in the presence of his own staff or Mr Trump's. It ensured that there would not be any formal record of the conversation, granting Russia as much control over the narrative as the U.S. And it allowed Mr Putin to claim something was 'lost in translation' if, as is often the case, he fails to follow through in the future on a promise made to Mr Trump. The latter will probably live to regret ceding control of the meeting."
Another problem? The message it sent to other nations: "[T]he discussion took place in front of all the other attendees, including some countries that failed to secure even one meeting with Mr Trump. The optics of this discussion -- Mr Trump and Mr Putin sitting together for an hour -- will not have gone unnoticed by the U.S.'s closest allies."
| | Trump's Syria Rebel Move: A Victory for Assad, Iran and Putin? | | "President Trump has decided to end the CIA's covert program to arm and train moderate Syrian rebels battling the government of Bashar al-Assad," the Washington Post reports. - Team Trump has made a mistake. Katherine Zimmerman, a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and author of a new report, "America's Real Enemy: The Salafi-Jihadi Movement," emails Global Briefing that the decision is a mistake.
"President Trump's decision to end aid to moderate rebels sells out the very Syrians the United States should be supporting. They alone are the ticket to ending Russian and Iranian dominance of Syria, something Trump himself has said is anathema to American interests," Zimmerman writes.
"In addition, the decision will delight al Qaeda and ISIS, who will be the only remaining opposition to the regime. Finally, President Trump, who seems to believe that ending support for the rebels will bring fighting to a close more quickly, doesn't appear to have considered what a close of fighting on those terms will mean: Victory for Assad, to be sure. And for Iran. And for Vladimir Putin, who will gain that which he cares about most: the new Russian base near Latakia that allows him to challenge the U.S. and NATO in the Eastern Mediterranean."
| | How Trudeau Has Mastered Handling Trump | | | Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has mastered the art of dealing with President Trump, writes Jordan Michael Smith for Reuters. By using a two-step approach of maintaining independence but using "mild, measured" words, Trudeau has been able to criticize Trump without generating hostility.
"Trump's off-the-cuff tweeting presents a 'new wrinkle in international diplomacy,' Trudeau said in June. He declared Canada 'deeply disappointed' in the decision to extract the U.S. from the Paris Agreement on climate change. The day after Trump signed an executive order banning some Muslim refugees, Trudeau tweeted, 'To those fleeing persecution, terror & war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith. Diversity is our strength #WelcomeToCanada.' A clearer contrast to Trump could not be made," Smith argues.
"Trudeau has avoided confrontation even when Trump has attacked Canada. After Trump called Canada's trade policies a 'disgrace,' Trudeau responded with almost a parody of Canadian politeness, cautiously saying he would defend Canada's interests: 'The way to do that is to make arguments in a respectful fashion, based on facts, and work constructively and collaboratively with our neighbors.'"
| | China to America: We Don't Want Your "Mediocre" Products | | America's media is missing the point with its pessimistic response to the failure Wednesday of high-level U.S.-China trade talks to reach a breakthrough, China's semi-official Global Times editorializes. To understand who is to blame, the United States should look in the mirror.
"Blaming China alone for a bilateral trade imbalance is the error of a layman. The problem lies in the distorted U.S. trade policy toward China. The U.S. is reluctant to sell high tech products that China actually needs. Instead the U.S. tries to promote the sale of genetically modified agricultural products and mediocre automobiles. However, China sells the U.S. products that the U.S. wants. How could the problem be fixed?" the paper argues.
"Through communication, U.S. trade officials will realize that the problem stems from America's economic structure. Made-in-USA products meet low demand not just in China, but in many places in the world."
| | Was Russian Invasion Good for Ukrainian Democracy? | | | Russia's occupation of Crimea and the eastern Donbas in 2014 might actually have been good for Ukrainian democracy, suggests Alexander Motyl in the Washington Post. The Russian moves managed both to banish lingering affection for Moscow and give Ukrainians a true sense of their identity. The conflict in 2014 "galvanized Ukrainian national identity to the point that the vast majority of Ukrainians today have no doubts about who they are not and who they are. They are not Russians, and they decidedly are Ukrainians, even if they remain committed to speaking the Russian language in private, Putin's aggression compelled Ukrainians to band together and discover that they are a people," Motyl writes. "Will Ukraine remain democratic? Ukrainian civil society and nationhood are here to stay. The Crimea and the occupied eastern Donbas are unlikely to revert to Ukrainian control anytime soon. The West may once again experience Ukraine fatigue, but so long as Putin's Russia remains committed to great-power imperialism and hybrid war against the West, the United States, Europe and their key institutions are unlikely to abandon Ukraine. These factors bode well for the continuation of democracy." | | Why Syria Ceasefire Could Be Bad for Israel: Rosner | | The current ceasefire in Syria is no replacement for a broader strategy. And the lack of one could come back to haunt Israel, suggests Shmuel Rosner in the New York Times. It's time for the United States to come up with a real plan – and to start leading again.
"Unfortunately, almost no Israeli strategist or military planner believes that this arrangement will hold for long. Either new fighting will erupt or, without sufficient oversight, the cease-fire will erode into nonexistence. Israel is following Iran's patient game, and what it sees is Iranian and Hezbollah operatives in the area between Damascus and the Golan Heights. It sees a gradual process that ultimately strengthens Iran and its proxies, and leaves them in charge of strategic areas in Syria, including right on Israel's border," Rosner says.
"Israeli planners believe that there is only one good solution to this strategic problem: for the United States to go back to being a superpower." | | | | | | |
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