Trump and Putin meeting could help shape our world

All eyes are on tonight’s inaugural Trump-Putin encounter in Germany on the sidelines of the G20 summit.

“Trump Putin Meeting Could Shape the World”.

Each gesture will be scrutinised by the world. The handshake, the eyes, the half-smiles and the body language of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin will set the tone for the most anticipated meeting of two world leaders in years.

The encounter between the US and Russian presidents on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Hamburg tonight is already being overshadowed by the hype of expectation.

“Trump Putin Meeting Could Shape the World,” screamed a CNN headline. “Who is the Bigger Man?” asked Newsweek.

As the expectations for the official sit-down meeting continue to rise, the wiggle-room for both leaders to have a meaningful exchange on US-Russia relations narrows.

But this meeting is not so much about immediate policy outcomes, although North Korea will be a priority given this week’s historic long-range ballistic missile test by the rogue nation. It is more about two of the world’s strongman-style leaders sizing each other up to decide if they can work with each other to improve a bilateral relationship that is as frosty as at anytime since the Cold War.

“(I expect) an Olympian level of macho posturing between these two leaders, who both understand the importance of symbolism and the perception of being tough,” says Derek Chollet, a White House national security official in the Obama administration.

For Trump, the meeting with Putin could be a bittersweet moment. Sweet because Trump likes strong leaders and he has long-admired the hardline Russian leader despite his autocratic excesses.

He has claimed in the past to have a “great relationship” with the Russian President, although he has been vague about whether he has ever met him face-to-face. Trump has described him as “very smart” and a greater leader than Barack Obama.

“I feel that Putin is somebody I would actually get along with ... I get a lot of heat for that,” Trump said in August 2015. “I think I would have a good relationship.”

Some have suggested that Trump admires Putin for the strongman persona he exudes, whether this be riding horses topless across the Russian plains or the unquestioned authority the former KGB spy wields over his country.

Whatever the attraction is, the fact remains that Trump has been warmer towards Putin and Russia than either Obama or Trump’s own Republican Party.

As recently as February this year, shortly after becoming President, Trump said: “I would love to be able to get along with Russia.”

He has since instructed his Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to explore how the two nuclear superpowers could improve relations.

Putin has also praised Trump, describing him in late 2015 as “a really brilliant and talented person” and he has welcomed his desire for a closer relationship with Russia.

But the meeting with Putin could also leave a bitter taste for Trump. His hopes of a warm relationship with his Russian counterpart have been hit by a series of events that may make it politically impossible for the two leaders to become close. The first is the escalating investigation into Russia’s election interference, which has spread its tentacles around the Trump administration in a way that has infuriated the President.

The White House knows that Trump cannot afford to look too cosy with Putin at a time when special counsel Robert Mueller is looking into links and possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign during last year’s election. The Trump team will be sensitive to these optics and so we are likely to see a serious-looking US President standing alongside Putin.

The administration has not forgotten how Russia played a public relations trick on it after Trump’s White House meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in May. The White House did not plan to release photos from that meeting but Russia did. The result was that the world saw photos of Trump sharing a laugh with Putin’s Foreign Minister, a bad look given the ongoing Russia probe.

Putin’s body language in front of Trump will also be instructive. The Russian leader has looked stony-faced in meetings with Trump’s predecessor, Obama, in recent years, to show his anger at US sanctions.

But Putin has more in common with Trump than he did with Obama.

Both Trump and Putin share a common view on US intelligence claims that Russia interfered in the US election or that there was any collusion between Trump campaign officials and Moscow.

“Its all a big Dem(ocrat) HOAX,” Trump tweeted recently, repeating his claim that Russian interference is a “phony” story being promoted by the Democrats as an excuse for losing the election.

Putin has echoed Trump, saying that claims of interference were a “fiction” created by Hillary Clinton and the Democrats.

“They want to explain to themselves and prove to others that they had nothing to do with it, their policy was right, they have done everything well, but someone from the outside cheated them,” Putin said. “It’s not so. They simply lost, and they must acknowledge it.”

The views of both leaders are rejected by US intelligence agencies, which say there is no doubt Moscow interfered in the election, including by hacking emails of the Democratic National Committee, in order to assist Trump.

CIA director Mike Pompeo said as recently as last month that Russia “meddled” in the presidential election “to undermine American democracy”.

“This election was meddled with by the Russians in a way that is frankly not particularly original,” Pompeo said.

Given that Trump is sceptical of Russian interference in the election, Democrats fear that he will not raise the issue during his encounter with Putin.

The ranking Democrat on the House of Representatives intelligence committee, Adam Schiff, has called for the meeting to be more than a “grip and grin”.

“I would hope — though I can’t say that I expect — the President to push back hard on Russia’s interference in our election, make it clear that that kind of meddling in our affairs will not be tolerated, and we won’t tolerate it elsewhere either,” Schiff says.

Even without the cloud of the Russian investigation hanging over Trump, his meeting with Putin promises to be a fraught on several levels. Since Trump was inaugurated, the US-Russia relationship has soured rather than improved, as the President had hoped. “The relationship with Russia ... is at an lowest point since the end of the Cold War, with a very low level of trust.” Secretary of State Tillerson says.

“So the President, I think, is committed to at least make an effort in that regard, and he has certainly asked me to make an important effort as well.

“Whether we can improve it or not remains to be seen,” he adds. “It’s going to take some time. It’s going to take a lot of hard work.”

From Putin’s perspective, the promise of a rosier relationship with the US under Trump is fast vanishing, with the two countries at loggerheads over North Korea, Syria, Ukraine, Crimea, Iran and NATO.

The most pressing issue between the two leaders will be to defuse the growing tensions between Moscow and Washington over Syria and to discuss the growing threat posed by North Korea. But already, there are stark differences between them over how to deal with North Korea.

Despite Kim Jong-un’s launch of its first long-range ballistic missile this week, Russia has accused the US of using North Korea as a pretext to strengthen its hand in Asia. Moscow wants the US to suspend military exercises with South Korea in return for Pyongyang suspending its nuclear and missile testing programs. It’s a plan Washington opposes, saying it will not negotiate or strike deals with the maverick dictator.

On Syria, Russia has been alarmed by the more assertive stance taken by Trump against its ally, the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. It opposed his decision in April to launch a ballistic missile attack on a Syrian military air base in retaliation for Assad’s chemical weapons attack on civilians.

Last month when US fighters shot down a Syrian government fighter, Russia responded by warning that any US or allied warplanes that flew west of the Euphrates could become a target. The threat caused the RAAF to temporarily halt its anti-Islamic State missions over Syria.

The US and Russia disagree ­vehemently over the legitimacy of Assad and Washington accuses Moscow of directing many of its military attacks in Syria against anti-Assad forces rather than specifically focusing on Islamic State.

The bilateral relationship is also still strained by the economic sanctions the Obama administration slapped on Russia over its support for rebels in eastern Ukraine and its 2014 annexation of Crimea.

Although Trump and his campaign team flirted with the notion of easing these sanctions during last year’s election campaign, the President now appears to have abandoned this idea.

In fact, congress is currently trying to increase sanctions on Russia over Ukraine and Crimea, and make it harder for Trump to lift them.

The US Senate recently voted 98 to two to strengthen sanctions against Moscow and the house is due to vote on the measure next week, giving Trump little room to appease Putin on the issue.

Putin is also said to be disappointed with Trump’s about-turn on NATO, an organisation that Moscow sees as a direct threat.

Tensions between NATO and Russia are getting worse, especially over the Baltics, where Russian and NATO fighters often joust and where NATO aircraft last month confronted a plane carrying Russia’s Defence Minister.

During last year’s election campaign Trump described NATO as obsolete and even toyed with the notion of a US withdrawal from the organisation.

Trump and Russia found common ground when they both accused NATO of being poorly equipped to deal with the major security threat of today, which is Islamic terrorism.

But, to Moscow’s disappointment, Trump has now turned around and declared himself to be pro-NATO.

He has aggressively urged NATO leaders to lift defence spending in order to sharpen the teeth of the security organisation.

Unusually for a meeting of the kind due to take place in Hamburg today, there appears to be no set agenda for discussions between the two presidents.

“There’s no specific agenda. It’s really going to be whatever the President wants to talk about,” says US National Security Adviser HR McMaster.

Some experts fear such an unstructured encounter will benefit Putin, a wily and seasoned leader, rather than the unpredictable new US President.

“You can rest assured that the Kremlin has prepared well in advance for this meeting, both with a complete analysis and dossier of Mr Trump himself as well as the goals that the Kremlin’s wishes to advance,” Heather Conley, director of the Europe program at Washington’s Centre for Strategic and International Studies told The Guardian.

Others believe only Trump has the gravity to influence Putin over Russian aggression in Syria, Ukraine and elsewhere.

“The President has the wherewithal and the willingness to deter President Putin from any more of this behaviour,” former US assistant secretary of state Jamie Rubin says.

“That is why all this talk about NATO is so important. If President Putin doesn’t believe that Donald Trump and his NATO allies are in sync and agree and will fight together for their joint purposes ... he won’t be deterred.”

What the experts do agree on, however, is that whatever relationship is formed between the property billionaire and the former KGB agent will play a key role in shaping our world over the next four years.