Winston Churchill said all there is to say about political summits with his quote: “Jaw jaw is better than war war.”
That is the thing to bear in mind when examining the rights and wrongs of the first Trump-Putin meeting, ‘Summit 1’: two leaders of two of the world’s most powerful nations, in Donald Trump’s words “competitors” sorting out differences eyeball to eyeball.
Both men share Churchill’s approach, with Vladimir Putin saying: “As nuclear powers, we bear special responsibility” for international security.
Putin said Russia (as a devout Christian country) considered it necessary for the two countries to work together on nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation – and to avoid weapons being placed in space.
“Even during the tensions of the Cold War, the US and the Soviets were able to maintain a strong dialogue [with, now, Russia],” Trump said. “But our relations [with Russia] have never been worse than they are now. However, that changed as of about four hours ago.”
He added: “Nothing would be easier politically than to refuse to engage”, which would “appease partisan critics, the media and the opposition”.
Trump correctly reiterated the significance and importance to hold a meeting with Putin despite the widespread criticism from within his own country and, most notably, from the mainstream media that are very clearly controlled entirely by what has popularly become known as the ‘Deep State’.
And what was the response in the US to the July 16 summit?
The most vitriolic insults came from former CIA director John Brennan. The not-so-funny irony is that Brennan literally voted for the then Soviet Union-dominated US Communist Party to take power in the US. Incredible, almost beyond belief. If you look at Brennan’s extremely insulting tweet, the full irony of his being a communist in the Soviet era should hit home: “Donald Trump’s press conference performance in Helsinki rises to & exceeds the threshold of ‘high crimes & misdemeanors’. It was nothing short of treasonous. Not only were Trump’s comments imbecilic, he is wholly in the pocket of Putin. Republican Patriots: Where are you???”
So what are the facts? Well, Brennan was accepted into the CIA in 1980 even though he admitted voting Communist in 1976. Something inexplicable and astounding for any thinking person to understand.
It was a success for all, except for the intransigent extremists of the US Democratic Party, or ‘Deep State’
Brennan, who by then had been appointed President Barack Obama’s CIA chief, first publicly revealed this at the annual legislative conference of the Congressional Black Caucus, on September 15, 2016, in Washington DC. There, he said that when he had applied to join the CIA, he admitted to them that, in the 1976 presidential election, at the height of the Cold War against the ‘Godless’ Soviet Union, when a strong Christian presidential candidate, Jimmy Carter, was running against Gerald Ford, Brennan had voted instead for the candidate of the US Communist Party, Gus Hall, and that he was then greatly relieved to find that this information did not cause rejection of his CIA application.
One must ask why, as it happened 11 years before ‘the alleged’ end of the Cold War by the West in 1991.
As a Brit, a keen observer of American politics for decades, I find it astonishing that a father and son, Americans Ron and Rand Paul, seem to be representative of only a few sane voices that debate logically and objectively on the subject of Russia, acknowledging, as Trump put it, that they are our competitors not enemies.
CNN Wolf Blitzer was aghast that Kentucky Senator Rand Paul spoke on his programme saying that critics of the Trump-Putin summit have “Trump derangement syndrome”.
Blitzer almost angrily asked the senator: “Let me get right to the questioning. Do you believe that President Trump’s meeting with Putin made America safer?”
The senator answered “You know, I think engagement with our adversaries, conversation with our adversaries is a good idea.
“Even in the height of the Cold War, maybe at its lowest ebb when we were in the midst of the Cuban missile crisis, I think it was a good thing that Kennedy had a direct line to Khrushchev. I think it was a good thing that we continued to have ambassadors to the Soviet Union even when we really objected greatly to what was going on, especially during Stalin’s regime. So, I think, yes, that it is a good idea to have engagement.”
Despite the partisan comments in the US, a reflection of the political shenanigans domestically, ‘the summit ‘ was without doubt the first step in bringing peace to the 15 or so conflicts going on in the world today. It was a success for all, except for the intransigent extremists of the US Democratic Party, or ‘Deep State’, whichever you prefer to call it.
Trump’s Summit 2 proposed to be in Washington or Moscow with Putin has now been delayed until 2019.
Bolton said the other day: “The President believes that the next bilateral meeting with President Putin should take place after the Russia witch hunt is over, so we’ve agreed that it will be after the first of the year.”