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Caroline Glick: Trump Was the Big Winner at Helsinki Summit
h/t Gates of Vienna
Trump met with Putin because as president, he is required to meet with the leader of Russia just as every U.S. president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt had to meet with his counterpart at the Kremlin.

U.S. national security and indeed, international security are dependent on the leaders of the two powerful nations developing cooperative relations. The ability of U.S. and Russian leaders to work together plays a key role in preventing another world war. It would have been a dereliction of duty if Trump had not met with Putin.

This brings us to the substance of the meeting, which was exceedingly positive and constructive.

...In his opening remarks, Putin put an official end to the debate over his intentions. "The Cold War is a thing of the past," he declared.

"The era of acute ideological confrontation of the two countries is a thing of the remote past ‐ it’s a vestige of the past."

If Putin’s statement of his intentions and his outlook were the only thing to have come out of the summit, it would have more than justified the meeting. But that was only the beginning.

Two critical issues, Iran’s presence in Syria and North Korea’s nuclear arsenal, were the subject of a significant amount of attention from Trump and Putin during the press conference. Their remarks on both subjects made clear just how critical the meeting was for U.S. national security interests and for global stability in the short and long-term.

...In their remarks, both Putin and Trump said that they are committed to Israel’s security. Putin said that he accepts Israel’s position that the 1974 disengagement of forces agreement between Israel and Syria must be implemented. The agreement bars Syrian military forces from deploying to the border with Israel and limits their deployment in the area adjacent to it. Trump stated outright that the U.S. supports Israel’s efforts to prevent Iran from entrenching its forces in Syria.

...The second reason that the Trump-Putin meeting was significant in the Iranian context is that it called into question the long-term viability of the Russian-Iranian partnership.

...So if Putin indicated a willingness to cut a deal with the U.S. and Israel in Syria, then the implication is that he is willing to attenuate Russian-Iranian ties in favor of Russian-American and Russian-Israeli ties. The minimal price for those ties is Israeli-U.S. acceptance of the survival of Assad’s regime in Syria. Netanyahu indicated last week that he is willing to accept Putin’s position.

...To understand just how significant Trump’s achievements in relation to Russia’s relations with Iran and its position in Syria are, it is important to notice where the U.S. stood in relation to both issues when Trump entered office.

...Obama joined with Russia in enabling Iran to become a nuclear-armed state by concluding the nuclear deal with Iran in July 2015. The fact that Trump was able to convince Putin to support Israel’s efforts against Iran in Syria after abandoning the nuclear deal in May, despite Putin’s continued support for the nuclear deal, was a major achievement.

The second area where Trump achieved a major breakthrough in Helsinki is North Korea. It is far from clear that Trump’s effort to cut a deal with North Korea can survive Pyongyang’s latest anti-American diatribes and the evidence of its continued nuclear operations. But what is clear is that none of North Korea’s efforts could continue without Chinese support. Nuclear armed North Korea is China’s most powerful ‐ and dangerous ‐ proxy.

During the previous three administrations, Russia has consistently partnered with China in relation to U.S. multiparty talks regarding North Korea’s nuclear program. But during the Helsinki summit, Putin expressed strong support for America’s goal of denuclearizing North Korea.

...This, then brings, us to the hysterical condemnations that Trump has been inundated with since Monday by the U.S. media, by former senior Obama administration national security officials, and by Democrats.

The very notion that a U.S. president commits treason by seeking a cooperative relationship with the head of Russia is absurd. Given the stakes of the two leaders’ relationship, it is also dangerous.

Statements accusing Trump of treason and calling for the military to overthrow him are terrifying. They demonstrate that Trump’s opponents are so obsessed with delegitimizing his presidency, and presumably with impeaching him that they are willing to risk a world war to achieve their domestic political goals.

When we consider the hysteria of Trump’s critics on the one hand, and Trump’s extraordinary accomplishments in Helsinki on the other, we need to be thankful that Trump was willing as he said, "to take a political risk in pursuit of peace," rather than "risk peace in pursuit of politics." The U.S. and the world benefited greatly from his courage.


Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2018-07-19
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=518855