Putin and Trump Couldn’t Make the Relationship Work
The summit ended without agreements because there’s nothing the leaders can do for each other, however much they would like to.
Trump will come home with something.
Photographer: Valery Sharifulin/TASS via Getty Images
Given the weeks of apocalyptic speculation that preceded the Helsinki summit between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, the news conference that followed the meeting Monday should have been anticlimactic: Nothing was agreed, nothing gained or conceded. And yet John Brennan, who ran the Central Intelligence Agency during the Obama administration, tweeted that Trump’s performance was “nothing short of treasonous.”
But Trump didn’t recognize the Russian annexation of Crimea, announce a troop pullout from Syria, promise to disband NATO, withdraw U.S. troops from Germany or stop the deployment of U.S. anti-missile defenses in Eastern Europe. He didn’t give up his opposition to Russia’s Nord Stream 2 pipeline into Germany or express regret about his decision to supply lethal weapons to Ukraine. In fact, he did nothing that could be construed as undermining U.S. interests as traditionally understood. His comments revealed no freebies to Putin or even any sign that the two leaders had attempted to negotiate compromises on the many substantive issues that divide their two countries.