Europe Is Right To Worry About The Trump-Putin Summit

The EU and NATO beware! Years before Trump became president, he and Putin were already simpatico.

- Marc Champion

Forget for just a moment the allegations of Russian meddling in U.S. elections or of collusion by President Trump. His summit with Vladimir Putin has American allies in a state of high anxiety, because the two men have emerged as natural partners in the culture wars sweeping the globe.

There can be few more contrasting personalities than Putin, the disciplined ex-KGB agent, and Trump, the flamboyant former reality TV star. And the two men are unlikely to strike any grand bargain when they meet in Helsinki on July 16, if only because the rest of Washington would block it. Even so, Europe is counting the things that can go wrong.

Trump’s fascination with Russia’s strongman is longstanding. Putin, for his part, has never disguised his interest in this new kind of American leader, one who appears hostile to decades of foreign policymaking based on the promotion of U.S. leadership and shared democratic values. And when it comes to protecting the international rules and institutions that underpinned the American century, liberal supporters of the status quo fear the current White House occupant is more likely to take sides with the illiberal in the Kremlin than with them. Putin and Trump “would agree that the most detested four words in the world right now are ‘international rules-based order,’ ” says Alexander Vershbow, a former deputy secretary general of NATO, now with the Atlantic Council, a Washington think tank. “In terms of values, Trump is much more attracted to what Putin describes as Russian values.”