Europeans Are Bracing Themselves For A Possible Trump-Putin Meeting
President Donald Trump is reportedly set to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin on his trip to Europe. With trade tensions already rising and Trump continuing to insist that Europeans owe the United States for defense spending, some European diplomats worry whether Trump will present a message of transatlantic unity and strength to Putin, with whom he seems to want badly to get along.
“We know that the president is notoriously undisciplined and seems to harbor a soft spot for the Russian strongman. As a result, the possibility of adopting an unreasonably conciliatory tone or making ill-advised concessions, which will later damage both Europe and the USA, is certainly there,” Dalibor Rohac, a research fellow studying European political and economic trends at the American Enterprise Institute, wrote in an email to BuzzFeed News.
“The problem is that there does not seem to be any strategy, or logic, to the president’s behavior at such meetings — other than his desire to make headlines, rally the base, and drive his opponents crazy. That’s hardly a sound basis for wise foreign policy choices.”
“... I didn’t have high expectations for what he’s going to bring to NATO summit anyway,” said Rachel Rizzo, who works on transatlantic security at the Center for a New American Security. “The whole point of this summit is to project unity and a sense of purpose. One of the only countries that’s probably going to be an outlier is the United States.”
https://www.buzzfeed.com/emilytamkin/europeans-are-bracing-themselves-for-a-possible-trump-putin?utm_term=.xbRZ0pBg#.rnVLg2Vq
= new reply since forum marked as read
marching orders.
