By Reginald Johnson
There’s a possibility for making a better relationship between the United States and Russia, but the knives are out.
U.S. President
Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin met last week in Hamburg,
Germany and had what appeared to be a very constructive meeting. The two
discussed a range of issues including the war in Syria, the battle against
terrorism, cyber security and the
charges of Russian meddling in the US presidential election last year.
The two leaders
were able to strike an agreement for a cease-fire in a section of Syria and
coordinate with each other in the battle against ISIS. They agreed to disagree
on the claim of Russian hacking.
According to
Stephen Cohen, professor emeritus of Russian studies at Princeton University
and New York University, the Trump-Putin
meeting may augur a new day in Russia-US relations.
Cohen said the
meeting represented a “potentially historic new détente, anti-Cold War
partnership begun by Trump and Putin.”
He noted that the relations between the two nuclear-armed superpowers
are at their lowest point in decades.
“What we saw today
was potentially the most fateful meeting between an American and Russian
president since the wartime (World War II)," said Cohen, who witnessed the Reagan-Gorbachev
summit meetings in the 1980s. “The
reason is the relationship between the US and Russia is so dangerous.”
But Cohen, speaking
on the Tucker Carlson show on Fox television on Friday, hours after the meeting, cautioned that the
proposed new partnership will likely come under “vicious attack.”
How right he was. Over the next few days there was a
fierce pushback. On Sunday, three
longtime critics of Trump and Russia took to the airwaves to criticize Trump’s
performance in Hamburg and blast the idea of a partnership.
Neo-con senators
John McCain and Lindsey Graham said it made no sense to forge a new agreement
with Russia without punishing Russia first for the alleged cyber attacks in the
US election last fall.
They and others keep insisting that Russian responsibility
for the hacking is flat fact, despite serious doubts raised by a number of
cyber experts, the fact that the report on the hacking was done not by the FBI
but by a company hired by the Democratic National Committee, the fact that the company’s chief technical officer is an anti-Putin
Russian émigré and the fact that a full National Intelligence Estimate on the
hacking, involving all 17 intelligence agencies,
was never done (contrary to assertions by many politicians and the media).
Speaking on the NBC
show “Meet the Press,” Graham said Trump gave a “terrific speech” in Poland
earlier in the week on his European trip, but then had what he called a “disastrous meeting” with Putin in Germany. The
senator said the president has a “blind spot” on Russia and his attitude that
we should “forgive and forget when it
comes to Putin regarding cyber attacks is to empower Putin and that is exactly
what he is doing.”
McCain criticized
Trump’s tweet over the weekend that he “looked forward to working
constructively with the Russians” --- actually, a thoroughly laudable goal, in
my view.
But McCain demanded
that Putin must pay a stiff price for the claimed hacking. “Otherwise he’ll be
encouraged to do it again,” he said.
John Brennan, former
director of the CIA, also appeared on “Meet the Press” and made similar
criticisms about the alleged hacking and Trump’s seeming soft attitude towards
it.
( I have to digress
a bit here. It’s amazing how discredited figures like Brennan can be
trotted out by NBC to weigh in as esteemed authorities on issues of law and
proper behavior. Under Brennan , the CIA conducted drone strikes in Afghanistan
and Pakistan that killed many civilians --- a breach of international law. The
agency also used unlawful interrogation techniques, including torture, in
dealing with prisoners in the years following the September 11, 2001 terror
attacks. When a Senate committee began investigating the torture claims, the
CIA was reluctant to cooperate and in fact spied on the Senate staff
investigators by hacking (yes,
hacking!) into their computers. But now those
days are over and Brennan is suddenly an expert analyst on TV, inveighing against
hacking by Russia.)
As typified by the “Meet
the Press” show hosted by Chuck Todd --- who did not bring in a guest who
offered a more favorable view of Trump’s Hamburg meeting – the media coverage of
the Hamburg meeting, Putin and Russia in general has been decidedly negative.
On Friday evening, NBC reporter Richard Engel
hosted a show called “On Assignment” which presented a scathing, and very
one-sided report on Putin and Russia. Basically, he and the guests on the show portrayed
Russia as a criminal state where Putin operated as a Mafia boss working with
wealthy oligarchs. The show described numerous mysterious killings that have
taken place in Russia and outside, in which dissidents and government critics
have been murdered. Some of the stories were chilling and had the ring of
truth.
However, Engel presented little in the way of countervailing theories
in his piece on the various murders as well as the bombing of an apartment building which killed hundreds of people, and which critics say was ordered by Putin. Government
officials were not given any chance to rebut the claims of illegality. Putin
was painted from beginning to end as a brutal killer who can’t be trusted.
While some of the claims of Russian government criminality
may be true, I have to be skeptical when a reporter is portraying a
person or officials as having committed acts of gross illegality or murder but does not bother to give the accused a chance to respond.
Given the one-sided presentation
and the timing of the show --- aired on the evening of the day of the Trump-Putin
meeting – the show came across as a hit piece designed to undermine any notion
that working with Russia or Putin was a worthwhile goal.
The avalanche of criticism of Trump and Putin from
both Republicans and Democrats continued on Monday on shows like MSNBC’s “Morning
Joe” hosted by bitter Trump critics Joe
Scarborough and Mika Brezinski.
So the demonization of Russia, Vladimir Putin and Donald
Trump goes on, undermining the prospects of a more positive and less dangerous relationship between the superpowers.
Given the size of the two nations’ nuclear arsenals and the areas of the world that could be flashpoints for conflict between the U.S. and Russia, like Syria and Ukraine, that is a shame.
