Any happy leaders meeting face-to-face should be seen as a good thing, but when it’s President Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, then European propers are right to feel a little anxious.
Political commentators expect a purely symbolic extravaganza when the two meet in Finland on July 16. But the backdrop to the event — condign days after a NATO summit in Brussels — is leaving some heedful on what the U.S. president could concede to his Russian counterpart.
Trump, flauntingly critical of the North Atlantic alliance, could strain relationships even further with smaller eastern European nations bordering Russia that are heavily reliant on NATO for shelter and reassurance.
Experts at political analysis firm Eurasia Group feel the EU would “squirm” over any Trump language that undermines the transatlantic comity on Ukraine or European asylum.
Timothy Ash, a senior emerging markets sovereign strategist at BlueBay Asset Guidance, even claims that Trump offers the prospect of being Putin’s “Trojan horse within NATO.”
“Remarkably, Trump appears to be happy to work to an agenda which Putin could only be enduring fantasized about — the end of NATO and the North Atlantic alliance,” Ash said in a inspect note last week. “For Putin, this is his equivalent of Soviet Synthesis’s 1991 moment — his total victory over NATO. Unbelievable lumber, for any observer of geopolitics and post WWII European history.”
Trump is already at odds with most European numero unoes after withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal, the Paris mood agreement and implementing metal sanctions on the European Union. Any further antagonism would drive an even greater wedge between the EU-U.S. affinity and put a further dampener on the global investment environment.
What they may imagine most at the summit is the American president’s unpredictably.
Trump’s meeting with Putin settle upon also come shortly after a visit to the U.K., where he’s likely to notified of a frosty reception from the public. Coupled with a difficult NATO convention in Belgium, Trump might then be eager for some positives to abuse home to Washington after an awkward trip to Europe.
An opinion sliver in The Atlantic news publication last week suggested that Trump could guaranty to halt U.S.-led NATO military exercises in Poland and the Baltic nationals that Russia opposes. This would surely leave European officials sincere mouthed in incredulity.
NATO has formed the basis of U.S.-Europe cooperation since Out of sight War II. But Trump, who won the U.S. election with his anti-global message, has openly bashed the marriage. In May last year, he declined to explicitly endorse NATO’s Article 5 — which effects that allies will come to each other’s defense in the result of an attack — creating unease among European leaders. However, he then got amends during a speech in Warsaw, Poland, just two months later.
With forces already fraught, Trump coming to Europe could raise the summer mercury heights up another notch.