Peter L. Berger's Blog, page 85

The Putin Moment

As the Trump-Putin meet nears and the media kicks into high gear, many policymakers and experts are trying to assess the summit’s potential for opening a new era in what used to be called “East-West relations.” Will Yalta-scale deals be made? Or will it become yet another occasion for the commentariat to grouse about Russian election meddling, while hashing out what by now amount to more or less technical issues concerning the conflicts in Ukraine or Syria. “You broke your promises many times over,” one side will complain, rejoined by “No we didn’t!”—again and again, until the dessert dishes are cleared away.

Of course, Russia these days isn’t a world-class power, as the Soviet Union sometimes was. Its economy is less than a tenth of that of the United States. Its military can upset the neighbors and even strip them of parts of their lands, but it isn’t capable of projecting might on a global scale. Technologically, it looks like a global outcast, importing 70-95 percent of its hi-tech products, drugs, and mobile devices. Even in terms of domination in commodity markets it was overtaken by the United States in natural gas deliveries in 2009 and is expected to lose its lead over U.S. oil production either this year or next.

And yet, at the same time, Vladimir Putin has succeeded in becoming an icon of the contemporary globoskeptic movement. As his close aide, now dispatched to serve as the head of the Russian parliament, Vyacheslav Volodin, famously said in 2014, “There is no Russia today if there is no Putin.” He is the reigning veteran of a new league of statesmen who are obsessed with national sovereignty—defined in practical terms as a leader’s right to do close to whatever he wishes inside his country’s borders. All these leaders believe they are authorized by “the people” to intervene into developments beyond their borders, but only Putin has actually done so by projecting military force abroad. All are skeptical, to put it mildly, of the virtues of democratic accountability. All disparage transnational human rights rhetoric, preferring instead to emphasize “traditional values” and their alleged abandonment by the Western world. And all behave in a rather aggressive, macho style because they feel uncomfortable in an open, free, and predictable social environment governed by rules common to all parties and blessed through internationally recognized procedures. They are all globo-norm busters—and none more so that Putin himself.

Of course, no one would have believed even just a few years ago that the leader of the United States would share in this motley collection of what Lionel Trilling once called “irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas.” But now there is a leader who to all appearances does. And this opens a rare chance for “The Putin Moment,” as I call it, to arise in global politics.

We can describe the Putin Moment as a period characterized by a significant devolution in all the major trends established from the 1990s onward. This devolution has two main characteristics, one societal and the other geopolitical.

The societal or “domestic” element of Putinism consists of four basic assumptions, many of them are deeply rooted not so much in his ideology, but in Russia’s millennial history that made the country an autocratic state par excellence.

First, it puts the interests of the “state” (which differs considerably from the “nation”) above those of individuals. Its symbolic collectivism is manifest in different ways and is used for different purposes, from reinforcing the elusive “sovereignty” of the nation to securing means for self-enrichment, but the rhetoric of fighting for the national interest is a constant. Personal liberties are therefore downplayed, and the sense of a “strong state” prevails. One sees this feature present in Orbán’s Hungary, Erdoğan’s Turkey, as well of course in regimes short of the status of even marquee democracy such as those from Belarus to Egypt.

Second, the main ideological platform for such politics is provided by some version of “conservatism,” but not real conservatism understood in any conceptual manner. The “conservatism” characteristic of the Putin Moment has nothing to do with the ideals of a small state apparatus or greater personal liberties, but rather the opposite: The turn to traditionalism, with its values of masculinity, clericalism, authoritarianism, disbelief in the idea of progress, and the idolization of the corporate nation. The attraction of traditionalism, of course, owes much to the anxieties and insecurities touched off by dramatic and rapid change in the world. Better the flaws of a world we know, in other words, than the dangers of one we can barely imagine.

Third, an obvious distrust for genuine democracy—meaning formal accountability in this context more than how leaders are elected— is inherent to this system. Most of today’s Putinesque authoritarian rulers are accustomed to democratic procedures—so much so, indeed, that most have been quite adept at dismantling democratic institutions in order to turn the electoral process into public referenda serving to legitimate their grip over their society. The Turkish example here is the paradigmatic one, possibly because the Turks have had more practice with real democratic politics than have Russia, Hungary, Poland, and the other East-Central European countries. Democracy in this dispensation becomes a temporal form of self-rule that presumably gives way over time to a kind of “new aristocracy” better described as the repatrimonialization of modern Weberian forms, supported by some mild form of “meritocratic” administration.

Fourth, the adherents of such regimes believe that the biggest problem they face is that the “majority” rightfully possessing the “natural right” to command society is now subjugated to willful “minorities” of one kind or another (ethnic, religious, linguistic, or sexual)). The usurpation of the rights of the legitimate majority forms the basis for both the preferred domestic policies (for example, imposing traditional values and rules on everyone) and international policies (for example, opposing interstate migration and reinforcing national sovereignty by mounting border barriers of one kind or another).

It should by now be very clear that it would be a huge mistake to discount the influence of such a doctrine (or of its constitutive elements) on contemporary Western societies. Even in most nations where one cannot yet see any turn toward traditionalist and authoritarian policies, the influence of ultra-conservative populist forces is growing rapidly. Even current governments, if they manage to survive, will survive by accommodating many of the demands of a traditionalist-nationalist bloc in their evolving political agendas. We have just see an example in the shift in German policies on asylum and refugee policy.

When President Trump repeatedly praises President Putin as a “strong leader” with whom he believes he can establish a close personal rapport, it derives from several similarities between the two men. Both are jealous for their nations’ supposedly endangered sovereignty. Both are very skeptical of broad interpretations of human rights. Both disparage minority claims. Both openly favor traditional cultural and social values, although of course their understandings differ substantively in this case.

So it was no coincidence that the Kremlin celebrated Trump’s victory in November 2016, and that would have been the case irrespective of whether or not Putin ordered the election-related hacking. The reason is plain: His victory marked the arrival of the Putin Moment, the alignment of informal norms around Putin’s particular version of “irritable mental gestures” posing as a coherent set of ideas.

This bring us to the geopolitical elements of the Putin Moment, which are as numerous and diverse as the societal ones—and which will be on exhibit in Helsinki.

First, the narcissism intrinsic to both Presidents Putin and Trump inexorably push them toward one another at a time when both believe their nations are becoming, if not “great again,” then “rising from their knees.” The crucial notion here is both leaders’ sense that their rule is dedicated to a national resurgence, to re-establishing the positions that were earlier (supposedly) lost. This makes them natural allies of instinct, so to speak, and, presumably, common opponents of both newly emerging powers (like China, of which they are very cautious) and post-traditional multilateral institutions (such as, first of all, the European Union, about which both are dismissive). The two might conclude that it would be better if the United States and Russia worked together in building a better world whose respective and respectable constituent elements are Realpolitik abroad and traditional values at home.

Second, neither Trump nor Putin are happy with Europe, which acts too independently and has become a beacon for the multilateral policymaking they disparage so thoroughly. Trump accuses the Europeans of being free-riders—parasites, really, in his mind—when it comes to security issues, and he wants to punish them in a trade war, the objective of which is the abolition of high tariffs on many categories of U.S.-produced goods. Putin, meanwhile, seems tired not so much of European sanctions than of the continuous “restraints” that EU authorities impose on his beloved ventures like natural gas pipelines, and of the endless European criticism of his domestic policies and human rights violations. Even though everyone seems happy that the old Cold War is over and very few express any desire for a new one to break out, many in both Washington and Moscow long for the return of those times when European voices were much less voluble.

Third, one should not underestimate the context and causes of the current estrangement between the West and Russia, the main one being the Russian occupation of Crimea and the still-ongoing war in Ukraine. But Trump has already reportedly opined that the Crimean peninsula should finally be considered Russian, and so proposed to turn the G7 back into the G8. Ever more politicians in Europe oppose the sanctions levied on Russia, believing that their own countries are losing too much money because of them. So Trump may be pushing on a mostly open door here. Moreover, disillusionment with Ukraine is growing, first of all in the United States; Western politicians are beginning to question why the sanctions should stay in place if Ukrainian politics continue to be no less corrupt than Russia’s. The sanctions were in part designed, after all, to buy some time and space for Ukraine to adopt Western recipes for democratic governance and economic liberalization.

All of this helps to build the Putin Moment, the idea that the Russian sail has caught the wind and is pulling ahead of others as global pacesetter. It would therefore be a mistake to think that mere personalities are at play here. After all, there was no prospect of a Putin Moment back in 2001-02, when Putin succeeded in establishing good relationship with George W. Bush. The context is what has changed.

Putin these days represents a significant group of political leaders who reject most globalization trends, call for restoration of traditional values, and praise the nation-state and the principle of sovereignty. These leaders pretend they can save their nations from both economic and societal decay by establishing “strong rule” and pursuing nationalist economic policies. Many do not support Putin personally and some, as in Poland, fear Russia from of old. But that doesn’t change the overall picture: Ever more decisionmakers around the globe act as his admirers and even his disciples. No realist can deny this dismal trend.

Two questions arise from this brief analysis. The first concerns how such a shift of norms and political styles might change Western policies, perhaps irrevocably, and what those changes will mean for what used to be called the Free World. The second one is how stable this shift may be: How long might the Putin Moment stay with us?

Of course, much depends on the results of the Trump-Putin summit, but whatever happens, even if not a lot happens, the summit will change Putin’s perception in the West and beyond. For at least two years he was an outcast, but being seen to resume Cold War-like one-to-one meetings with the U.S. President conducted on “neutral” soil will change all that in a trice. One probable consequences of what we may, with tongue firmly in cheek, call the New Détente will be a growing pressure on Europe.

The rise of Putin’s star will aid those offering unilateralist and protectionist policies. It will stimulate more assertive rhetoric in favor of “traditional values,” which can be a dog whistle for xenophobia and bigotry. And it will dilute attention paid to “peripheral” issues like Ukraine and Syria. In Germany, it will certainly help AfD and the rest of Germany’s Russlandversteher lobby. Gerhard Schroeder may begin to look like a prophet.

The Putin Moment, with its unexpected support from the United States, is in some respects a new edition of nationalism, protectionism, and traditionalism that affects politics throughout the globe and significantly pushes it to the right. It will require great efforts from centrist and especially leftist political forces to regain ground—first of all because they will be forced to rethink many dogmas that might seem evident to the well-to-do and educated elite, but that do not resonate in the hearts of ordinary citizens. The greatest challenge for mainstream Western politics since 1968 is at hand; these forces now look as outdated as their predecessor versions looked 50 years ago.

At the same time, the Putin Moment might turn out to be useful for the West in general, resembling a bit the surge of pro-communist sentiment back in the 1960s and 1970s that proved retrospectively embarrassing to those who fawned over it. Today, to reiterate, Russia cannot be compared to the Soviet Union; everywhere else rising populist regimes preside over ineffective economies, whether those of oil-producing countries or those that try to capitalize on their economic ties with Europe (like Turkey or Hungary). Before very long the Putin Moment will recede before the inevitable Russian economic collapse—inevitably, if we define that as meaning within the next 10-15 years. With the central reputational element of the system in ruins, the rest will swoon as well.

The second reason is that the systems like the one Putin has created are simply unable to recreate and sustain themselves. We have already seen how his “succession operation” failed in 2012 when Putin decided to return to the Kremlin to secure the system he built. Just recently Erdoğan made himself President for five, or rather ten, more years; and even China’s Xi managed to jettison the long-lasting limit for consecutive presidential terms this past March. But all these leaders will age, and the systems they erected will slide into senility with them. Meanwhile, with any luck at all, Western politics will evolve to accept some new realities and to rethink some old arguments.

The traditionalist system Putin has nurtured now for so many years might be somewhat effective in the sense of being amenable to a strongman’s control over it, but not in providing social or economic development. The crucial virtue of such a system is believed to be stability, which is Putin’s favorite word. But graveyards are also stable. When the history of these times are written, it will be clear that the Putin Moment arrived not so much because Putin expedited it, but because the West ventured too far, too fast in overturning traditional values and mistakenly believed that popular attitudes might be transformed as quickly or even in the same direction as those of the elite. The Putin Moment rings true in the same way that a broken clock shows the right time twice a day.

The Putin Moment will be relatively brief, and the main task for responsible Western policymakers consists in innovating policies so that their societies will not once again fall in love with primitive beliefs. This will require a lot of effort; it will put a huge premium on the acumen and abilities of Western political classes. History stops for no one and no nation. Putin and his kindred spirits are trying to stand athwart of its movement, and will fail. Western leaders need to learn how to move faster to keep up with mainly technology-driven social change—but in the right direction. That’s the longer-run reality behind what will happen in Helsinki. That’s the reality you will not read about in the press the next day.

The post The Putin Moment appeared first on The American Interest.

There Is No Art of the Deal in Helsinki

On Monday, President Trump will meet his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin for a much-anticipated summit in Helsinki, just a few days after the indictment of 12 Russian individuals involved in the hacking of the 2016 election. The meeting is fraught with risks, uncertainties, and few potential benefits.

There is nothing wrong in principle with meeting with the Russian President: diplomacy entails talking to your enemies, and, as Barack Obama noted in a 2008 debate with Hillary Clinton, talking to our adversaries in no way implies rewarding them. The question is what you say, and how you follow it up. Many observers have noted President Trump’s kid-gloves approach toward Putin and frequent moral equivocation (“we’re not so innocent”) between the United States and Russia. Just this week, he called the meeting with Putin the “easiest” part of his trip to Europe, which included the NATO summit and a visit to the United Kingdom. Typically, it should be the other way around.

Some see Trump’s warm rhetoric as driven by his alleged collusion with Russia to win the 2016 election, or even as evidence that Russians possess kompromat against the American President. But there is no need to reach for conspiracy theories to explain Donald Trump’s attempts at cozying up to Putin. Trump is not the first U.S. President to claim that he can solve the Russia problem: every U.S. President since the end of the Cold War thought that he could succeed where his predecessor failed. Just as previous Presidents—and many other European leaders—Trump is overestimating the sway a warm personal relationship with Putin can have. He is also overestimating the extent to which Russia is capable of delivering on its promises. At the end of the day, Russia is in a position of dependency vis-à-vis the West, not vice versa.

Trump should learn from others’ mistakes, especially the failure of Barack Obama’s famous “Reset” policy. America’s fraught relationship with Russia is not the result of misunderstanding, failed dialogue, or poor personal relations between leaders. Rather, it is the result of an entrenched divergence in interests. To put it bluntly, Vladimir Putin has staked his legitimacy on restoring Russian greatness on the world stage. This entails either confrontation with the United States, or the restoration of a kind of world order where strategic matters would be solved between the leaders of “great powers.” This is an absurd play for a country with the GDP of Spain. The reality is that in Helsinki, the United States has all the leverage, while Putin has little to offer.

What could a bad deal in Helsinki look like?

As reported by the New Yorker, American allies in the Middle East—Israel, Saudi Arabia and the Emirates—have privately lobbied the Trump Administration for a “Ukraine for Syria” deal. On paper, it looks promising: without committing additional resources in Syria (a red line for President Trump, like his predecessor), America would get Russia to cooperate in Syria on achieving U.S. strategic objectives: fighting ISIS and pushing back against Iranian influence.

But there is no deal to be made with Russia in Syria: just ask John Kerry who tried countless times to find an arrangement with Moscow after American inaction invited Russian intervention in 2015. Or ask former French president François Hollande, who flew to Moscow after the 2015 Paris attacks to try, unsuccessfully, to rally Russia into a large anti-ISIS coalition. Russia has neither the will nor the ability to kick Iran out of Syria. Optimistic experts, often close to the Obama Administration, predicted in 2015 that Russia’s intervention in Syria would drive a wedge into its relationship with Iran: our adversaries are working for our own interests, the wishful thinking went. Rather, both have worked together to shore up Assad’s regime and impose their own political solution in Syria.

Still, Trump could be tempted to believe Vladimir Putin’s promises and in return offer concessions in Ukraine. What can Trump actually do? On some matters, much less than you might think: Congress, through the passage of the 2017 Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, has stripped the Administration of the authority to unilaterally lift sanctions. As Melinda Haring notes: “If Trump wanted to walk back the sanctions, he would need to submit a report to Congress saying that Russia has implemented the Minsk Agreements—the ceasefire agreement that Russia has continually violated—or that Russia’s aggressive and expansionist foreign policy has massively changed, which it hasn’t and won’t.”

But he is far from completely hamstrung. European allies have closely studied the Singapore summit between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un where the President suspended military exercises with its South Korean ally in exchange of an elusive promise of disarmament from Pyongyang. Could Trump make a similar move with America’s Eastern European allies? He could announce a drawdown of the European Defense Initiative (to which Congress committed $6.3 billion in funding for 2019), a reduction of NATO troops in Poland and the Baltic States (which have been constantly reinforced on Trump’s watch), or renege on the approval of weapons sales to Ukraine.

Despite reassurances from his top advisers and staff, the President has remained ambiguous on the issue of Crimea, after reports that he privately repeated Russian talking points (“Crimea is Russian because everyone there speaks Russian”) to allies. The United States doesn’t even need to officially recognize Crimea’s annexation: if, in his meeting with Putin, Trump repeats, or tweets, his comments that Crimea has always been Russian, that will amount to a de facto acknowledgment that Russian occupation of Crimea is legitimate. A major pillar of transatlantic sanctions policy will be weakened, inviting Europeans to think twice before renewing their own sanctions. Furthermore, the message will be clear, to Russia as well as other potential aggressors: be patient because America does not have the attention span to defend its principles. No doubt China will feel encouraged to be bolder in the South China Sea. And while there is no solution in sight for Crimea, there is a strong precedent for holding firm on nonrecognition. During the Cold War, even at times of détente with the Soviet Union, the United States never recognized Soviet occupation of the Baltic States.

What should Trump do in his meeting with Putin? First, the President should be well aware that he holds all the cards in the relationship. He should use NATO’s continued unity on increasing defense spending, Western sanctions on Russia, and even the recent Department of Justice indictment as leverage in his conversations with Putin. He should also exploit Russia’s weak economic position and dependence on hydrocarbon exports to send the message that there is a lot more the United States can do to make it harder on the Kremlin to profit from its energy wealth. President Trump was right to lambast the Nord Stream 2 project during his meetings with NATO allies in Brussels. The pipeline is critically important to Russia—it will allow Russia to cut off Ukraine from transit fees while making Europe more dependent on Russian gas. U.S. sanctions on the project would kill it, and this is something Putin very much wants to avoid.

Trump should also be skeptical of any Russian “olive branch” on Syria. Russia is incapable and unwilling to enforce the agreement Putin appears to be brokering with Iran and Israel. Russia also has no incentive to stop supporting Iran’s malicious activities in Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East.

In Ukraine, the Trump administration has made it clear that US commitment to supporting Ukraine’s territorial integrity remains strong with the delivery of Javelins, continued military support for Ukraine, and insistence that Russia hold up its end of the Minsk agreement. Trump should not give up this leverage in Ukraine, but rather use it to pressure Putin to bring real peace to the hot war still raging in the Donbas.

The idea of a “grand bargain,” as allegedly pitched by our Middle East allies, is an illusion. For Moscow, Ukraine and Syria are two distinct conflicts with little in the way of grand strategy to connect them. In addition, the reported Middle East deal is an illusion as well: Putin is happy to make promises, but, as past experience has shown, he is unlikely to keep them.

The post There Is No Art of the Deal in Helsinki appeared first on The American Interest.

The Skeletons in the Gallery

If you strolled down Fifth Avenue last fall, you might have noticed a ten-story-tall nude figure, a reproduction of Paul Gauguin’s “Delightful Land,” covering the façade of Louis Vuitton’s flagship NYC location. On one side of the building, the sinuous line of a girl’s naked torso plays across the artwork, 50 feet long. Extending a slim arm, the girl presents an unblemished flower to the viewer. Verdant foliage presses around her in an Eden-like scrim. Amid the condensed humanity of midtown Manhattan, the girl stands above it all, offering equal measures of sexual innocence and pleasure

The ten-story mural was advertising a high-art collaboration between artist Jeff Koons and Louis Vuitton. Gauguin’s artwork joined a number of other western masterpieces chosen by Koons to be reproduced on purses in the lead-up to the holiday gift-giving season.

But most Fifth Avenue shoppers might not realize that our Louis Vuitton cover girl is likely Teha’amana, a 13-year-old Tahitian whom Paul Gauguin described as his “little mistress with the instinctive ways and the golden body.” Teha’amana was Gauguin’s first sexual partner when he moved to the islands at the age of 43. Coughing up blood from advanced venereal disease, Gauguin came to Tahiti from France after the pressures of supporting a wife and five children had grown too burdensome. The islands, he expected, would be an inspiring world of cheap living and unconfined sexuality.

In reality, the island’s social and religious landscape had been long-shaped by Christian missions. The “delightful land” he expected to find was nonexistent—a more common sight would be Tahitian girls in neck-high dresses on their way to bible study. Yet Gauguin still managed to take three “brides,” aged 13, 14, and 15, and create a body of work detailing a mythical world of sexual availability, more fantasy than reality. Ancient Tahitian culture, as Gauguin imagined it, was defined by the “less civilized woman”—which, in the words of art historian Patty O’Brien, meant “searching for partners with less sexual experience; thus he conflated the ‘primitive’ with ‘the child.’” The nude portraits of his child brides remain some of Gauguin’s most celebrated work.

But in our time, can we turn a blind eye to Gauguin’s well-documented history of predation? Avoidance turns out to be the rule, not the exception, when dealing with Gauguin.  The repackaging of an abused girl as a luxury purse betrays a failure by cultural institutions to address the questionable legacies of brilliant artists.

Two extreme poles of reaction dominate the current conversation surrounding Gauguin and other historical figures with unsavory pasts. At one extreme, revisionists try to enforce a sanitized, “correct” version of history. They discredit the significant legacy of Thomas Jefferson on account of his treatment of the enslaved, and Winston Churchill for propagating colonialism. The other end of the spectrum, populated by many art institutions, would rather whitewash the behavior of famous artists in fear that addressing their sins would be to take ownership of their actions.

Jean-Pierre Faye observed that both political extremes often favor similar authoritarian solutions, just as the iron ends of a horseshoe bend towards each other. As with politics, so with culture: both ends of the spectrum gravitate towards a reductive approach that subordinates complex realities in favor of a simplified narrative. Revisionists and whitewashers alike would prefer that history be shaped into a “correct” version through the omission of unalterable facts and a heavy dose of the conjunction “or.”

An important middle ground exists, simply by choosing “and” rather than “or.” Thomas Jefferson owned slaves and gifted us with the greatest charter of liberty. Paul Gauguin was a luminous artist and he physically and sexually abused girls. As a society and culture, we can celebrate their contributions while acknowledging their moral faults.

By embracing the unadulterated truth about the behavior of past celebrated artists, museums can protect their collections from the encroaching revisionist trends that have claimed other academic spaces, where intellectual discomfort is now seen as an infringement on the rights of the individual. Institutions can deflect attempts to carve out a “correct” cultural history – by reflecting that history, warts and all. Discussions of Gauguin’s Tahitian paintings should address his predatory sexual impulses as a creative influence. So long as museums present sanitized versions of their artists over the messy truth, they are leaving a target on their backs for anyone determined to assert the primacy of a single interpretation.

Good Art, Bad Person

As a society, we’re most comfortable condemning art when its message is overtly harmful and broadly violates established social norms. We can easily dismiss artwork created for propagandistic ends—thick-legged Soviet beauties and Leni Riefenstahl’s footage of Nazi rallies—as historic artifact.

Cruel art is easy to condemn, but good art by cruel people is a different matter. In such cases, we often feel absolved from judgment. Discussions of Richard Wagner’s symphonies or Woody Allen’s films, if they touch on their personal transgressions at all, normally conclude “But can’t you separate the art from the artist?”—the cultured equivalent of a shrug. And indeed, one can watch a Woody Allen film without becoming a sexual predator; listen to Wagner without becoming an anti-Semite; and view Gauguin’s artwork without establishing a Tahitian sex colony. Good artwork by bad people does not necessarily bring a transference of moral bankruptcy. So how, then, are we to judge and view classic works of art by predatory artists?

Let us stipulate that the best art, regardless of its creator, is indeed uplifting. An artist can harvest the raw materials of emotion and present it back to the viewer as something finer. But the pure power of art can sometimes lead us to ignore when it is put to shameful ends, or emerges from foul beginnings.

With his wealth of talent, Gauguin makes it easy to buy into the myth of seduction rather than the reality of predation. Much like the blushing mangos that his nudes often present to the viewer, Gauguin offers his sexual fantasy for the viewer’s delectation. We are encouraged to see his “little mistress,” guileless and seductive in equal measure, in an exotic setting that absolves us of any further need to reconcile fantasy with reality. The girl isn’t, say, studying for her 7th grade biology test. We are uncomfortable with the notion that we might respect the output of a brilliant child molester, so we distance ourselves from the conflicting behaviors.

Museums, our appointed guardians of culture, are even more vulnerable to the seduction of a great artist than individuals. Cultural organizations proud of their progressive social impact often fall victim to institutional self-censorship. Professionals tasked with presenting reality omit uncomfortable truths under the pressure of institutional preservation. When artistic beauty is born from abusive deeds, we see cracks widening in museums’ mandate to both champion truth-telling and promote art for its beneficial effects on society. Gauguin’s sexual manipulation of children is well documented. His passion for young, inexperienced sexual partners was a driving force behind his creativity, and a violation of social norms then and now.

Morality, The Ultimate Taboo

While Chuck Close, James Levine, and other contemporary artists have fallen from favor due to predatory actions, concerns about morality seem reserved only for the living. It has become taboo to suggest that human decency or ethical behavior should factor into our enjoyment of classic art. Mention “morality” and you’ll be accused of fostering a future where priggish curators administer ideological purity tests. But this need not be a matter of hunting the art world’s Hester Prynnes. It is rather about weighing an artwork’s real-world context in equal measure to the respect traditionally paid to an artist’s creative vision.

“The status of beauty as an ultimate value is questionable,” Sir Roger Scruton writes in Beauty, “in the way that the status of truth and goodness are not.” The notion of objective moral values took a blow in the 19th century when Romanticism asserted the primacy of the individual’s emotional experience. The notion of art for art’s sake, coined by French dramatist Théophile Gautier, claimed that moral concerns defile the pureness of creative expression. Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du mal, which could be considered a sourcebook for Gauguin and the other symbolists, includes the passage “Que tu viennes du ciel ou de l’enfer, qu’importe, Ô Beauté!”: “Whether you come from heaven or hell, what does it matter, O Beauty!” For Gauguin, who desperately wanted his life to feed his art and vice versa, the line served as a guiding philosophy.

Lest we have any uncertainty about Gauguin, we can turn to his own words. On the topic of “The Tahitian Woman,” Gauguin wrote that she “lives almost as do animals. . .like she-cats, she bites when in heat and claws as if coition were painful. She asks to be raped.” In another excerpt that won’t be making its way to an exhibition poster anytime soon, Gauguin notes that “giving her a good beating every week [makes her] obey a little. She thinks very poorly of the lover who does not beat her.” It would be difficult to find starker terms of abuse. However tempting it is to judge Gauguin on purely aesthetic terms, we cannot ignore this historical context, and the human cost of his artwork.

It’s the oldest lesson in the book, dating back to a plucked apple: beauty is deceiving. But when beauty is contingent on the abuse of other people, it’s unethical. If that beauty is then embraced uncritically by cultural and commercial institutions, it becomes a matter of public concern.

At the Museum

Art institutions are expected to be more socially engaged, more culturally inclusive, more profoundly life-changing than ever before.  As social welfare causes become increasingly popular with grant makers, arts organizations are working harder to ground their missions in social improvement. In the past, a museum’s mission was rather obvious—to preserve and promote art for its inherent cultural value. Today, museums compete against literacy initiatives and pre-K education centers in the battle for funding. And they do so by promoting art, and personal creativity, as the handmaiden to greater truths.

But this shifting mandate is placing a set of new expectations on our canon, with the dead masters assigned roles they cannot fulfill. When an artist’s lifestyle contradicts a museum’s mandate of promoting social good, museum professionals are there to smooth things over, covering up past misdeeds with a combination of self-censorship, euphemism, and omission.

On a recent visit to the National Gallery of Art, I staked out the ten Gauguin artworks on display, from carved wooden totems to the iconic Tahitian nudes. At the entrance to the post-impressionist gallery, the first sentence of a wall panel states: “Too often, the personal histories of Van Gogh and Gauguin have obscured the intensity, vision, and discipline that propelled them. . .” Like a lawyer defending his client, we are reminded not to let these histories “obscure” the collective good achieved by the artists. For the curious visitor, no additional details are forthcoming through wall text, website, or audio guide—we can merely guess what actions are alluded to in Gauguin’s “darkly enigmatic” work.

The Museum of Modern Art’s characterization of Gauguin is also rich with euphemism: “Seized by wanderlust, Paul Gauguin sought to abandon the European life. . . in favor of one in tune with nature and free of the constraints of Western social mores.” The Metropolitan Museum of Art, through their well-respected Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, eschews any personal references to the Tahitian relationships. In a blog post titled “Getting Beyond Gauguin’s Girls,” a female curator at the Tate addresses the thorny issue thusly: “What is the main thing we generally know about Gauguin? That he did paintings of Tahiti and that he had Tahitian mistresses. So let’s get that out of the way first. . .But I reckon that he was a far more interesting and complicated character than most of us think.” Given the choice to focus attention on Gauguin’s creative vision or questionable behavior, most curators opt for the former.

Museums deceive visitors when they leave out uncomfortable, but relevant, information about their artists. These cultural scions are the authoritative “institutions of record,” where artistic legacies are written in stone and polished by scholars. The impact of a museum’s characterization of an artist echoes through traveling exhibitions, critical reviews, academic literature, and auction house pricing. By scrubbing clean an artist’s biography, curators misshape the public’s understanding of the artist, while minimizing abuses and furthering the “genius saint” myth.

Even when supported by significant endowments, most institutions rely on corporations and foundations to underwrite major exhibitions. In these circumstances, the corporate social responsibility officers at any major company will prioritize sponsorship opportunities that frame the corporation’s involvement as a conscientious member of the community. These factors place an unspoken, yet influential, pressure on how a museum’s curators and staff frame the narratives surrounding the artwork.

The road to self-censorship is paved with good intentions and policed by risk-averse nonprofit culture. Any truly uncomfortable material will be minimized to reduce chances of public controversy, corporate sponsors withdrawing support, and unhappy board members. No corporate sponsor would get near an exhibit of artwork by a stockbroker who abandoned his family to paint unclothed 13-year-olds. But an exhibit of vibrant artwork by a celebrated artist is a tempting proposition. The unsavory characteristics can be relegated to the back of a $60 exhibition catalogue.

In the question of whether we can separate the art from the artist, in some instances, we never knew the artist to begin with. Being the definitive authority comes with a curatorial imperative to be forthright about the factors that influence an artist’s craft. And there’s an institutional imperative, when entrusted with the public’s confidence, to be honest about the work in its collection. Sidestepping Gauguin’s sexual abuse allows major institutions to continue hosting his work, critics to continue writing uncritical reviews, and commercial entities, like Jeff Koons in his collaboration with Louis Vuitton, to skirt questions of good taste and ethical conduct.

Warts And All

The solution may be to embrace two contradictory facets of the art experience—to acknowledge that while our experience with the artwork is subjective, the artwork itself is the product of unequivocal actions. The distinction lies in addressing an artist’s acts, versus an audience’s interpretation of the subject on display. Museums should (and often do) function as arbiters of truth, presenting the biographical facts of an artist and how those details are reflected in the art. In the current censorship-heavy climate, however, curators are being pressured to adjudicate not just cultural value (their professional domain), but the audience’s corresponding response.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art recently came under fire for displaying the artwork of Balthus, the Polish-French modernist known for his sexually suggestive painting of pubescent girls. In a petition, activists demanded that the artwork be removed or that wall text be added stating “some viewers find this piece offensive or disturbing, given Balthus’ artistic infatuation with young girls.” The Met rightfully resisted efforts on both fronts. Either approach outlined in the petition would prioritize one audience’s subjective experience over the unequivocal facts of the artwork—that, to our knowledge, Balthus did not act indecently towards minors. The installment of “trigger warnings” would be the domination of a single perspective over fact, and would enforce a very specific interpretation, at that: either find the artwork “offensive or disturbing,” or run afoul of socially mandated expectations.

“To acknowledge [art’s] power entails the obligation to examine how that power is exercised,” Jacques Barzun noted 43 years ago while giving the prestigious A. W. Mellon lecture series at the National Gallery of Art. In an environment where activists are seeking targets to censor, Gauguin presents an ethical blind spot for museums. The failure of institutions to address the discordant reality behind Gauguin’s artwork reveals why more moral introspection, not less, is needed to navigate our current moment of cultural revisionism. As Jeff Koons and Louis Vuitton exploited Gauguin’s girls, so do museums when they display the Tahitian canvases without context. Give us the entire, messy truth of the creative process and the imperfect creators behind it.

Gauguin’s quotes are drawn from Henri Dorra’s “The Symbolism of Paul Gauguin: Erotica, Exotica, and the Great Dilemmas of Humanity,” [Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2007, 214-15] which cites the source as preeminent biographer Maurice Malingue’s “La Vie Prodigeuse de Gauguin” [Paris: Buchet-Chastel, 1987, 228-69].

Admittedly, this is difficult to achieve across an entire collection, and many of the institutions that mishandle Gauguin should be lauded for their handling of related situations, such as the National Gallery of Art’s decision to cancel an upcoming Chuck Close exhibition, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s inclusion of Michelangelo’s relationships with younger male apprentices in their recent exhibition of his drawings.

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What Will Happen If the United States Leaves Syria?

On July 16, Presidents Trump and Putin will meet in Helsinki to discuss a variety of issues, the most critical of which perhaps will be the ongoing carnage in Syria. The background to this discussion foreordains limits on how it can proceed, for the indelible fact is that for consecutive administrations the U.S. government has essentially ceded Syria to Russia and its local ally, Iran. There are good arguments for such reticence, including those made by former U.S. Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford. The situation being what it is, there is much practical sense in the advice of experienced policymakers like Dennis Ross—basically, that warning the Russians not to abuse their enhanced position or trip over the remaining American red lines is all that can be salvaged from past errors.

But there have been and remain better arguments for a more engaged U.S. approach. Those arguments will likely look more powerful over time as the consequences of U.S. disengagement from Syria emerge. Those consequences will transcend what happens in and to Syria, where there is no reason to believe that Russian shot-calling will produce a stable peace. For Russia, Syria has always been a zero-sum game, so that any solution it enforces will serve only its narrow objectives of “stabilizing” Assad’s rule by brute force, with Chechnya being the operative “security” model. The Russians will also empower their partners on the ground, the Iranians, as a labor-saving device—a stratagem which runs directly contrary to the interests of the United States and its allies.

More worrisome, a Russian “solution” in Syria will not stay in Syria, but will in time imperil Jordan, Lebanon, and possibly the Arab Gulf states as well. It will also constrain the policy options of stronger regional actors, notably Turkey and Israel. And it will have a negative impact on what some of us like to think of as civilizational norms of acceptable moral behavior. So the stakes of Monday’s discussion in Helsinki are high, and not just for Syria.

It is one thing to abandon a policy stake because the costs of engagement exceed the likely benefits. It is another to think that U.S. and Western deference to Russia in the Levant can be traded for benefits elsewhere. That, it seems, is how the Obama Administration concluded that robust engagement in Syria might jeopardize its would-be transformative opening to Iran, an opening that needed Russian acquiescence if not support. The idea now in some circles focuses on a Trumpean “big deal,” defined as ceding Syria to Russian influence in return for moderated Russian policy elsewhere—with regard to Ukraine or the western Balkans, for example, or even with respect to broader issues like cybersecurity and cyber-interference into the politics of democratic countries.

This belief is a phantasm that amounts to self-inflicted appeasement. It is hard to discern any sigificant area of overlap between U.S. and Russian interests, besides which opposition to U.S. interests on principle plays a key role in the otherwise hollow domestic legitimacy of the Putin regime. The Russians are not and have never been diplomatic philanthropists. They will not take and trade; they will take and then take more unless and until they encounter some form of credible resistance. Without “skin in the game” the United States will not persuade the Russians to give as well as to take. Evidence? The Russians have broken every promise they have made with respect both to “Geneva” (as regards Syria) and “Minsk” (as regards Ukraine).

The record in Syria is crystal clear. The Russians have repeatedly promised to play a constructive role since the early days of the conflict, and every promise has been a ruse. Russian intervention to remove entirely Syria’s chemical weapons cache in 2013 was one such false promise; since then, the United Nation’s Joint Investigative Mechanism has verified repeated use of chemical weapons by a regime that claimed it no longer had them. In September 2015, the Russians promised to rid Syria of ISIS and jihadi terrorists, justifying their heightened military intervention under that pretext. This claim also turned out to be false, as human rights organizations and international observers documented a surge in attacks on civilian centers, including hospitals and schools—rather than on ISIS strongholds—in order to break down the will and infrastructure of communities outside of regime control and polarize the situation into an Assad-versus-ISIS choice for credulous outsiders.

Worse, President Trump’s apparent preference simply makes no sense. As best as anyone can make out, the Administration’s Middle East policy has two sound objectives: to contain and push back on Iranian regional influence, and to permanently defeat the Islamic State. But statements by President Trump indicating that an American withdrawal from Syria is imminent—including the April freezing of almost $200 million in stabilization funds—work against both of these objectives.

First, leaving Syria rewards Iranian behavior in Syria, empowers the most dangerous actors within Iranian domestic politics, and raises no dilemma for a Russian-Iranian partnership that has several unnatural and exploitable aspects. Second, as long as Iran and its radical Shi‘a partners and militias are on a roll, the underlying conditions that give rise to radical salafi movements like ISIS will remain. U.S. efforts to finally defeat ISIS will therefore have to be extended to defeat whatever terrorist juggernaut arises in its place, whether in Syria or somewhere else.

Syria’s tragedy, it seems, is that it has failed to induce anything like a coherent strategy in two successive administrations. This failure is not new: The U.S. government has never had a policy focused on Syria. Syria has always been an adjunct to other policies believed to be more important, whether the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Cold War-era competition for regional proxies, the Lebanese civil war, the Iraq War, and the Kurdish issue, U.S. policy toward Turkey, and more recently counterterrorism policy. This tradition helps explain why U.S. airstrikes against the regime in April 2017 for its use of chemical weapons have led to no sustained military or diplomatic effort. U.S. attention has wandered if not dwindled over time. For example, in April 2018 at the UN-EU Brussels pledging conference for Syrian reconstruction, the American absence was resounding, leaving Germany, the European Union, and the United Kingdom to collect only half of the sum needed to meet the UN’s 2018 target.

There are three reasons why the United States should remain engaged and credible in Syria. First, Iranian ambitions in Syria are on the rise, with no indication of retreat. If the United States pulls out of Syria entirely, both hard and soft Iranian power will benefit. Although the exact number of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-affiliated militants in Syria has not been verified, Ahmad Majidyar, the Middle East Institute’s Iran expert, estimates that since the spring of 2017 Syrian regime-affiliated Local Defense Force units, led and supported by Iran, have recruited almost 90,000 local Syrian troops. This is in addition to the many thousands of Iranian, Iraqi, Afghan, and Pakistani Shi‘a foreign fighters that have flooded into Syria, some of them younger than 14 years old.

Moreover, Iran has used its soft power quite creatively. In 2018, the Assad regime agreed to open branches of the Iranian Islamic Azad University, which is closely affiliated with the IRGC, in every major Syrian city. Iranians have also spearheaded Assad’s depopulation scheme, which has dislocated millions and has severely altered Syria’s ethno-religious demography. Clearly, Iran intends to dominate Syria for a very long time, and to radically reshape its society in the process.

Second, if all of Syria returns to Assad’s totalitarian grip, it will be impossible for refugees to return home. Providing assistance to areas that remain outside of regime control is an essential prerequisite for eventual repatriation. Syria’s refugee and displaced population now exceeds 12 million registered refugees and internally displaced persons. The newest Russian air offensive on Deraa has created about 300,000 displaced people in the past two weeks alone. Any future offensive on Idlib, the primary province left outside of Assad’s control with remnants of civil society intact, would affect more than five million people.

Lebanese, Jordanian, and Turkish officials have all made public statements indicating that Syrians refugees on their territory will soon be asked to leave. Yet refugees will not return until there exist credible guarantees for the safety of their children, that men will not be conscripted, and that they can return home without fear of arrest, kidnapping, torture, or execution. All of these conditions are currently impossible to establish under the Assad regime; the Syrian Parliament’s new Law 10, which seizes properties not claimed within one year by residents demonstrates that the Syrian regime systematically intimidates refugees from returning, because the Sunni majority among them opposes Assad’s authority. So unless the United States puts skin in the Syrian game to force a change in these conditions, refugee repatriation will never happen at scale, with all that implies for politics within and among many crucial European and Middle Eastern countries.

Third, American stabilization funds are budgeted for civil society work on civic duty, transitional justice, governance, and stabilization support in post-ISIS areas, including the de facto Kurdish Autonomous Administration. These programs are necessary to keep any hope of democracy alive. In Syria, civil society has been at the forefront of fighting extremism, pushing back against the Islamic State, al-Qaeda-affiliated groups, and all repressive armed actors. At a great cost to life and limb, civil society alone has fiercely and strategically defended the values of democracy, pluralism, and coexistence, all of which resonate with American values and interests. Syrian civil society is the only entity still developing a national narrative, something the political opposition to the Assad regime has yet to produce.

All of this has been done at a tiny fraction of the cost of military action: For example, the 66 Tomahawk cruise missiles fired into Syria on a single day in April 2017 cost the United States $92.4 million. But using these more modest non-lethal funds, civil society has challenged both Iranian and extremist ideologies and governance. Cutting these stabilization funds, let alone terminating them altogether, would disable American partners on the ground from being able to establish any foundation for sustainable and democratic governance structures.

That, in turn, would prolong the war and suffering we have seen. As a result of our conversations with leaders from Syrian civil society, we are convinced that reversion to a totalitarian state will never be acceptable to Syrians after all the immeasurable sacrifices of its people. They will fight on. This anti-authoritarian stubbornness aligns with the interests of the United States and its allies. Russia, Iran, and extremist jihadist groups would like nothing better than to seize on American disengagement to expand their own influence and design new totalitarian schemes for Syria ones where they alone set the agenda and shape the outcome. If the Trump Administration becomes complicit in such evil by default, Americans will not escape the eventual consequences.

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Silence from the Party

Imagine that a Democrat—Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, any Democrat—had been elected president in 2016. And imagine that the Democrat in the White House had done any one—not to mention all—of the following things:

Commended the brutal North Korean tyrant, Kim Jong-un as “a great personality…, a funny guy, … very smart,” who “loves his people,” and granted him the huge concession of a face-to-face meeting with the American president; then suddenly—and unilaterally—canceled American military exercises with South Korea, all in exchange for no meaningful concession on the part of the North Koreans.
Repeatedly praised the Russian autocrat, Vladimir Putin—the man who ordered and presided over the gravest foreign assault on American democratic institutions in history—as a strong and effective leader, and easier to deal with than our own allies, while refusing to condemn Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, his annexation of Crimea, or his intervention in the American electoral process.
Generated so much tension over trade with America’s leading democratic allies at the recent G7 summit in Canada that it came to be known as the “G6 plus one,” leaving the president to reject the joint summit communiqué the U.S. had agreed to and plunging America’s relations with its European allies into their worst state in memory.
Launching ad hominem attacks on the elected leaders of two of our most faithful democratic allies, Canada and Germany, around the time of his recent visits there.
Clumsily intervened in the domestic politics of Britain—whose partnership with the U.S. through a century of world wars and rivalries has been so intimate that Churchill termed it “the special relationship”—by criticizing Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May and lauding her party rival, thus aggravating the political turmoil over the stalemated Brexit negotiations.
Undermined and disparaged NATO—the most successful interstate alliance for peace in modern history—by repeatedly declining to embrace the all-important Article 5 (the collective-defense clause) and pursuing what a leading centrist think tank called “uniquely divisive” tactics in bludgeoning NATO allies over a narrow interpretation of their investment in the alliance.
Trashed the pillars of free trade by demonizing NAFTA, withdrawing the U.S. from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and launching trade wars with Europe, Canada, and China, thereby increasing consumer prices on a host of manufactured goods, undermining American agricultural and other exports, and putting at risk more than $200 billion in trade while jeopardizing America’s economic recovery.

If a Democratic president had freely conceded so much, so gratuitously and seemingly impulsively, to dictators and strategic adversaries while eroding the pillars of our most precious and enduring alliances, Republicans in Congress would be up in arms. Most treated President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran as naïve and dangerous if not virtually treasonous, but Obama managed to freeze Iran’s nuclear weapons program before it built a single bomb. All Trump has done so far is appease our adversaries and shake the confidence of our allies.

If Congressional Republicans issue foreign policy dissents at all, they are specific, carefully worded critiques of one policy or another, without confronting the broader pattern of a narrow, bullying foreign policy that is not putting America first but rather Donald Trump himself. It’s hard to find a better metaphor for the Trump foreign policy than the pathetic video clip of the American president literally shoving the prime minister of tiny Montenegro out of the way at the 2017 NATO summit to get to the front of the photograph. As former Republican Congressman David Jolly said of Trump last night on the 11th Hour with Brian Williams, “He goes abroad and sells himself, not freedom and democracy.”

In fact, in a sharp departure from the Republican presidencies of Reagan and both Bushes, Trump looks admiringly (and one fears, enviously) at the power and decisiveness of authoritarian strongmen, such as Putin, Xi, Kim, Turkey’s Reccep Tayyip Erdogan, Egypt’s Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, and the Philippines’ Rodgrigo Duterte. Since coming to power in June 2016, Duterte has waged a violent, extra-judicial war on alleged drug dealers that has claimed the lives of more than 12,000 people. With his security forces making “systematic use of torture,” Al-Sisi, “re-elected” in April with 97 percent of the vote, has brutally decimated a civil society landscape that once generated real hope for peaceful democratic change. Erdogan, who has destroyed a vibrant democracy in Turkey, has the distinction of holding more journalists in prison than any other autocrat in the world (with China and Egypt ranking second and third).

We have in Donald Trump a reckless, obtuse and deeply insecure President of the United States, who makes and wrecks foreign policy on the fly, with slapdash preparation and little consultation with his own top officials and Ambassadors, not to mention our most important allies. Whatever is driving Trump, his shocking disregard for diplomatic conventions, historic alliances, and the American national interest no longer surprises. However, the damage is compounded exponentially by the lack of forceful denunciation from Republican members of Congress. They know full well that President Trump is placing in jeopardy the entire democratic architecture of post-World War II bonds that have deterred Russian and Chinese aggression and preserved American global security and leadership. But just as they have failed to contain his domestic political outrages, so Congressional Republicans have failed to confront his thrashing of America’s core interests and alliances.

It is not that Republicans have failed to utter a word of independent thought. Republican Senators John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Rob Portman, Marco Rubio, and John Cornyn, Pat Toomey, Johnny Isaakson, among others, have been prominent in condemning Russian aggression in Ukraine and Crimea, and in standing up for continued U.S. sanctions on Russia. But only the ailing McCain has systematically condemned Trump’s foreign policy of loving and appeasing dictators while sabotaging the post-World War II liberal order that has been the indispensable basis of international stability and U.S. national security.

Next Monday Trump will meet Vladimir Putin for his first summit meeting with the Russian leader. No one has any idea what President Trump might agree to or give away—including Trump himself, who, at a news conference yesterday before departing the NATO meeting, would not rule out canceling NATO exercises in the Baltic Sea (perhaps the alliance’s most vulnerable flank). As the ailing Senator McCain said yesterday while criticizing Trump’s blustering theatrics at the NATO summit, “It is up to President Trump to hold Putin accountable for his actions during the meeting in Helsinki. Failure to do so would be a serious indictment of his stewardship of American leadership in the world.”

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When Trump Meets Putin

The world’s eyes turn to Helsinki on Monday as President Trump meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the heels of a tumultuous NATO summit. Ahead of the highly anticipated meeting, we’ve gathered the perspectives of six experts—all of them veterans of previous administrations—about what to expect and hope for from the Trump-Putin talks.

First, in “The Putin Paradox,” former Ambassador to Ukraine John E. Herbst explains why Putin is pursuing aggressively anti-Western policies while simultaneously wooing Washington—and how President Trump can avoid falling into his trap.

Second, Thomas O. Melia, in “Swagger Is as Swagger Does,” explains why Secretary Pompeo should ensure human rights are on the agenda in Helsinki.

Third, Kirk Bennett looks at past negotiations to explain “The Limits of US-Russian Summitry,” while acknowledging one useful avenue for cooperation in Syria.

Finally, three former U.S. ambassadors in the post-Soviet space—Denis Corboy, William Courtney, and Kenneth Yalowitz—argue that “Western Unity Is Best for Russian Summitry,” outlining a host of policies toward Russia’s immediate neighbors that the West should adopt in a united front.

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The Putin Paradox

Vladimir Putin’s policies are a paradox. On the one hand, he is facing many problems that would be eased by improved relations with the West. On the other, he is pursuing aggressive polices designed to undercut Western and especially American interests. What explains this?

President Putin is beset by many challenges. His not-so-covert war in Donbas has been stalled for three years without destabilizing the government in Kyiv, and his people oppose Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine. His economy is barely growing even as oil prices rise to $80 per barrel. A growing number of his cronies and the Russian financial elite are under Western sanctions, which cost his economy at least half a percentage point in GDP per year. His popularity ratings, which once topped 80 percent, have dropped to their levels prior to his military seizure of Crimea in 2014, and a majority of Russians believe that the country is heading in the wrong direction. Recent Kremlin efforts to deal with its straightened financial circumstances by raising the age for pension payments have led to demonstrations across the nation. And, of course, Russia remains isolated internationally because of its aggressive foreign policy.

Given the formidable list of domestic problems, it would be sensible for Mr. Putin to seek to break out of his current isolation. That would give him pause to deal with his domestic problems, to get rid of the economic and political burden of Western sanctions, and even to acquire Western technology and financing to promote stronger economic development. Indeed an April poll by Moscow’s Levada Center shows that by a nearly two-to-one margin, the Russian people would like to improve relations with the West. So a breakthrough here would also bring President Putin immediate political benefits.

This explains the eagerness and constancy with which Mr. Putin has pursued a summit with President Trump. The Kremlin strongman has been trying since early 2017 to make this happen. Last year he had to settle for meetings with the American President on the margins of other international events. Next week, he gets his own, stand-alone summit.

The paradoxical thing about Putin’s effort to meet with Trump is that has not been accompanied by any easing of the aggressive policies that have led to Russia’s international isolation. Moscow continues its war in Donbas and has even opened a new front. In recent months, the Russian navy has been regularly stopping ships heading to and from Ukraine’s ports on the Sea of Azov to impose additional costs on the economy of eastern Ukraine. Moscow’s interference in the U.S. presidential election was followed by interference in the French and German elections, and in Spain’s Catalonia issue. In Syria, Russian mercenaries attacked U.S. allies and U.S. soldiers. In the United Kingdom, Moscow tried to assassinate a former Russian spy with a highly sophisticated poison that continues to endanger the British public. Moscow is in violation of several arms control agreements with the United States. And in Afghanistan the Kremlin has been supplying weapons to the Taliban.

Even after it was announced that National Security Adviser Bolton would visit Moscow to discuss summit details, President Putin could not restrain himself from issuing another challenge to the United States. He broke the ceasefire that Moscow and Washington had established in southwest Syria. Not only did the U.S. government let this provocation pass without any apparent response, after it occurred the White House finalized details for Putin’s long-sought summit. At least in the short run, this is good politics for the Russian strongman. He is signaling to the entire world that he is the alpha male in the relationship with his American counterpart.

Here we may find the answer to Putin’s paradoxical policies. He is romancing the White House even as he challenges American interests globally because he thinks he can. We do not know the origins, but it has been clear for over two years that President Trump has a not-quite-comprehensible soft spot for Moscow and Mr. Putin. We saw this in the first days of the Trump presidency—when the White House wanted to “review” sanctions policy—and we have seen it recently with the Mr. Trump’s peculiar comments on Crimea and Russian participation in the G-7.

Whatever President Trump’s predilections, to date the policy of his Administration towards Moscow has been stronger than his predecessor’s. Thanks largely to Congressional action, sanctions policy is tougher, but President Trump himself took the long overdue decision to send defensive lethal weapons to Ukraine.

But Mr. Putin is hoping at this summit to play to President Trump’s predilections. This is evident in the preparations for the event. President Trump has a strong national security team that well understands the dangers that Kremlin policies pose for American interests. That is why the Kremlin has pushed for the main meeting to be a one-on-one with just the two leaders. Mr. Putin will probably try to arrange that only his interpreter joins them.

Moscow has also been keen to make it politically easier for President Trump to offer concessions – particularly regarding sanctions. The Kremlin understands that Congress has played an important role in toughening U.S. policy. So it invited a delegation of Republican Senators to Moscow over the July 4 congressional recess. Putin shrewdly calculates that if he can get at least a few Republican legislators to talk about the importance of improving relations with Russia or to talk about easing sanctions, that would give President Trump running room to launch a new relationship.  President Putin may try to feed this at the Helsinki Summit by offering an apparent concession on one or two items. Perhaps he broke the Syrian ceasefire in June to offer it with new wrapping as a summit concession.

While this may be good politics for President Putin, it is not good politics for President Trump; and it could be a disaster for the United States. The United States is much stronger than Russia. The Kremlin is working overtime against American interests.  A closer relationship with Moscow is only to Washington’s advantage once the Kremlin ceases its destructive policies. Talking prematurely about easing sanctions or other U.S. concessions feeds Mr. Putin’s hopes that he can end his international isolation, by altering only slightly, if at all, his efforts to undermine the U.S. position globally. Why would Washington want that?

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From Penalty Kicks to Pensions

The 2018 World Cup champion has yet to be determined, but Vladimir Putin’s personal soccer saga is over. With Russia now out of the running, it’s time for him to turn to tough domestic social reforms, which he may find impossible to delay any further.

Russia has broken three records during the 2018 World Cup. First, it got the tournament to be held in Russia. Second, the national team made it to the knockout stage for the first time in post-Soviet Russia’s history. And third, the team advanced to the quarterfinals with a staggering upset against Spain. Despite their being knocked out by Croatia in the next stage, Russia has gone crazy about the soccer team’s miraculous success. Both Putin’s supporters and the opposition called for awarding the top players with the state’s highest honors. Putin’s Spokesman Dmitry Peskov compared the national joy after the match with Spain to the glory of the World War II victory in 1945.

This was not only an accurate comparison; it was also a smart political statement. As in any authoritarian country, national sports victories are always attributed to the leader, while coaches and players are always held responsible for losses. Though technically a loss, the quarterfinal match was counted a huge victory for Russia because few expected the team to even make it through the group stage.

As to the World War II victory, May 9 (Victory Day) has become the main national holiday in Russia, a patriotic extravaganza when Putin throws huge military parades in Red Square alongside invited world leaders. This year’s guest star was Bibi Netanyahu.

Because Vladimir Putin lavishes so much attention on the Victory Day celebrations, Russians reflexively associate the 73-year-old war victory with the current Russian leader. And because Vladimir Putin got FIFA to host the 2018 World Cup in Russia, Russians reflexively associate the team’s success with him too. Neither the fact that Putin failed to show up for the Spain game (apparently not expecting a win) nor the team’s loss to Croatia stopped Russia’s dutiful propagandists from praising the Russian President for the team’s success.

Being a master of propaganda and an intuitive reader of the public mood, Vladimir Putin saved a tough and unpopular pension reform for the World Cup period. On the first day of the tournament, the Russian government announced its plans to raise the retirement age from 60 to 65 years for men and 55 to 63 for women, with a transitional period of ten years, beginning in 2019.

Although in developed countries lifespans have been steadily increasing and it makes little sense to retire at 55 or 60, in Russia this is not the case. The average lifespan is 66 years for men and 76 years for women. In essence, then, the government wants Russian men to work until death and never see the pensions they have paid into their whole working lives. As for women, they would have 13 years after retirement to live their lives. On average, then, a retired Russian would enjoy their retirement for six years.

The Russian pension fund is empty, and there is not enough money even to pay current retirees, as former Finance Minister and now Accounts Chamber head Alexey Kudrin confirmed last year. Political expert Kirill Rogov argues in Novaya Gazeta that Russia could have easily followed the Norwegian model by adopting its own form of sovereign wealth fund, saving extra profits from oil exports for future generations. But Putin’s elites chose another way. When oil prices were high, there was enough money for trickle-down effects and people were not particularly demanding about how elites spent the money. Putin’s oligarchy chose to privatize oil revenues through expensive state-sponsored infrastructure projects (with the World Cup being one of many). When the oil cash flows shrunk, it was time to cut back on social obligations, pensions among them.

Vladimir Putin, that “very smart cookie,” distanced himself from the reform by choosing not to comment on it at all. The honor of breaking the unhappy news went to Prime Minister Medvedev. But neither that tactic nor the World Cup euphoria was enough to placate the public. Right after it became clear the Russians would make the quarterfinals, Russian media broke the news: Vladimir Putin’s approval rating plummeted into a record-breaking fall. In the two weeks after the pension reform announcement, Putin lost 14 points of approval, from 78 percent to 64 percent. The last time Putin’s ratings were that low was in January 2014, right before the Sochi Olympics and the subsequent annexation of Crimea and invasion of eastern Ukraine. But never before have Vladimir Putin’s numbers dropped so sharply—even in 2011, when hundreds of thousands protested in Moscow against his planned return to the presidency.

Thirty-eight percent of poll respondents said they trusted Vladimir Putin, down from 47 percent a month before. Eighty percent spoke against the pension reform, and 43 percent expressed their willingness to take part in protests against it.

No less shocking was the source of the polls: the state-owned and government-run VTsIOM. Virtually all public polling in Russia is done to please Putin, including VTsIOM’s polls. The agency’s job for the past six years has mostly been to report record-breaking approval ratings for Putin and ask respondents all the right questions.

How and why VTsIOM conducted and released these latest polls is a separate question. When I once asked an American official whether his Russian counterparts manage to deliver their views to Putin, this person assured me they do, but not directly—because no one in Moscow dares to tell Putin anything that goes against his wishes. But one way to communicate bad news is to cite third-party expertise and public opinion. That may have been what happened this time: Someone within the government or the Kremlin authorized an honest poll to deliver a message to Putin on the perils of pension reform.

Since those polls Putin’s approval ratings have stabilized, but now another troublesome issue has arisen from an unexpected source. Russian regional authorities have stirred up a silent rebellion against the pension reform. Only 11 out of 84 regional governments have openly supported the measure, while almost half have distanced themselves from it in one way or another. Some of the governors have avoided comment on the reform; in other regions the state legislators have gone on summer break without preparing official reviews. The law allows the Russian Duma to pass the reform without any approval from the regions, but the extra measure was demanded by the Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin who apparently wants the federal center to share responsibility with state authorities for such an unpopular measure. But 36 Russian regions face elections in September, and 26 of them are Governors’ elections, including Moscow. The Russian capital was among those who used the summer break as an excuse to not prepare the review. Volodin has officially complained about such behavior.

The data on the regions came from St. Petersburg’s Policies Foundation. Hours later, though, the Russian Labor Minister said that 61 regions have provided positive reviews of the reform.

In the meantime, the protests across the country continue. The main demonstration was supposed to be held by the Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny, who for some reason chose July 1 as the date. This was exactly when Russia played Spain, and even worse for that matter, won. Navalny’s rallies didn’t draw large crowds and remained almost unnoticed by the media due to Russia’s World Cup miracle.

Nevertheless, even on Tuesday protests took place in several Russian cities, including the coal-mining Kemerovo where a few months ago a fire in a shopping mall took 64 lives, including 41 children. And in Saratov Oblast, a Communist Party representative now faces criminal prosecution for extremism after having publicly criticized the pension reform in the regional parliament. In a blistering speech, Nikolay Bondarenko called the reform “anti-people” and said that “half of the oil production money goes to the oligarchs. [ . . . ] 700 billion rubles have been spent on soccer, to show a pretty picture . . . and had we won over Croatia, I assure you, we’d have a serfdom law enacted.” He also called “Medvedev’s liberal government” a “fraud.” The speaker of the Saratov parliament warned the lawmaker that the session was being recorded and might be checked on by “entitled authorities.” After the session the speaker filed a police report against Bondarenko.

All the political experts and commentators predict that, once the World Cup is over, a new wave of people’s protests will come. And the Kremlin will have only two options: either back down, or crack down.

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Swagger Is as Swagger Does

After the dispiriting tenure of Rex Tillerson, one way Secretary of State Mike Pompeo could help the State Department “get its swagger back” would be to do what he promised he would do when he arrived at Foggy Bottom. That is, to speak up for American democratic values and for the longstanding bipartisan consensus that the United States prefers as partners those governments that respect fundamental human rights.

“Swagger is not arrogance, it is not boastfulness, it is not ego,” Pompeo told State Department employees at a large town hall meeting in May. “No, swagger is confidence—in one’s self, in one’s ideas. […] It is aggressiveness born of the righteous knowledge that our cause is just, special, and built upon America’s core principles.”

Pompeo will have the opportunity to showcase that confidence, that “righteous knowledge,” and those principles when he visits Helsinki with the President next Monday, and follows up with Russian officials thereafter.  

To state the obvious, no one really expects Donald Trump to press Vladimir Putin on human rights. After all, Trump is as pumped up to embrace and celebrate Putin’s “strength” as he was about meeting Kim Jong-un last month, when he remarked favorably that North Koreans “sit up at attention” when their murderous despot speaks. Against the advice of his closest confidantes, Trump went out of his way to congratulate Putin on his fraudulent victory in the March presidential election, and he has been talking him up at Midwestern campaign rallies in recent days. Trump has even said it is time to recognize Russia’s seizure of Crimea and its population of about two million—which in turn would mean an end to the punishing targeted sanctions levied against the Kremlin and those most responsible for the takeover and subsequent crackdown in Crimea.

But that does not mean that the rest of the U.S. government has forgotten America’s principles. Surely a public figure like Mr. Pompeo—first in his class at West Point; elected to Congress from Kansas; whose tenure at the CIA was by all accounts successful, if brief—knows what America stands for. And he seems to know how to mobilize and motivate a government agency.

As anyone who has spent much time in the State Department knows, American diplomats relish opportunities to demonstrate solidarity with the oppressed and to nudge repressive governments in a better direction.  This is not surprising, since they often spend years living in countries hobbled by the dysfunction, impoverishment, and insecurity that comes when governments fail to respect their own people’s rights.

The range of human rights issues on which Putin’s Russia has separated itself from the rule of law and respect for the rights of individuals is long and lengthening. Russia’s military occupation of territories in neighboring countries, moreover, has added a particularly cruel dimension by exporting its domestic repression abroad.

Consider, for example, the case of Oleg Sentsov, a Ukrainian filmmaker and writer of short stories who peacefully protested against the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014. His first two short movies were A Perfect Day for Bananafish (2008) and The Horn of a Bull (2009). Gamer, his first feature length film, debuted at the Rotterdam International Film Festival in 2012. Sentsov was making plans to produce another film in 2014, but in November 2013 he was swept up in the popular Euromaidan protest movement that eventually prompted Russian-backed Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych to flee to Russia. When Putin’s “little green men” spread across the Crimean Peninsula as part of the takeover that commenced the day after the conclusion of the Sochi Winter Olympics, Sentsov helped deliver food and supplies to Ukrainian servicemen trapped in their Crimean bases. He was soon arrested by Russian forces in Crimea and transported into Russia where he stood trial in Rostov-on-Don.

He is now in the fourth year of a 20-year sentence, convicted on fabricated charges of “terrorism” in retaliation for his outspoken opposition to the illegal Russian seizure of his native region. No evidence of any terrorist group existing in Crimea has ever been found, and the only thing that “proved” Sentsov’s membership in the Ukrainian far-Right group Right Sector was a CD in the filmmaker’s possession containing the Soviet documentary Ordinary Fascism. The main witness for the prosecution against Sentsov, implicating him in the supposed terrorist plot, recanted even before the trial concluded, saying he had been tortured into making the false statements. Sentsov himself was beaten and threatened with rape to force a confession.  According to Sentsov’s lawyers, investigators refused even to open a case on his allegations, suggesting in reply that his bruises were self-inflicted and that he was keen on sadomasochism. (Sentsov’s gruesome ordeal is captured in a recent documentary by the Russian director Askold Kurov, The Trial: The State of Russia vs. Oleg Sentsov, which premiered at the 2017 Berlin Film Festival.)

Last year, Sentsov was transferred to Russia’s northernmost prison, the high-security correctional facility Number 8 (also dubbed Polar Bear) which is located just outside the Yamalo-Nenets town of Labytnangi, north of the Arctic Circle. Its inmates are male convicts sentenced for “serious” and “very serious” crimes.

Since May 14, Sentsov has been on hunger strike, demanding not his own release but that of about 70 other Ukrainian citizens currently held in the Russian Federation on political grounds. Most of these prisoners are residents of Crimea, and many are Crimean Tatars, the Muslim people exiled to Siberia by Stalin who returned in the 1990s after the collapse of the USSR. Last week, Sentsov’s cousin Natalia Kaplan visited him—and told friends afterwards that Oleg has lost more than 30 pounds off his six-foot, three-inch frame and is in failing health.

Secretary Pompeo’s own spokesperson recently expressed deep concern about the “growing number of individuals—now more than 150” political and religious prisoners held by the Russian Federation, including Sentsov and three other Ukrainians also on hunger strike. Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin has persuasively described the treatment of the Crimeans, in particular, as “not isolated cases of human rights violations, but a consistent and clearly coordinated policy of Moscow.”

Donald Tusk, the President of the European Commission, on Monday renewed his call for Sentsov and the others to be released and urged President Trump to raise this issue when he sees Mr. Putin next week. Certainly, Secretary Pompeo should do so as well. A strong America needs to recognize that Russia’s aggression against Ukraine includes these unjust imprisonments, in flagrant violation of America’s core principles and international covenants. If there are to be any changes in the U.S. posture toward Russia, Mr. Pompeo needs to make clear, the release of these political prisoners must be a prerequisite.  Oleg Sentsov’s case is urgent and he should be released immediately.

If Mr. Pompeo really wants his department to get its swagger back, he needs to demonstrate the kind of confidence he invoked at that town hall meeting two months ago.  Foreign service officers want to keep doing what the world has consistently seen them do, and they want their leader to again elevate human rights advocacy as part of the American diplomat’s job.

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The Limits of US-Russian Summitry

In the run-up to the July 16 Trump-Putin summit in Helsinki, I was reminded of a May 13 article for The New York Times Magazine entitled “The Quiet Americans Behind the U.S.-Russia Imbroglio,” in which journalist Keith Gessen sought insight into the current parlous state of U.S.-Russian relations by examining the thinking and career paths of some well-known American “Russia hands.” Based on his interviews with various prominent specialists, Gessen tended to divide them into two camps: older Russia hands, generally with many years of U.S. government service, who incline toward a fairly tough approach toward Moscow (for example, Victoria Nuland and Daniel Fried); and a mostly younger group skeptical of America’s democratic “missionary impulse” and more inclined to see some merit in the Russian perspective (for example, Michael Kofman, Olga Oliker, and Samuel Charap). Individuals who somewhat defy this dichotomy, such as Thomas Graham or Michael McFaul, ironically found themselves, as senior U.S. government officials, overseeing sharp declines in U.S.-Russian relations despite their best intentions and efforts. Gessen summarized the dilemma with the following apt observation: “And yet the mystery is this: After all the many different Russia hands who have served in the United States government, the country’s relations with Russia are as they have always been—bad.”

Compared with the movers and shakers profiled by Gessen, I hardly qualify as a Russia hand at all; I am at best a knuckle, or perhaps a fingernail. Nevertheless, let me make one observation about Gessen’s profile of American Russia experts that I think sheds some light on the “mystery” of chronically fraught U.S.-Russian relations and underscores the likely limits of Russian-American summitry.

The grizzled hardliners tend to be those of us who have struggled for decades to secure Russian cooperation in various undertakings, generally with considerable frustration and limited success. Whether the issue is European security architecture, WMD proliferation, human rights in third countries, the functioning of UN or OSCE missions, or cleaning up after the Wars of Yugoslav Succession, few experiences will suck the optimism out of an American policymaker more thoroughly than trying to reach a consensus with the Russians. There have been a few exceptions to this rather dismal track record: cooperation in space, the Northern Distribution Network for Afghanistan, and the Middle East peace process (at least in the 1990s, when a viable peace process still existed). Still, even though the Cold War is long over, Kumbaya moments between American and Russian officials have been few and far between.

The optimistic Russia hands, conversely, tend to be people in academia with at most episodic experience in government—typically somewhere like the State Department’s Policy Planning staff with responsibilities that do not involve close daily engagement with the Russians to advance specific policy agendas. This factor also helps explain the serial bullishness of successive incoming U.S. administrations about the prospects for improved relations with Russia. Each new U.S. President, along with key members of his team, appears confident of the ability to “avoid the mistakes” of the previous administration and set U.S.-Russian relations on a firmer footing. This mindset found an echo in grand bilateral initiatives like the Gore-Chernomyrdin Commission, where American and Russian leaders could agree in principal about the need for cooperation across a broad swath of issues, but working-level “bureaucrats” somehow never managed to hash out the practical details and progress, by either side’s definition, remained elusive.

In fact, the theoretical commonality of purpose across a laundry list of issues—counterterrorism, non-proliferation, regional security, and so forth—was superficial and largely evaporated once the two sides set about trying to flesh out a joint action plan. Over the course of my own career, I watched various American officials, both career and appointed, set out eagerly to forge a consensus with their Russian counterparts to advance some aspect of our bilateral or multilateral agenda, only to conclude ruefully after lengthy, fruitless discussions that—notwithstanding reasonable expectations seemingly rooted in shared interests—there was precious little common ground. Conversely, I have yet to see a curmudgeonly American official whose cynicism toward Moscow was dispelled by a fulsome Russian spirit of cooperation and compromise, or the quick and easy elaboration of a common U.S.-Russian approach to any given issue.

The problem is not sheer bloody-minded intransigence on the part of the Russians (or the Americans, for that matter). Americans can cooperate effectively with countries that share either our values or our interests. The most productive cooperation occurs with countries with which we share both values and interests. With Russia we increasingly share neither—and have shared little since the early 1990s. Even where we share some identifiable broad interest with the Russians (like countering Sunni jihadists), we find ourselves with different perceptions of the common problem, as well as different priorities. This U.S.-Russia disconnect has been more glaring at times of outright tension, but it has been operative even when relations were ostensibly smooth. Whatever chumminess or mutual admiration Trump and Putin might demonstrate in Helsinki does not reduce this fundamental problem one iota.

Even with a dearth of shared interests, priorities, or perceptions, Americans and Russians could still, in principle, advance their relationship by taking a transactional approach. Although Americans are not much inclined to foreign-policy horse-trading, the election of Donald Trump gave rise to the notion of some package deal that would resolve a host of problems through mutual concessions and set bilateral relations on a solid businesslike footing in one fell swoop. Speculation inevitably centered around tradeoffs principally involving Ukraine and Syria. Although no such grand bargain ever took shape, news of the impending Trump-Putin summit has reignited the hope—and the dread—of a high-level package deal that would, depending on one’s perspective, either reverse the deplorable slide in U.S.-Russian relations, or undermine Western solidarity and resolve in the face of Russia’s global war against liberal democracy.

Actually, neither of these outcomes is likely. As was the case a year ago, there is simply no objective basis for a package deal involving Ukraine and Syria. Moreover, the experience of a generation of American Russia hands (and presumably, of Russian America hands as well) demonstrates the difficulty of translating any agreement in principle by the leadership into practical cooperation at the working level. At their final press conference, Trump and Putin can pat each other on the back all they want and crow about their mutual appreciation of the importance of U.S.-Russian cooperation on x, y, and z. Subsequent implementation of any concrete measures, however, is likely to prove a formidable undertaking.

In any event, discussions in Helsinki about Ukraine are likely to amount to wasted breath. The U.S. assessment of Russia’s culpability is well-known, and Trump is clearly not inclined to belabor the point. Neither, despite his track record of Putinophilia, is Trump likely to adopt the Kremlin’s blinkered perspective on Ukraine. Judging by Russian commentary, there appear to be few specialists in Moscow who really grasp Russia’s fundamental problem in Ukraine, or have a game plan beyond blaming the West for creating the “fascist junta” in Kyiv and working to facilitate the “inevitable” collapse of the Ukrainian government and state. Putin will receive no comfort in Helsinki on either point. He is probably too savvy to engage in a Ukraine blamestorming exercise in his meeting with Trump, but he might seek to drive in some wedges. One possibility that comes to mind is a confidence-building measure floated by at least one presumably well-intentioned Western observer: that the West demonstrate its goodwill and reassure Moscow by preemptively ruling out future NATO membership for Ukraine.

With the bluntness of which he is singularly capable, Trump should rebuff any such suggestion. Russian-Ukrainian negotiations—the only means to resolve the conflict—might well result in a Ukrainian renunciation of NATO membership, but it is incumbent on Moscow to provide the requisite assurances to Kyiv that NATO membership is no longer necessary for Ukraine’s security. It is Russia’s unique responsibility to make Ukrainian NATO membership superfluous. Preemptive declarations by the United States or other NATO members would only undercut Kyiv’s leverage in negotiating the scope and terms of Russia’s withdrawal from occupied territories. It is Kyiv, not Washington, that has agency over Ukraine’s policies and destiny, and any indulgence of Moscow’s propensity to seek Western blessing for a Russian sphere of privileged interests would be counterproductive.

Putin and Trump might conceivably declare their agreement in principle on some Ukraine-related matters, such as the utility of a peacekeeping force in the Donbas, but it would be empty rhetoric, since the devil is in the details and there is virtually no likelihood of achieving an actual working arrangement. Trump could best demonstrate Western goodwill by assuring Putin that the United States would not object to any Russian-Ukrainian settlement to which the parties themselves have freely agreed. Beyond that, there’s probably not much to talk about.

If Ukraine offers little prospect for even limited, practical U.S.-Russian engagement, let alone a breakthrough, Syria presents a complex but potentially more promising picture. Trump, like his predecessor, appropriately concluded that the United States can play only a narrow role in Syria, focused on defeating ISIS. Unlike his predecessor, Trump has actually sought to enforce compliance with Syria’s agreement to forego chemical weapons, and he has authorized missile strikes when presented with credible evidence of chemical attacks by the Syrian government. It is a policy that Trump should unapologetically uphold with Putin, particularly in light of Moscow’s longstanding practice, dating back more than 30 years, of obfuscation about Syria’s chemical weapons program. If the Kremlin’s protestations of Assad’s innocence ring hollow to the West, it’s only because of Russia’s proven record of dissimulation on the subject.

In addition, since the fall of Aleppo in December 2016, Russia has negotiated several deconfliction zones in areas still controlled by anti-Assad forces. Subsequently the Russian military has assisted Syrian regime forces and their Iranian and Hezbollah allies in crushing anti-Assad resistance in these areas one by one. The regime is now making moves toward the opposition-controlled enclave in the southwest of Syria, where the deconfliction zone was negotiated by Russia, the United States, and Jordan. As with Syria’s chemical weapons, Trump could usefully hold Putin accountable for enforcement of a deconfliction agreement to which both Russia and the United States are parties.

Aside from underscoring the American expectation that Russia will actually uphold the agreements it has signed, Trump could conceivably explore whether the growing differences between Russian and Iranian interests in Syria present an opportunity for even limited U.S.-Russian cooperation.

Since the onset of the Syrian civil war, Russia and Iran have pursued complementary policies in support of the Assad regime, but for quite different reasons. Moscow has sought to preserve a long-time client and underscore the Kremlin’s invidious comparison between ostensibly responsible Russian policies to promote stability and order vs. the supposed American propensity to sow chaos with color revolutions and regime change.1 In addition, Russia stands to gain heightened prestige as a Middle East power broker, preserve Syria as a platform for regional intelligence-collection, and possibly expand its modest basing arrangements. Iran, on the other hand, is vitally interested in the survival of the Alawite regime in Syria in order to maintain an unbroken arc of Shiite states stretching from Iran to the Levant, ensuring Syria as a conduit for arms transfers to Hezbollah and a platform for attacks against Iran’s arch-nemesis, Israel.

For seven years it mattered very little that Russia and Iran pursued different goals in Syria as long as those goals did not conflict. However, now that the anti-Assad forces in Syria are essentially beaten, Israel has moved with increasing vigor to counter the threat posed by Iran. Long content to maintain a wary neutrality between Assad and his equally distasteful Islamist opponents, Israel is now being drawn militarily into Syria precisely because Assad’s victory over his domestic opponents has resulted in an unprecedented level of Iranian influence in, and military penetration of, the Levant.

The situation is a potential catastrophe for Russia. With anti-Assad forces in Syria routed, Putin should now be running his victory lap, basking in the glow of a successful Syria campaign, bringing some of the troops home, and building on the Syria intervention to enhance Russian influence elsewhere in the Middle East. Instead, the prospect of a large-scale Israeli-Iranian conflict in Syria threatens to set back Moscow’s arduous efforts to stabilize the Assad regime, to wreak further destruction in an already devastated country, and even to make Russian forces in Syria potential collateral damage. All of a sudden, Iranian overreach in Syria risks undermining everything that Russia has worked seven years to accomplish there.

One can only speculate what sharp words the Russians and Iranians might currently be exchanging in private, but Russia’s remarkable restraint in the face of recent Israeli air operations against Iranian forces in Syria speaks volumes. Can Trump and Putin, notwithstanding their different national priorities and perspectives, find common ground in the need to bring Iran down a couple pegs in Syria, thereby diminishing the threat to Israel and averting an Israeli-Iranian conflagration? Recognizing their inability to exercise control over all the internal and external players in Syria, can the two leaders nevertheless agree on a set of measures to diminish the risk of Syria becoming an Israeli-Iranian battleground? It would be a worthy endeavor.

One hopes that the Trump-Putin summit will bring no further jarring, off-the-cuff remarks such as Trump’s recent pronouncement about bringing Russia back into the G8 “because we’ve got a world to run.” The statement was off-putting on many levels, not least of which is the fact that the whole thrust of Trump’s foreign policy is supposed to be getting the United States out of the business of trying to “run the world.” An America that no longer seeks to play the role of sheriff has no need for a Russian deputy.

Whatever rhetorical excesses or flights of fancy may occur in Helsinki, if the summit can nevertheless manage to make Syria a less horrific or dangerous place, it will have accomplished something worthwhile. If the United States and Russia can identify a congruence of interests in preventing an Israeli-Iranian war from being fought in the ruins of Syria, and elaborate a joint strategy to this end, they should seize the opportunity. The doleful experience of a generation of American Russia hands suggests that such opportunities are few and far between.

1In fact, some clear, substantive differences have become apparent between the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 to remove one regime, and Russia’s engagement in Syria since 2011 to support another one. Both Syria and Iraq have been wracked by civil war, suffered widespread destruction and economic devastation, been subject to various degrees of hard or soft cantonization, and seen hundreds of thousands of their citizens killed and millions displaced. The primary difference is that, at the end of the day, the dictator in Iraq who used chemical weapons against his own people is gone, while the dictator who did likewise in Syria is still in power. Largely as a consequence, conditions for the return of refugees and displaced persons are being created in Iraq, while they are still far off in Syria.

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