IF GEORGE W. BUSH once famously looked Vladimir Putin in the eye and saw his soul, Donald Trump, when he met the Russian president in Helsinki on July 16th, saw his own reflection: an alpha male who made his country “great again”; a fellow populist and disrupter who disdains the politically correct and hypocritical liberal elite, and the institutions they inhabit; a man guided by interests, who likes doing deals while trusting nobody and who uses the media to create his own reality show. Vladimir Putin saw in Mr Trump a confirmation of a long-held belief that Western leaders operate in exactly the same way as he does and only pretend to have “values”.
Appropriately enough, the meeting took place in the Hall of Mirrors at the presidential palace in Helsinki. It was both an imitation and a reversal of traditional foreign-policy engagements. Stylistically, it resembled cold-war summitry. But unlike past summits, it lacked a clear agenda or substance. There was little change in the official...Continue reading
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