The Helsinki blowback

“I’ve asked the same question,” Trump replied, “Montenegro is a tiny country with very strong people. They’re very aggressive people. They may get aggressive, and congratulations you’re in World War III,” the US president asserted.

Doubtless at some point over the subsequent next few hours Russian President Vladimir Putin would have seen last Tuesday’s interview, and almost certainly have been well pleased with Trump’s response.

“The criticism seemed to parrot Putin’s thinking on Nato and Montenegro…the exchange left observers justifiably wondering if this was part of the agenda in the private Trump-Putin talks,” observed New Yorker journalist Susan B Glasser, who writes a weekly column on life in Trump’s Washington.

In effect the US president had just succeeded in undermining Montenegro’s membership of Nato, something the Russians have been trying to do ever since the small Balkan nation expressed a desire to join the alliance some years ago. So incensed was Moscow at the time in the run up to Montenegro’s full Nato membership last year, that the Kremlin brought the full might of its dirty tricks repertoire to bear. Propaganda, espionage, and subversion were all tried by Russian military intelligence the GRU, the same service that has been indicted by the US Justice Department for its meddling in America’s 2016 election.

The Kremlin even went as far as to support a coup in 2016 against the Montenegro Government of then prime minister, Milo Dukanovic.

Although the putsch ultimately failed it had been hoped that with Dukanovic’s assassination a pro-Russian party would be brought to power, so determined was Moscow to ensure that the west was not able to encroach on areas it has long viewed as falling within its sphere of influence.

In the end the GRU’s plans were rumbled, but the Kremlin’s obsession with the tiny Balkan country remains.

With a population of only 600,000 and a standing military force of scarcely 2000 troops, Montenegro poses no threat to the United States, yet last Tuesday with his on-air remarks Trump made this miniscule country sound like a threat to world peace.

“This is insane. I can tell you these days we are thinking about our holidays, heading to resorts along the Adriatic, not waging world war three,” Vesko Garcevic, Montenegro’s former ambassador to Nato, said in response to Trump’s remarks.

Jokes aside, given that Trump’s Montenegro comments came so quickly on the heels of his hugely controversial meeting with Putin in Helsinki, they only served to ring more alarm bells concerning his cosiness with the Russian president.

“Worrying to hear Trump use Russian talking points with Tucker Carlson, about Montenegro,” tweeted Wesley Clark, retired US army general and former Nato Supreme Allied Commander

“Montenegro has been under continuous pressure by Russia for more than a decade. Trump’s comments weaken Nato, give Russia a license to cause trouble and thereby actually increase the risks of renewed conflict in the Balkans,” warned Clark.

This weekend the fallout and blowback from Trump’s Helsinki meeting is far from abating and indeed shows signs of intensifying.

News on Friday that the US President has now offered his Russian counterpart a further meeting in Washington in the autumn has only added to the prevailing “incredulity” and ire within the US security and foreign policy establishment.

The furore was further fuelled by the almost 24-hour delay before the White House publicly rejected Putin’s request to interrogate Americans in exchange for assistance in the FBI's Russia probe led by US special counsel Robert Mueller.

Trump has already effectively dismissed FBI indictments of 12 Russian military officers for conducting cyber-warfare against the US during the 2016 Presidential elections.

Putin had suggested that Mueller's investigators could come to Russia to question the Russians that have been charged with interfering in the election. But in return, Putin said he would expect the US to allow Russian investigators to question people he called fugitives on American soil.

The Americans wanted for questioning by Moscow include Michael McFaul, the former US ambassador to Russia, and American-born financier Bill Browder, who successfully lobbied the US government to impose new sanctions on Moscow.

Almost across the board senior US officials have pushed Trump to roundly dismiss Putin’s offer.

“That’s not going to happen,” said Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in an interview with the conservative Christian Broadcasting Network on Thursday when asked about Putin’s offer. Other prominent figures were also uncompromising in their response.

“The administration needs to make it unequivocally clear that in a million years this wouldn’t be under consideration, period. Full stop,” insisted John Kerry who served as Secretary of State under president Barack Obama, adding that the proposal is “not something that should require a half second of consultation. Dangerous.”

But even the White House announcement rejecting Putin’s offer has done little to allay fears of Trump’s relationship and apparent willingness to appease Putin. His remarks in Helsinki, which were far more deferential to Russia than anyone could have anticipated, are continuing to send shockwaves through Washington and other Western capitals and have clearly made their mark on ordinary Americans too.

According to a recent Reuters Ipsos Mori poll, 56 per cent of Americans think Putin did interfere on behalf of Trump in the 2016 elections, even if only 32 per cent of Republicans think the same.

Many Americans are clearly rattled at the sight of their president showing greater faith in Putin’s word than the analysis of the US intelligence services. With mid-term elections scheduled in November, minds are now focused in certain quarters to ensure there is not a rerun of Moscow meddling

Already the US Senate is actively debating a bill introduced back in January by Senators Mark Rubio, a Republican, and Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat, that would impose harsh economic sanctions if Russia interferes in the November poll.

As for the Helsinki summit itself there remains a near total blackout on what was discussed between the two leaders.

Such is the concern over what was talked about and possibly agreed that some US Democratic politicians moved to subpoena Trump’s interpreter Marina Gross, the only other American in the room during the meeting with Putin.

The Democrats efforts were only thwarted by Republicans during a vote in the US House Intelligence Committee on Thursday, but as many observers have pointed out subpoenaing a president’s interpreter is unprecedented in modern times.

For their part the Russians have at least alluded to some of what was talked about and made clear Moscow’s satisfaction over how things went.

“Awesome, better than super,” was how Sergei Lavrov, the Russian Foreign Minister summed up his assessment of the summit.

The Russian Government appeared to be taking advantage of the secretive meeting, suggesting that Trump and Putin had reached agreements on key issues despite denials from US officials.

For his part president Putin announced that the summit “was overall successful and led to productive agreements.” Russian state-controlled TV channels agreed, praising the summit outcome and Putin’s performance for five consecutive days.

On Thursday Trump said he looked forward to a second meeting with Putin “so that we can start implementing some of the many things discussed”.

He listed Ukraine, Israel’s security, nuclear proliferation, trade, North Korea, and Middle East peace, much to the consternation of US officials who are still in the dark over what was discussed and are keen to reassure European and Nato allies.

Bloomberg reported that Putin made a proposal during the meeting to hold a referendum to end the conflict in eastern Ukraine, a plan that the news outlet said Russians diplomats believe Trump is considering.

Inevitably the scarcely believable events of the last week have also provoked rising debate in Washington over whether Russia does indeed have some incriminating intelligence it is holding over Trump’s head that is influencing his behaviour toward Putin. While so far there has been no publicly available evidence to back up any such claim, some are beginning to seriously consider the likelihood.

“Before the Helsinki summit, I was not prepared to go to the darkest corner in the room and say there is kompromat – there is compromising information – on Donald Trump,” said Steve Hall, a former CIA station chief in Moscow, on CNN's “Anderson Cooper 360” on Thursday.

“After I saw Donald Trump treat Putin in a fashion that is just inexplicable, the only conclusion that I can come to is ... I think there is information and data out there that implies there is indeed compromising information that Vladimir Putin has on Donald Trump. Why else would he treat him that way?” asked Hall, expressing the fears of many.

Should such an assessment prove to be true it would have profound political consequences. Even without this doomsday scenario, many observers of America’s corridors of power feel that massive damage has already been inflicted on the US body politic.

Some like political writer Susan Glasser of the New Yorker suggest what we are witnessing is nothing less than the breakdown of American foreign policy.

“Even if we don’t know the full extent of what was said and done behind closed doors in Helsinki, here’s what we already do know as a result of the summit: America’s government is divided from its President on Russia; its process for orderly decision-making, or even basic communication, has disintegrated; and its ability to lead an alliance in Europe whose main mission in recent years has been to counter and contain renewed Russian aggression has been seriously called into question,” she wrote last week.

What, more than anything, now baffles the US political and media community however, is why, given the near universal condemnation Trump received over meeting Putin in Helsinki, is prepared to do the same thing all over again in the autumn?

This, after all, is a President who has been known to make or reverse decisions based on what he sees on TV, a man that feeds off media coverage.

As the Washington Post noted on Friday, only a month ago Trump abruptly decided to end his administration's policy of separating families apprehended at the Mexican border after criticism of it reached near fever pitch in the US and beyond.

In November last year too, he also ended the import of elephant trophies from Africa just a week after his own administration reopened it, after conservative TV hosts voiced their aversion to big-game trophies.

Why then now, given the tsunami of criticism over his Putin meeting would Trump now invite the Russian leader to a rerun in Washington, not least without conferring with his own country’s top intelligence officials?

For the moment there remain more questions than answers as to what really happened in Helsinki. If one thing is certain, though, it’s that the Trump-Putin summit is cutting its way into the US political establishment in a way rarely ever seen before. Round two in Washington will be very interesting indeed, as will November’s mid terms. For now the blowback continues and will do so for some time to come.