Today, the President of the US, Donald Trump and the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin are meeting in Helsinki, Finland. The world has come a long way since the then President of the US, John F Kennedy met with the then leader of the USSR, Premier Nikita Khrushchev in Vienna on June 3, 1961. The Cold War rivalry between the two superpowers was heating up and the young, liberal Kennedy was anxious to prove he could stand up to the communist leader. The Bay of Pigs invasion had ended in disaster for the US, but JFK showed he was willing to confront the “communist threat” frontally.
In Vienna, Laos was one of the topics on the agenda, in addition to the “Berlin question”. While the threat of “another Cuba” in the western hemisphere had already raised concerns among US politicians about the PPP Government in then British Guiana, we would not be on Kennedy’s radar until after the August 1961 elections, which were supposed to determine which party would take the British colony into independence.
Today, the USSR has been shattered like Humpty Dumpty; Germany has been reunited; the Berlin question is moot; and Laos was just a precursor to the Vietnam War. Of course, the PPP was manoeuvred out of office in 1964 for the PNC to rule by rigging for the next 28 years.
While we barely even rate a footnote in US-USSR history, being a pawn in their power struggle has certainly been disastrous for us as a nation. Since ideology is no longer the determinative factor in US-Russia relations, here in Guyana, maybe the PPP and the PNC could finally use the ongoing discussions on the selection of their presidential candidates to articulate their new ideology outside of the neo-liberal premises of the Washington Consensus foisted on us even as the Berlin Wall fell.
So what will Trump and Putin have on their agenda apart from what the metropolitan media has dubbed their “bromance”? While much may be discussed, the much-heralded Trump-Kim Summit has tempered expectations of momentous decisions or much progress on current contentious issues such as Syria and the Ukraine.
There is a certain irony in Trump browbeating his European allies on the need for increasing their spending on NATO, which is an alliance that was meant to checkmate the USSR and its “Eastern Bloc” allies when Trump dismissed concerns about his meeting with Putin by saying, “Putin’s fine”.
All of this, however, is not to say the Helsinki Summit is not important, but just as with the Singapore Summit with Kim, it will be a triumph of style over substance. It will reinforce the creeping rise of leadership defined increasingly by the leader as a “strongman” and not being bound by older norms of civility.
In the specific case of these leaders, it is not very much appreciated that among Trump’s Bible Belt, Rust Belt and rural supporters, Putin is very popular for his tough defence of “traditional” values against Muslims and other nationalities at Russia’s borders. While some may be surprised at Trump’s hard line against immigrants and other nationalities as “shithole countries”, this pales in comparison with Putin’s actual military attacks on Crimea and Chechnya.
Another topic that will certainly be raised are the swirling investigations in the US into charges that Russia interfered with the last US elections to help Trump get elected. It should be obvious, however, that it will all be a rather carefully scripted scenario with Putin denying any interference and Trump remaining rather non-committal, rather than repeating the denials he had made in the US in the past.
As such, the sanctions that were imposed by Trump – after pressure from Congress –- on several Russian oligarchs and businesses for the alleged interference and other “malign activities” will not be removed. Guyana was affected by the sanctions against the aluminium magnate Oleg Deripaska, who owns a majority interest in Rusal, which mines bauxite in Berbice.
Whether the elephants fight or make love, the grass always suffers.
