Dear CCI Friends,
Check out the URL and article below authored by three highly-qualified US-Russia specialists. Tell us whether the Presidential Summit on July 16th makes sense to you or not.
Sharon Tennison
Center for Citizen Initiatives
The Washington Times
July 10, 2018
Trump-Putin Summit in Helsinki: The Triumph of Common Sense
By Edward Lozansky, James Jatras and Gilbert Doctorow
ANALYSIS/OPINION:
The upcoming Trump-Putin summit in Helsinki is a triumph of common sense over bitterly anti-Russia politics in Washington and some European capitals. Prepared by National Security Advisor John Bolton, the summit is the culmination of President Trump’s efforts to reestablish lines of communication with the world’s other nuclear superpower that Barack Obama foolishly severed following the ideological agenda of the State Department and intelligence agencies.
In addition, the pre-summit visit of a delegation of Republican Members of Congress organized by Ambassador Jon Huntsman opens top-level lines of communication between the two sides and can help establish a minimum of mutual trust that has been missing for the last few years. If the decades of first Cold War taught us anything it was that machines fail, that humans are fallible, and that false attack alerts or misreading the intentions of the other side can easily lead to catastrophe.