World

NATO once feared the spectre of Soviet divisions rolling through the Fulda Gap. Military and civilian leaders spent restless nights worrying about Russia’s nuclear arsenal, its bloody-minded intelligence services, and its endless desire to erode the leadership, morale, and capabilities of the West. Today, they fear Donald Trump is about to throw them to the Russian wolves out of pique, spite, and a curious loyalty to Vladimir Putin. For two generations the annual NATO summit had a particular and vital purpose. They began as careful, crafted exercises designed to develop the capacity and resolve of the West to stand against Soviet aggression, and then subsequently evolved as a check against post-Soviet misbehaviour and instability.

From Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer, comes a warning to his old boss. “My wife, my daughter and my son have my first loyalty and always will,” Cohen told the ABC anchor, George Stephanopoulos, off-camera, “I put family and country first.” He was answering a question about whether he would cooperate with the Feds and flip on the president if that were the price of his freedom. Such a deal may be a real possibility now, following an FBI raid on his offices, home and hotel room. Cohen said, menacingly, that the president’s lawyers had better think very carefully about their next steps: “I will not be a punching bag as part of anyone's defence strategy. I am not a villain of this story, and I will not allow others to try to depict me that way.

When the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu visited London in 1978, the British government did some serious sucking up. Ceausescu was an egomaniac and possibly crazy. When he went hunting outside Bucharest, his body-guards shot game with machine guns so he could be photographed at the end of the day with a shoulder-high pile of dead animals. He was also said to be a germophobe, sterilising his hand with pure alcohol if it touched a door handle. The French president telephoned the Queen to warn her that when the Ceausescus came to the Élysée, lamps, vases, ashtrays and bathroom taps went missing from their rooms. But Ceausescu got a state visit to Britain, with a knighthood (later revoked) and a stay in Buckingham Palace.

Writing in his space last week, Jacob Heilbrunn quipped that President Donald Trump’s summit in Singapore with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un went so well for the North Korean fat man that Vladimir Putin must now be itching to meet the Donald as soon as he can. Given how little Kim gave up in Singapore and how flimsy the page and a half communique he signed up to was, it’s hard to take issue with Jacob's point. But the more I think about a possible Trump-Putin blockbuster this year (perhaps in July), the more I’m inclined to support it. Relations between the United States and Russia have been awful for a long time, and it’s hard to see how the status-quo ante can be changed unless it is shattered into a million pieces.

You can tell when Donald Trump has just achieved something: he starts being strangely amiable, and his critics start frothing at the mouth. He’s just met supposedly one of the most dangerous, evil men in the world — and made him look like a sweet overgrown child. He and Kim Jong-un signed an agreement and all the rolling news anchors talking about how ‘historic’ it is are for once not exaggerating. 'Today, we had a historic meeting and decided to leave the past behind and we are about to sign the historic document,' Kim said. 'The world will see a major change.' He also thanked Trump for the summit. ‘We’re going to take care of a very big and very dangerous problem for the world,’ said Trump.

This is Putin’s time. Next week, the Fifa World Cup kicks off in Moscow, and the Kremlin has spared no expense to showcase Vladimir Putin’s new Russia as a vibrant, safe and strong nation. Half a million visitors will be welcomed — with the Russian press reporting that the notorious ‘Ultra’ hooligans have been officially warned to behave themselves or face the full wrath of the state. Despite four years of rock-bottom oil prices, Putin has nonetheless found the cash to build or refurbish a dozen new stadiums. Moscow has undergone a two-year city-wide facelift that has left it looking cleaner, fresher and more prosperous than any European capital I have seen.

Vladimir Putin — about to embark on a state visit to Austria, his first foreign trip since being re-elected president of Russia — sits for an interview with Austrian television…and is repeatedly questioned about a man popularly known as ‘Putin’s chef’. This is because the ‘chef’, Yevgeny Prigozhin, is not really a chef, but an oligarch said to be trusted with some of the Russian state’s most important tasks, including  — allegedly — interfering in the US presidential election, though Putin denied this in his interview.Prigozhin earned his mocking nickname after opening a luxury restaurant in St Petersburg that became one of Putin’s favourites.

Kim Yong-chol arrived in New York from Pyongyang via a flight from Beijing on Wednesday afternoon. He then made his way to a hotel in midtown Manhattan and, later that evening, to an apartment near the United Nations headquarters, where the North Korean pol had dinner with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. The two are apparently laying the groundwork for the off-again, on-again summit between their bosses, Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump, that may or may not take place in Singapore on June 12. https://twitter.com/SecPompeo/status/1002012928407728128 The ease with which Kim—no relation to his boss—made his way to and through New York City stands in stark contrast to his last big diplomatic photo-op.

Who what where when why? The desiderata school teachers drill into their charges trying to master effective writing skills apply also in the effort to understand that byzantine drama known to the world as the Trump-Russia-collusion investigation. Let’s start with “when.” When did it start? We know that the FBI opened its official investigation on 31 July 2016. An obscure, low-level volunteer to the Trump campaign called Carter Page was front and centre then. He’d been the FBI’s radar for a long time. Years before, it was known, the Russians had made some overtures to him but 1) they concluded that he was an “idiot” not worth recruiting and 2) he had actually aided the FBI in prosecuting at least two Russian spies.

So much for the Nobel Peace Prize that Donald Trump said “everyone thinks” he should receive. The New York Times reports that Trump is starting to get second thoughts about visiting Singapore on June 12 to hold a summit with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un. Trump boasted earlier that if they cut a deal, Kim would be “very, very happy.” Now it’s starting to dawn on the Trump administration that it’s getting played by the portly pariah of Pyongyang.Even as Trump abrogated the Iran nuclear deal, he was confident that he, and he alone, had the magic touch that would persuade North Korea to hand over its nuclear stockpile to America. He would, in turn, play the role of the benignant emperor, showering economic largesse upon Pyongyang.

My, my, my. North Korea is in a snit over National Security Adviser John Bolton who urged it to follow the Libya model of total denuclearization. Everyone knows how that ended. The North declared yesterday that it finds Bolton “repugnant,” a sentiment that is actually widely shared around the world, and that it wants an end to the “ruckus” surrounding the talks. Indeed Pyongyang is threatening to blowup the summit talks altogether. Will President Trump, who has been childishly eager to meet Kim Jong-un and land a prized photo op, realize that there is something wrong with this picture? Trump is being outmanoeuvred both by the North – and by his own adviser. By invoking Libya, Bolton pretty much ensured that Pyongyang would retaliate. And so it has.