Vladimir putin

In May 2017, TIME magazine published a cover showing the White House being infected and taken over by Russian onion domes. The image meant to suggest that Donald Trump was a sleeper agent on behalf of Vladimir Putin. This sort of thinking was the driving force behind four years of media hysterics and seemingly endless cable news segments portraying Trump as a Russian puppet. ​With Joe Biden, naturally, the media has adopted a distinctly different tone — especially when it comes to the President’s relations with Russia: this despite six months of Team Biden’s complacency towards Russia, bad actors and even Putin himself. Gone are the accusations of ransom and pee tapes, or treachery — even as Russia makes aggressive moves on the world stage and towards the United States.

There was a time when summit meetings between the presidents of Russia and the US were world-historical events on which the balance of world peace rested. Today — not so much. Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin didn’t even manage to fill the five hours allotted for their talks in Geneva today in large part because they simply didn’t have much to talk about. Russia today threatens no US vital interests, commands no alliances or strategic resources and remains a world power in only two areas, both inherited from the Cold War — its large nuclear arsenal and its UN Security Council veto.

On Tuesday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo traveled to Sochi to meet Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and, of course, Russian President Vladimir Putin. It was the first such trip by a high-ranking US official since the release of the Mueller report in April. During his meeting with Lavrov, Pompeo struck a conciliatory tone while calling for cooperation more between the United States and Russia. If that sounds familiar that’s because it is. US-Russia diplomatic efforts always start pushing in the same direction, then something goes wrong. ‘We have differences.

Vladimir Putin is not nearly as clever as American liberals like to believe. His meddling in the 2016 election backfired, after all — spectacularly. The Kremlin did not expect Donald Trump to win, just as no one in Washington did. If Trump had lost, the Kremlin’s gambit would have paid off: stolen emails would have damaged America’s newly elected president as she faced a hostile, Republican-controlled House and Senate. She could hardly expect cooperation from them on Russian sanctions or anything else, and the GOP could be counted on to react to another Democratic administration by adopting an oppositional foreign policy.

Over the weekend, two Russian military aircraft carrying General Vasily Tonkoshkurov along with over 100 Russian troops landed in Caracas, Venezuela. Did the US know Putin was planning this? What will America’s response be? Who knows, because the American media isn’t asking. What might well become the most explosive situation since the Cuban missile crisis has gone almost totally ignored on the homepages of our major news sites. Rather than inquire what will be done about Russian troops in Venezuela, the media focuses its myopic gaze on the only Russia story they seem capable of seeing: what role Russia may have played in our 2016 presidential election.

Trump’s latest wet kiss to his pal Bibi is supposed to help the beleaguered Israeli prime minister, but really it will benefit Putin – and Xi. The unintended consequences of dumb diplomacy may prove severe here. It happened with a tweet. Because that’s how Donald J. Trump rolls. Yesterday, the president informed the world of a significant change in US foreign policy with this tweet: ‘After 52 years it is time for the United States to fully recognize Israel’s Sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which is of critical strategic and security importance to the State of Israel and Regional Stability!’ https://twitter.