Donald Trump recently said in an interview with The Sunday Times that he will start his presidency trusting both Vladimir Putin and Angela Merkel, before adding that such trust might not last long. Given Russian interference in the US presidential elections and the general distrust of Putin in the West, Trump’s excessively pro-Putin statements and his readiness to trust his Russian counterpart naturally created some backlash.
But where states don’t trust each other, personal trust between their leaders is often crucial. And Trump is only proposing to do what many of his predecessors did, both in the Cold War and since: to build a trusting relationship with their Soviet/Russian counterparts. John F Kennedy went to Vienna in 1963 to size up Nikita Khrushchev. Richard Nixon met Leonid Brezhnev in Moscow in 1971, and Barack Obama visited Putin in 2009 for the same reason.
Still, trust is only an effective foreign policy tool if it’s established slowly and carefully. If one leader extends too much trust too early in their relationship with another, the trustee will rarely value it.
In 1964, the new collective Soviet leadership was quick to assure Lyndon Johnson that it trusted him, but its goodwill evaporated after a few months due to what the Soviet leadership saw as Johnson’s duplicity and harmful intentions. Brezhnev’s early trust in president-elect Jimmy Carter withered after Carter repeatedly failed to demonstrate any empathy for the needs of a Soviet leader.
Trust can also prove dangerous if it’s one sided, which leaves the trustor vulnerable to betrayal. Mutual trust requires that actors entertain some affinity for one another and prove themselves able, honest and benevolent.
This is a problem for Trump, who’s already known for inexperience, inconsistency, a volatile temperament, and an inability to see things through other people’s eyes. This is not the character of a trusted partner. Likewise, Putin’s lack of warmth and sometimes open contempt for Western leaders might not appeal to Trump, while his very public machismo and ruthless pursuit of Russian interests are more likely to incite a competitive spirit rather than a co-operative one.
So in the long term, US-Russia relations are likely to deteriorate rather than improve. But should a real crisis arise, the two leaders do still have a trust-based device to fall back on: the Moscow-Washington hotline.
Call me if you need me
The hotline, also known as MOLINK or the Direct Communication Link (DCL), was established in 1963 as a leader-to-leader communication channel to help Soviet-American leaders resolve such serious confrontations as the Cuban Missile Crisis. Originally, the hotline was a written teletype connection, but today Russian and American leaders may choose from various options, including email, phone, and a videolink, to contact each other.
At its birth, the hotline was not only conceptualised as an instantaneous communication device, but also as a last resort that would allow the superpowers to trust the peaceful intentions communicated through it even when all other channels of communication had been contaminated with untrustworthy messages.
The DCL has been used several times since 1963. It was first used in 1967 when, at the outbreak of the Arab-Israeli war, Premier Kosygin contacted President Johnson to inform him of peaceful Soviet intentions.
Four years later, Nixon contacted Brezhnev through the hotline to ensure the interests of Pakistan, a US ally in the Indo-Pakistani war. But while Nixon and Brezhnev at first enjoyed a genuinely trusting relationship, the 1973 Yom Kippur war undercut that trust to the point where Brezhnev, no longer certain of Nixon’s intentions, was forced to use the hotline to make sure an already agreed ceasefire was implemented.
The DCL also helped prevent a confrontation in 1984 when Moscow contacted Washington about a mistakenly launched cruise missile that ultimately crashed in Finland.
Little is known about the hotline’s use in more recent years, but we do know that presidents Obama and Putin conferred over the hotline in April 2013 as part of the effort to tame Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Should an emergency arise, it remains at Trump and Putin’s disposal. But if they are able to trust each other, they may not have to use it at all.
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
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It is not we who should be asking 'Can we trust Russia' but Russia should be asking 'can we trust them'.
After allowing the Serbs to pound Sarajevo and after failing to listen to the Serb's fears of a Muslim Government in Bosnia, we missed first one opportunity. Tell people to take themselves and their artillery off the hills above Sarajevo and strafe or bomb the hills on a regular basis. We failed to understand Kosovo. RAF pilots were returning from missions seeing villagers fleeing their burning homes but wot a trace of Serbian troop movement in the vicinity. Who set fire to the villages? Who had most to gain in publicity and sympathy. The KLA. All this time, Russia, who should have been in the forefront of negotiation watched on, frustrated.
It would have been good if that were the end of it but no sooner had the KLA been handed Kosovo on a plate, they took to insurgency in Montenegro. And a short time ago the Russians were airlifting civilians out of Serbia because of insurgency there.
Our latest mess is Syria. Over two years ago, we were threatening to bomb Assad, I wrote to my MP asking if we were really intent on opening a bag of cats. Russia was bullied and even threatened with disturbances at it's Winter Olympics if they didn't back our crazy scheme. Then, we turned out back on the situation until it became a veritable hell.
Democracy imposed on a people with a different view of democracy that ourselves is Tyranny. India is Democratic but 29% of their population lives on less than $2 a day. Democratic India removed tens of thousands of slum dweller in Delhi to build the Commonwealth Games Stadium. They were sent to patches of ground up to thirty miles away from Delhi, where they carried out most of the menial tasks in the city. 35 miles, morning and night. The poor sell their votes and the same system is now skewing polls in Britain. Postal Voting has increased in Britain along with the voting *****. It seems to be contageous.
China is not Democratic but it has a demodracy that can be carried in a pocket. Spending power. Expectation. If a train does not turn up to takle people home from the Cities, heads roll. China has a good trading relationship with the Ukraine and is responsible for roads and infrastructure projects throughout Africa.
America is a Democracy but it can't be bothered to fund Police and Social Services child protection. Thousands of American Children at risk and not the infrastructure to deal with the problem.
Can we trust Russia? Can we trust America not to dump its Sub Prime Mortgages on us? Can we trust Turkey not to by fuel from ISIS? Can we trust the Friendly Arab Countries (oxymoron) to apply their laudable Age of Consent to Nine year old girls who once married are no longer covered by statutory Rape laws.
ON a purely national preservation theme, Russia has untouched minerals and underground water. When, as it is predicted we develop shortages in water or Gas, Is America going to be there for us?
Yes, this is a long rant, and it might sound Daft, but the men in the posh suits have not been doing a good job thus far. In fact, they have missed opportunity after opportunity to bring Russia into the community of nations, usually because An American President knows that hate of the 'Ruskies' will help with re-election.
Postal voting
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