Authored by Nikolas Gvosdev via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
Will a future, formal Trump-Putin summit be a game changer?
Last week, I noted that any encounter between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin that would take place at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Da Nang, Vietnam, would have to address two critical questions if there was to be any clarity in U.S.-Russia relations.
We’ve now gotten a first draft of answers.
While officials cited "scheduling conflicts" that dashed hopes of a bilateral meeting between President Trump and President Putin on the sidelines of the APEC summit, the two 'old friends' came face-to-face during the photo-op at the start of the conference... and the handshake took place...
The two were all smiles while shaking hands during the photo call...
In what is sure to stir up a media storm of over analysis, the Kremlin has commented that there is a strong possibility that Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin will meet on the sidelines of the upcoming international summit in Vietnam.
Authored by Pepe Escobar, originally posted op-ed via Strategic-Culture.org,
A half-hearted near handshake between US President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin before and after they spoke «for about four minutes», standing up, on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Lima, Peru, captured to perfection the melancholic dwindling of the Obama era.
As we noted on Thursday, "it was ludicrous for Obama to leave China out of things. China is the second biggest economy in the world, third if you treat the EU as a block. Had China been in the deal all along, we may not have seen the ludicrous provision that allowed companies to sue governments. That provision was one of the key reasons the deal failed. With the election of Trump, TPP is officially dead. China, not the US, will be at the center of a new Asian trade pact."