Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and the Triumph of Nothing Over Everyone

By Masha Gessen, The New Yorker

16 July 18

onald Trump and Vladimir Putin are about to hold a meeting that will reflect their shared understanding of power: the triumph of nothing over everyone. American journalists have been trying to guess what the two Presidents might discuss when they meet in Helsinki on Monday. The special counsel Robert Mueller apparently tried to create a topic they would not be able to avoid, by announcing the indictment of twelve Russian military-intelligence officers on Friday for allegedly interfering in the 2016 U.S. election.

The Russian media barely acknowledged the indictments but mostly continued to report on the bare facts of the meeting: it may last three hours; there will be a press conference; the two Presidents will answer four questions; the Russian President’s limousine has been delivered to Helsinki, and it is a new model. In other words, in Russia, the only thing that matters about the summit is the bare fact of it. It is the hollow power gesture taken to its world-stage extreme.

The deliberately empty gesture is the ultimate innovation of the Trump Presidency. Beginning with his transition-era announcement of saving American jobs at a Carrier plant—an accomplishment of no consequence for the country as a whole and little, if any, consequence for many Carrier employees—Trump has trafficked in hollow symbols. Each gesture is designed to affirm his image as a dealmaker, even though the deals are devoid of substance at best and costly at worst. In this context, the Trump-Putin summit, a meeting without an agenda, appears entirely logical.

For his part, Putin has spent nearly two decades hollowing out Russian politics, media, and public language. His system rests on rituals devoid of content: elections in which voters have no meaningful choice, court and administrative procedures whose outcomes are preordained, and media that speak with a single, vacant voice. For the last several weeks, these media have been trumpeting the looming summit.

Kremlin-dominated media—which is to say, nearly all media—have published pieces aimed at discouraging overly enthusiastic summit expectations. Although Trump has suggested that he is open to recognizing the Russian occupation of Crimea, Russian analysts have warned compatriots against expecting that Helsinki would lead to the recognition of Russian expansion or to the lifting of sanctions against Russia. For Putin, the summit itself is a triumph—filling it with content would be unnecessary and possibly even undesirable.

Putin’s power and legitimacy in Russia rest on two pillars: mobilization at home and perceived fear abroad. Russians see themselves fighting two wars against the United States–one in Ukraine and one in Syria. The ongoing economic pressure exerted by sanctions serves as a constant reminder that Russians need to stick together in the face of a powerful enemy. That Putin has been able to bring the enemy to the negotiating table testifies to the Russian President’s fearsome power.

For Putin, less discussion in Helsinki is more. His power will be manifested in things not discussed: Russian interference in the election, which Trump is clearly loath to bring up, and human-rights issues that an American leader would traditionally broach at such a meeting. A political prisoner, the Ukrainian film director Oleg Sentsov, who is serving a twenty-year sentence in a Russian prison colony on trumped-up terrorism charges, is in the second month of his hunger strike. He is trying to draw attention to the fate of more than sixty other Ukrainian political prisoners held in Russia. American and international human-rights activists have been waging a hopeless fight to get the issue on the summit agenda—or on the White House radar at all.

The mere fact of the meeting, followed by a joint press conference with the American President, will be a demonstration of power for Putin. He needs to deliver nothing else. If, however, he is also able to nudge Trump toward a verbal acknowledgment of the legitimacy of Russia’s interests in its old sphere of influence—something that Putin will almost certainly bring up in conversation, making Trump likely to parrot an attitude he instinctively understands—Russians will perceive it as Putin restoring Russia’s superpower status. Putin may also suggest a deal whereby the United States pulls out of Syria. Being able to make such an announcement would make Trump feel like the dealmaker he longs to be. To Russians, it would look like they had won the war. If any deal happens, though, it will be merely an accidental substantive bonus attached to a performance designed to be empty.