Amateur hour
redux...
On the eve of another Russian-American ‘summit’, the usual alarmism is on display. What a fool Mr Witkoff is! How can he and Mr Trump negotiate with no real advisers, without their own interpreter, without a notetaker?!
And so on.
Summits are made for carping from the expert class. It wasn’t that long ago that the same noses turned up at Mr Bush’s staring into Mr Putin’s eyes and seeing his soul, or his sharing a tube of toothpaste with Mr Blair. It wasn’t that long ago that the class reacted in horror to Mr Reagan’s agreeing with Mr Gorbachev to destroy all nuclear weapons. And it wasn’t that long ago that Mr Baker let slip the news that instead of inspecting his great big superpower briefing book before another such gathering, Mr Reagan watched ‘The Sound of Music’ on television.
The world has survived these and other embarrassments. But then history doesn’t usually repeat itself, does it?