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Eastern Europe
April 20, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 17
Putin and Trump try to walk back Syria strike
bne IntelliNews
The US surprised (and relieved) the market by not following through on a threat to impose even more sanctions on April 16, the day after western allies carried out limited missile strikes on suspected chemical weapons industrial targets in Syria.
The US administration is split over how to react to Russia’s increasing aggression but both US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin were actively trying to dial back tensions on April 18.
US ambassador to the United Nations Nikki
Haley warned that new sanctions that would target Russia’s defence industry and especially single out companies that were connected to the production of chemical weapons, without giving any details, at an Emergency UN Security Council (UNSC) meeting on Sunday April 15 called by Russia to protest the missile strikes. Haley then went on the Sunday US talk shows to say that new sanctions would be announced on Monday.
But it seems that she failed to check with her boss first. On Monday April 16 the US government said the new sanctions would be postponed to sometime in “the near future.” Markets opened flat on Monday as traders waited to hear the details of the new sanctions. Russian securities were walloped by the last round of sanctions announced on April 6 that targeted some of
the country’s biggest companies and singled
out oligarch Oleg Deripaska and his aluminium producer Rusal for special attention.
Putin and Trump are trying to dial back tensions between the US and Russia.
However, there seems to be some confusion at the top amongst US policy makers. A White House spokesman apologised and said that Haley “got ahead of the curve” and was probably “confused” when making her comments on the Sunday shows.
White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow told reporters on Tuesday that a final determination had not been made on whether to levy any further sanctions against Russia, the Guardian reported. Haley hit back a few hours later saying on April 18: “With all due respect, I don’t get confused.” Later the same day Kudlow apologised and said: “The policy was changed and she wasn’t told about it, so she was in a box.”
The back and forth highlights the lack of consensus in the US over how to deal with Russia. It also highlights the fact that the US State Department is increasingly making its own policy in lieu of clear leadership from Trump, who seems distracted and uninterested in the details of foreign policy.
“This is not about Nikki Haley. Trump had no idea the oligarch/crony sanctions or diplomatic expulsions would be far-reaching because McMaster didn’t fully explain them to him and Trump doesn’t read memos. Now that Trump has seen the Russian reaction, he’s putting
on the brakes,” tweeted Michael Carpenter, a former foreign policy advisor for former vice