Trump may have a plan to deal with Russia

Relations have been bitter for long, but the US president’s approach seems right and might produce results

Few of the Trump administration’s priorities have received as much criticism from the American foreign policy establishment as the president’s desire to improve relations with Russia. President Trump’s allegedly pro-Russian policies have been the subject of conspiracy theories and scandal.

This makes little sense. There are many good reasons for the United States to reach conciliation with Moscow on issues from Eastern Europe to the Middle East. The real question will be if Washington can control its own desire for global hegemony enough to make that possible.

Unlike China, Russia is not an emerging peer competitor to the United States. Russia is a regional power struggling to retain a fragment of its former sphere of influence. Moreover, it should be a natural ally of the United States in the fight against extremism. A reduction of tension with Russia would allow the United States to concentrate on more important geopolitical issues.

Ultimately, the United States may have no choice but to work with Russia. The West’s previous strategy has run its course, as recent policy failures make clear. Plans to expand American support for the former Soviet countries ring hollow. The United States and NATO did not fight for Georgia in 2008 or Ukraine in 2014. They will not do so in the future. In these circumstances, holding open the possibility of NATO membership for these countries, as the West has done for years, is pointless. By the same token, the populations of the European Union — an organisation wrestling with existential problems of its own — have no will to help Ukraine join their club in the foreseeable future. In Syria, the United States and its allies seem to be torn between wanting to unseat President Bashar Al Assad and wanting to contain the jihadists who oppose him. Russia, on the other hand, has made its position clear.

Repairing relations with Russia can begin in Ukraine. The parameters for such a compromise were laid out in the Minsk agreement of 2015, which committed Russia to disarm separatists in eastern Ukraine and Ukraine to draw up a new federal constitution granting enhanced autonomy to the Donbas, the eastern Ukrainian region that has declared

There are many good reasons for the US to reach conciliation with Moscow. But the real question will be if Washington can control its own desire for global hegemony.

independence. The United States should work with Russia on a compromise for the Donbas, which should be demilitarised and secured by a United Nations peacekeeping force. Meanwhile, the Russian annexation of the Crimean peninsula should be accepted (since short of a world war there is no way Russia will give it up). Though the annexation shouldn’t be recognised legally, American sanctions on Russia should be lifted.

Eastern Europe is not the only arena where the American agenda has proved inept. In Syria, the United States and Western Europe have bungled the war. Here, too, Trump’s plans to cooperate with Russia would be a welcome change. Because of Russian, Iranian and now Turkish support, Assad’s Syrian state is not going to fall. If it is to be transformed in the future, negotiation with Russia and Iran will be necessary.

Iran is an essential ally against the jihadists in Iraq and Syria. And that means that the White House will soon discover the dangerous inconsistencies in its policies. Trump has spoken of prioritising the fight against Daesh. But by simultaneously expressing desire for a new confrontation with Iran, they have demonstrated that they do not actually understand the word “priority.”

Furthermore, barring an open Iranian violation of the nuclear agreement, no imaginable American concession to Russia would persuade Moscow to agree to new international sanctions against Iran. One reason is that Russia sees good relations with Iran as permanently in its interest, whereas the policy makers in Moscow know that American concessions may be withdrawn by the next administration.

China may be the other major sticking point. While he has moderated his stand somewhat in recent weeks, Trump has suggested he is prepared for a confrontation with China. But Russia will not play along. With a 2,600-mile-long border with China and a hopelessly outnumbered army, there is no way that Russia can be persuaded to adopt an outright hostile stance toward its neighbour.

Since the end of the Cold War, Russia has not opposed the United States out of blind anti-Americanism. In the former Soviet countries, Russia has defended what the Russian establishment sees — rightly or wrongly — as vital Russian national interests.

Elsewhere in the world, Russia has clashed with the United States for reasons that have often been shared by many Americans, and have often later been proved correct: opposition to the invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of Col. Muammar Gaddafi’s regime in Libya being the most notable examples. While Russia wants good relations with the United States, it will not lend blanket support to American global primacy. If that is what the Trump administration is hoping for, it will be sorely disappointed, and the latest attempt at reconciliation with Russia will fail.

Anatol Lieven is a professor at Georgetown University in Qatar. — The New York Times Syndicate