Here are excerpts of an analysis of what one expert sees on the horizon for U.S.-Russia relations:
If, a year ago, someone had predicted that the incoming Trump administration would launch a military strike on Syria, approve the shipments of lethal military aid to Ukraine, preside over a tightening of sanctions on the Kremlin, the buildup of U.S. and NATO forces in eastern Europe and designate Russia as a strategic rival of the United States, the foreign policy commentariat would have had a field day. After all, Donald Trump was the “Siberian candidate” who was going to preside over a twenty-first century version of Yalta with his good friend Vladimir Putin. These were the steps that a Hillary Clinton team was expected to make, not someone who had run on a platform of seeking better relations with Moscow.
Yet here we are. The situation has changed over the past year from what was expected of Trump (when champagne corks popped in the Duma after the results of the November 2016 election were broadcast) to reports that Russian officials quietly admit that they miss dealing with their Obama-era counterparts. So what does this portend for the future?
The strategic ethos of the Trump administration appears to be settling in to a variant of the old “selective cooperation” approach, buttressed by Trump’s own personal assessment that U.S. diplomats were too keen to offer concessions and inducements to other countries to get their support when that support would have materialized in the end. As I previously noted, the gamble that the Trump team is taking vis-a-vis North Korea is that Russia and China have too much at stake to permit an unraveling of the situation on the Korean peninsula, and therefore there is no need for Washington to offer compromises in other areas to get Beijing and Moscow on board for tough new measures directed against Kim Jong-un. When it comes to Ukraine, the logic appears to be that Russia has too much to lose to restart the conflict and that U.S. efforts to rebuild the Ukrainian security forces will not provoke Russian steps to ascend the ladder of escalation. Likewise, the administration sees no reason for the U.S. to abandon its operations in Syria and does not feel any need to step back from the reiteration of the Obama-era policy that Bashar al-Assad has no political future in Syria.
So the starting point for U.S.-Russia relations in 2018 is the Trump administration’s insistence that improved U.S.-Russia ties, while desirable, are not essential—and that the ball is in Moscow’s court to make a series of up-front concessions and policy reversals.
Read the rest here.
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