Despite his vainglorious nature and thin skin, US President Donald Trump could play a historical role in resolving the dead end in relations the West has reached with Russia. He has consistently rejected the caricature that Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has become in American eyes and treats his fellow President with respect as a person he can do business with.
How far Mr Trump will go in befriending Mr Putin remains to be seen, but what is already clear is that he has broken the mould, even praising his Russian counterpart’s “smartness”. One of the trademarks of the Obama era was its obsession with bringing China on board by lauding Chinese President Xi Jinping, despite blatant human rights abuses, while condemning Mr Putin. China, of course, has economic clout and aspires to be a superpower.
While Barack Obama hinted to the Atlantic magazine in a series of soul-bearing interviews that Ukraine was a core Russian interest while it was not America’s, he did not act on it. One of the problems flowing from the break-up of the Soviet Union was Washington’s resolve to humiliate Moscow and to hive off the adjoining state of Ukraine with a population of 50 million, with close ethnic, religious and family ties to Russia into the Western world.
This was part of the Western philosophy of having won the Cold War and with the populist Russian leader Boris Yeltsin at the helm, decided to tilt the scales against Moscow. Ukraine was, indeed, divided by the western regions of the country being pro-West while the eastern parts, largely Russian-speaking, were pro-Russian. The crisis in Moscow’s relations with Kiev reached a climax with Russia annexing Crimea Nikita Khrushchev had once given to Ukraine, then a part of the Soviet Union. Russia also armed sympathisers in eastern Ukraine in areas declaring themselves self-governing.
Mr Putin cannot restore the Soviet Union, but he is suggesting that hiving off Ukraine from its close ties with Russia, given the geopolitical scenario, is unnatural and should be reversed. The West had imposed economic sanctions against Moscow after it annexed Crimea and sponsored two Minsk agreements to keep it in line on eastern Ukraine.
What Mr Trump is suggesting is that Mr Putin is a leader fighting for his country’s interests and need not be painted in lurid colours, the fashion in the United States. Indeed, during his recent hour-long telephone conversation with the Russian leader, Mr Trump touched on the themes of fighting the Islamic State and terrorists in Syria. Both sides, it would seem, are carefully calibrating their relations after Mr Putin was virtually blackballed by the West.
Mr Putin’s interests are plain, to rehabilitate his country as a major power — nothing hurt him as much as Mr Obama’s description of his country as a regional power — with a role to play in the wider world. He proved it by his military intervention in Syria tilting the scales in favour of President Bashar al-Assad and his moves in seeking new terms for peace. Unlike his predecessor, Mr Trump is demanding concessions from China in giving it a pass in world affairs, making Beijing see red. In geopolitical terms, it does not make sense to see Russia get closure to China because it is spurned by the West.
Thus far, Mr Trump’s vague suggestions of removing sanctions against Russia for other favour offered have met strong opposition from Republican leaders. The picture is further complicated by US intelligence agencies’ conclusion of Russian hacking of US sites to help Mr Trump win. The new US President’s argument is that Russia can help in the fight against the Islamic State and can be of assistance in Syria.
Judging by Mr Trump’s temperament and often-erratic behaviour, it is difficult to gauge how far the opening to Mr Putin will take the two countries and the world. The West still swears by keeping Ukraine in the Western sphere of influence even as more leaders in Europe are coming out against maintaining economic sanctions against Moscow, with several aspirants for the French presidency pleading with Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel to reconsider her hard line on sanctions. She was, of course, living in East Germany before the reunion of the two Germanies.
The Cold War was supposedly over with the break-up of the Soviet Union, but a new kind of murky Cold War has taken its place, with a more assertive Russia provoking the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) to police European Union borders with members’ troops. Mr Trump’s designation of Nato as “obsolete” has been replaced for the moment by his endorsement in his talks with Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May. In any event, the US President does not set much store by the longevity of the European Union after Britain’s exit.
Undoing the aberrations of the break-up of the Soviet Union is not on anyone’s agenda. Rather, the more limited task of evolving a reasonable compromise with Russia on Ukraine’s future is within the realm of possibility. The difficulty is that the myth of a valiant Ukraine fighting the bad boy (Russia) is so ingrained in the Western view and so enmeshed in the triumphalism of the West that it is difficult to separate reality from popular credo.
Britain will suffer from its foolish decision to leave the European Union for a long time. It is indeed ironical that an outsider who beat the insider in the US presidential election should have so little respect for the European traditional warring parties coming together in what became the European Union. Perhaps the shock of Mr Trump’s US presidency was necessary to get European leaders to refocus on what they have achieved, despite the new strains of nationalism gaining ground.
Mr Trump’s entry into the world scene might be akin to the proverbial bull in a china shop, but to the extent it has disrupted conventional wisdom on Russia in the West, it will be salutary. Russia is a country that cannot be ignored.
