Analysis

So Much for Yet Another Russian Reset

Whatever Donald Trump’s intentions, America is bound to be at odds with Russia so long as it considers NATO a threat.

Saint Basil's Cathedral Moscow Russia
Saint Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow, Russia at night (Unsplash/Ivan Lapyrin)

From Reuters:

US president Donald Trump grudgingly signed into law on Wednesday new sanctions against Russia that Congress had approved overwhelmingly last week, criticizing the legislation as having “clearly unconstitutional” elements.

Ever since the United States entered the stage as a world power, it’s brushed up against Russia. From the 1918-20 international intervention that halfheartedly tried to prevent the rise of Soviet communism to this latest American sanctions bill, the US has long hoped to turn Russia into yet another reliable ally, joined together in a liberal order of peace and prosperity.

That geopolitical naivety is deeply embedded in the American body politic: candidate after candidate has hoped to defang the Russian bear with arms outreached, only to discover that Moscow sees not friendship but subjugation.

It is a relationship between an idealistic, extremely safe nation state and a cynical, deeply insecure one. One finds every betrayal or turnabout shocking; the other sees them as a natural course of events.

American power in Europe

The Americans have secured much of the Great Northern European Plain, the main avenue for invasion and infiltration into Russia’s heartland. Through two world wars and a cold one, US power now stretches across the Atlantic to just miles away from the great city of Saint Petersburg, Russia’s premier port.

To the Americans, this is the result of goodwill and good work, as state after state has rushed into its alliance to enjoy what Washington sees as inevitable benefits.

To the Russians, this is the cynical manipulation of European politics to America’s advantage, with the ultimate goal of turning Russia into a supplicant like Germany, the United Kingdom or France.

That NATO allies don’t seem themselves as vassals is irrelevant to Moscow’s calculations. For the current clique in power in the Kremlin, to bend the knee before NATO is to risk losing power, going to jail and even bringing about a second breakup of the Russian Federation, built as it is on the bones of the shaky czarist realm.

Irreconcilable differences

As President Bill Clinton did, as President George W. Bush did and as President Barack Obama did, Donald Trump entered the White House aiming to reform the relationship with Russia.

A joint Trump-Putin alliance against Sunni supremacist terrorism would smite the Islamic State’s caliphate, build trust toward a settlement in Ukraine and a grander geopolitical bargain that would come close to settling the security dilemma of Europe.

Alas, all that hinges on Russia no longer seeing NATO as a threat, but the only way for Russia to no longer fear NATO is for the alliance to roll itself back.

The Americans, for all of Trump’s “America First” nonsense, still live in a worldview of international liberalism, guided by the principles of Westphalian order refined after World War II. To them, the world is divided between the democracies and everyone else — and everyone else is destined to evolve to democracy.

To the Russians, democracy does not equate to security. Democracies can and do wage war on one another; infiltration, subversion, espionage make hybrid wars that topple regimes and imprison elites. For Vladimir Putin, it is still a brute dog-eat-dog world, elections or not.

Thus to roll back NATO — perhaps to Poland, perhaps further — would ensure NATO infiltration and subversion is all the harder.

That is the ultimate goal of the Kremlin: to discredit NATO and send it back to Central Europe or beyond, replaced, perhaps, by the new Eurasian Union anchored in Russia itself.

Yet the Americans cannot do that. NATO is the second main pillar of American foreign policy, right behind the hemispheric Monroe Doctrine that wards off influence in the New World. To ask Washington to give up NATO allies is nearly as bad as to expect America to accept a Russo-Mexican alliance or a Chinese-Canadian one.

Here we go again

Despite Trump’s “drain the swamp” rhetoric, there was little he could to prevent the rest of the state from closing ranks on him when it came to Russia. Congress gave him a veto-proof sanctions package and so he could humiliate himself and still lose or sign and live to fight another day.

Perhaps he’s foolish enough to think Putin will buy his line that his hands were tied; that is to underestimate Putin yet again. The Russian president has clear goals. That Trump cannot understand that is his flaw.

And so the latest attempt to stave off a mini-Cold War has ended. The Russians seek what the Americans cannot give; the Americans want what Putin fears the most. That is an irreconcilable difference and so conflict, in whatever forms it must take, is the inevitable result.

Nuclear warheads will keep tempers from flaring too much, but no one should be too shocked if we have a modern nuclear scare and citizens on both sides suddenly have to consider what they would do if the bombs really fall.

Putin surely already sees that as a losing proposition. Does Trump? Now forced to become Russia’s enemy, will President Trump’s ego allow him to avoid rattling atomic sabers to prove some point? Time will surely tell.

This story first appeared at Geopolitics Made Super, August 2, 2017.