POSSIBLE DETENTE WITH RUSSIA

Author : Michael McFaul, Director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Professor of Political Science, and Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He was Senior Director for Russian and Eurasian Affairs at the National Security Council (2009-2012), and later U.S. Ambassador to the Russian Federation (2012-2014).

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“Obviously, the change from Obama to Trump creates the first condition for a possible detente with Russia. Often, the change of U.S. administrations starts a honeymoon in U.S.-Russian relations, but 2017 is extraordinary, as the United States has never had a president make so many glowing statements about a Kremlin leader as Trump.

President Putin seeks several very concrete objectives from the new American president: Lift economic sanctions; endorse his way of warfare in Syria; acknowledge a Russian sphere of influence in the former Soviet Union; suspend missile defense deployments in Europe; and,  recognize Russian-Crimean “unification.”

President Trump first needs to develop his own list of foreign-policy objectives, and then try to use this new opportunity to engage Putin to achieve some of these outcomes in which Russia can be a cooperative partner. But Trump must also be ready to ignore Russia’s desires and even contain Russian behavior when such policies serve American national interests.

The Eight -Step path

1. The first move of Trump’s administration’s policy toward Russia should be the reassurance of  NATO allies. In doing so, Trump will incentivize US allies to spend more on defense without even uttering a word about burden-sharing. A Trump declaration of support of NATO will not hinder his Putin courtship. On the contrary, such a move by Trump first might reduce criticisms of rapprochement with the Kremlin from some American allies and within the ranks of his own Republican Party.
2. President Trump must outline his conditions for lifting sanctions. To do so unilaterally, without consultation with European allies and partners, and without getting anything in return from Russia, would be a really bad deal. One obvious strategy would be to maintain the status quo i.e.  sanctions will be lifted when Russia implements its commitments in the Minsk Agreement. If however, the new Trump administration concludes that Minsk will never be implemented, it must engage with Moscow, Kiev, Berlin, and Paris to replace this agreement with something else.
3. The Trump administration must provide smarter economic aid, political assistance, and technical help in order for Ukraine to succeed both as a market economy and democracy. The new Trump administration must put additional pressure on Kiev to reform.
4. President Trump must define his own objectives regarding Syria . Trump wants to join forces with Russia to fight the Islamic State. President Trump also must decide to whom American and allied forces will hand sovereignty in pushing the Islamic State out of Raqqa. Returning the keys of the city to Assad should not be an option.
5. The Trump administration must develop a more effective cybersecurity policy. President Trump’s first move toward this end must be to increase U.S.  cyberdefenses and resilience to protect the homeland from countries and domestic actors. Down the road, President Trump should consider engaging President Putin to agree to some basic norms about cyberwarfare.
6. President Trump should consider pursuing other steps to demonstrate the virtues of his rapprochement with President Putin. Given that both President Trump and President Putin seem disinterested in deeper nuclear weapons cuts, in fact President Trump has argued for expanding the U.S. nuclear arsenal, the two Presidents could instead endorse an extension of the New START agreement to keep the treaty’s limits in place and, equally importantly, maintain the rigorous inspections regime codified in this agreement. Or, now that the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe has lapsed, the two Presidents could agree to provide greater transparency to each other about military training exercises and deployments in Europe.
7. President Trump’s  pledge to rip up the Iran nuclear deal will not win favor with President Putin. The Russian President will never agree to impose new sanctions on Iran, since Russia is seeking to expand economic ties and military sales to the Islamic Republic, and has allied with Tehran in the Syrian war. In addition, President Trump’s full-throated embrace of Russia creates more tension in U.S. bilateral relations with China. President Trump’s most recent pledge to strengthen and expand the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal eventually will complicate his pursuit of other cooperative policies with Moscow. And Russian military officials are waiting anxiously for greater clarity on President Trump’s approach to missile defense.
8. The United States and its allies must develop new strategies for engaging Russian society and other societies throughout the former Soviet Union, including even in the Donbass region of Ukraine now occupied by Kremlin-supported separatists. There is a need for more student exchanges, more peer-to-peer dialogues, more business internships to increase connections between both societies. We cannot revert to a policy where we only speak to officials in Moscow and attempt to do right by the Kremlin.