Trump win puts U.S.-Russia hostility on
hold - but for how long?
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[November 12, 2016]
By Warren Strobel and Jonathan Landay
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - After years of
rising U.S.-Russia tensions over Ukraine, Syria, cyber attacks and
nuclear arms control, Donald Trump's election as U.S. president may
offer a narrow window to repair relations as he and Russian President
Vladimir Putin size up each other.
But Trump's ascent to the White House carries the risk of dangerous
miscalculation if the U.S. president-elect and Putin, two willful
personalities and self-styled strong leaders who have exchanged
occasional compliments, decide they have misjudged one another,
according to Russia experts and others.
U.S. officials and private analysts predict that Putin, who has
reasserted Moscow's military and political muscle from eastern Europe to
the Middle East, will avoid openly provoking Trump before he takes
office.
"Putin has the ability to advance his interests in many different ways.
Sometimes tactical diplomacy can help," said Fiona Hill, a senior fellow
at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think-tank.
"We're in temporary truce phase," said Hill, who has served as the U.S.
national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia in the George W.
Bush and Obama administrations and co-authored a book on Putin.
Michael McFaul, a former U.S. ambassador to Moscow under President
Barack Obama, said Putin likely will wait to see if he can reach some
accommodation with Trump to allow the lifting of Ukraine-related
sanctions imposed by Washington and the European Union that have
contributed to Russia’s growing economic woes.
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During the campaign, Trump was criticized by his Democratic Party rival,
Hillary Clinton, for praising Putin as a strong leader and saying ties
with Russia should be improved at a time when Moscow and Washington are
at odds over Syria and Ukraine.
Trump rattled Washington's European allies with comments questioning
NATO's mutual self-defense pledge and suggesting that he might recognize
Russia's 2014 annexation of Ukraine's Crimea region.
Putin last year called Trump "a really brilliant and talented person"
and the Kremlin said on Thursday that the U.S. president-elect's foreign
policy approach was "phenomenally close" to that of the Russian leader.
Putin "has a future president who has expressed a desire to cooperate,
who has expressed a desire to move away from the Obama policies. Why
would you screw that up with a provocation?" asked McFaul, now at
Stanford University.
In Syria, a U.S. official said, Putin appears to be extending a
"humanitarian" pause in air strikes against moderate rebels holding the
eastern side of Aleppo to give Trump an opportunity to affirm the
willingness he expressed during the campaign to seek a more cooperative
U.S.-Russian relationship.
"I think they were holding their fire for the purpose of decreasing the
international pressure on them, and now, like the rest of the world,
they may be taking stock of the current situation," said the official,
speaking on condition of anonymity.
But U.S. officials caution that Russia still may feel compelled to
launch more attacks after dispatching a naval task force led by the
aging aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov to the eastern Mediterranean in
a show of force.
CONFLICT IN CYBERSPACE
The U.S. government has publicly accused Moscow of hacking the
Democratic National Committee and other party organizations during the
election campaign, which Russia has denied. Trump declined to blame
Russia, and the Election Day Russian cyber attacks that some officials
feared never materialized.
Trump has not laid out a detailed Russia policy, and many in his party,
including potential top advisors and cabinet officials, have taken a
hawkish view of Moscow.
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President-elect Donald
Trump speaks at election night rally in Manhattan, New York, U.S.,
November 9, 2016. REUTERS/Mike Segar/File Photo
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Former House of Representatives speaker Newt Gingrich, a Trump ally
rumored for a senior post, lambasted in 2014 what he called Obama's
weak response to Russia's land-grab in Ukraine. Putin, Gingrich
wrote, is "a ruthlessly determined leader motivated by nationalism
and an imperial drive."
And while there was celebration in Moscow after Trump's victory over
former secretary of state Clinton, who has been sharply critical of
Putin, some Russians cautioned against euphoria.
"The idea that it will be easier to strike a deal with Trump than
Clinton is wrong. ... Everything will be tested when we get down to
business," analyst Vladimir Bruter told the daily pro-Kremlin
tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda before Tuesday's election.
Some experts and U.S. officials say there is a high risk of
miscalculation or even confrontation, given Trump's history of
taking slights and challenges personally.
"That's actually where reality is going to intrude," Hill said.
"Putin's pretty thin-skinned, too."
Putin has a penchant for challenging adversaries, particularly when
he senses weakness, and he has long made it clear that he intends to
reassert what he considers Russia's rightful global role.
Suspending a treaty with Washington on cleaning up weapons-grade
plutonium last month, Putin listed conditions for resuming Russian
participation that amounted to a laundry list of grievances against
the United States.
The demands included lifting Ukraine-related U.S. economic
sanctions, compensating Moscow for those sanctions and reducing the
U.S. military presence in NATO's eastern European states to the
levels of 16 years ago.
Russia's bedrock concern "is whether they believe the threat of
U.S.-promoted regime change is abating under a President Trump,"
said Andrew Weiss, vice president for studies at the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace. "Everything else is a secondary,
lower-order problem."
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Putin has accused the U.S. government of promoting widespread street
protests in Russia following its 2011 elections, as well as the
"color revolutions" in Georgia, Ukraine and elsewhere.
On specific issues, Weiss said, there are few if any easy
opportunities for rapid U.S.-Russian agreements.
"The agenda's really threadbare," he said. "We're basically at a
standstill."
(This version of the story fixes a typo in paragraph two)
(Additional reporting by Andrew Osborn in Moscow. Editing by John
Walcott and Stuart Grudgings.)
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