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| Spengler: Is a Russian-American Rapprochement Possible? |
| 2018-05-16 |
| Major media outlets on both sides of America’s political divide ran denunciations of Russian President Vladimir Putin last weekend. These include a lengthy extract in the Wall Street Journal from the memoirs of Sen. John McCain, calling Putin "an evil man ... intent on evil deeds" who "means to defeat the West." Meanwhile, Washington Post foreign policy pundit Jackson Diehl praised a delegation of Putin’s opponents, asserting that Russia "is a place where discontent is growing, the desire for civil rights is tangible and the prospect of democratic change is, in the longer term, real." The Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies linked Diehl’s column in its May 14 blast email. The Wall Street Journal devoted its weekend interview to Putin foe Bill Browder, who qualified the Putin government as a "criminal enterprise." This sort of unanimity in the American Establishment is rare, and when it appears, it is invariably wrong. ...In this case there is one dissenting voice in the policy arena, and it belongs to President Donald J. Trump. He intervened to block additional sanctions on Russia, as American media reported. Inundated by charges of "collusion" with Moscow in the 2016 elections, the president has been at pains to show that "there's been nobody tougher on Russia than President Donald Trump," as he said April 18. Liberal CNN averred: "Trump's reversal once again raises questions about his affinity for Russia despite Moscow's meddling in the 2016 US election, its alleged use of chemical weapons on foreign soil to target a former spy and its backing for the Syrian regime as it conducts possible war crimes against its own people." Underneath the cloud of dust thrown up by Washington’s gutter brawls, though, the president continues to pursue what I characterized as the "Trump Doctrine." This doctrine "reserves the use of American military power for vital American security interests, while seeking compromise with competing powers -- namely Russia and China -- where such compromise is possible." It is visible in America’s coordination with China over the North Korea problem. It is less visible in the case of the Middle East, where the Administration’s tough stance towards Iran requires some degree of acquiescence from Moscow. ...It is now generally acknowledged that Russia’s alliance with Iran was a matter of convenience in Syria, and that Moscow now finds Tehran’s imperial ambitions a burden; Raja Abdulrahim and Thomas Grove offer a fair sampling of Russian views on the subject in a survey for the May 14 Wall Street Journal. Former Russian diplomat Nikolay Kozhanov told the newspaper, "Russia would like to see Iran’s influence reduced in Syria, especially since they have radically different views on what post-conflict Syria should look like." ...The American foreign policy Establishment has seven years of investment in the efforts of Sunni rebels to overthrow the Assad regime, and its reflex reaction is to denounce Russia as the source of all evil in Syria. Last month’s reported poison gas attack on Syrian civilians prompted the Trump Administration to impose new sanctions on Russia. Since then no additional proof has emerged that the Assad government (which has already killed half a million of its citizens with such devices as barrel bombs) was responsible for the attack, and the issue has vanished from the news cycle. This reinforces my initial skepticism about the first reports. More broadly, the utopian narcissism of Mainline Protestant missionaries still informs Establishment thinking about Russia. Like Mr. Diehl of the Washington Post, the Establishment believes that Russia’s democratic evolution is predestined, and that Putin’s authoritarian regime represents a temporary aberration in the inevitable course of Progress. Most of the allegations concerning Putin’s brutal repression of political dissidents as well as commercial competitors probably are true in whole or in part, but that is beside the point. Regime change in Russia is a delusion within any possible horizon of strategic calculation, and the Putin regime is simply a fact of life. ...American and Russian interests do not converge in the Middle East, to be sure, but they overlap in some respects. Russia will not help the United States bring down the Iranian theocracy, but it may not stand in the way of American efforts to do so, either. There is room for negotiation. Russia’s position well may make the difference between success and disaster for the Trump Administration’s initiative against Iran. That is why a Russian-American rapprochement is possible, despite the dudgeon of the foreign policy Establishment. For the past ten years I have argued that the most important trade-off would be American legitimization of Russia's takeover of Crimea in return for Russian help with America's policy objective in the Middle East. |
| Posted by:g(r)omgoru |