No single issue left Republican national security experts more skeptical of candidate Donald Trump than his rhetoric on Russia. Trump’s seeming affinity for authoritarian Russian President Vladimir Putin, and his belief that he could work with Russia in places like Syria, raised just about every eyebrow in the Republican foreign policy community no matter where each individual’s expertise lay.
But was Trump serious? Since his stunning electoral victory, Trump has taken a number of steps that indicate he doesn’t intend to follow through in full on his campaign rhetoric. In a call with South Korean President Park Geun-hye, Trump rightly committed himself and the United States to South Korea’s defense, which remains critical to nuclear non-proliferation and to stability in East Asia.
After his own call with the president-elect, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said he is “absolutely confident that President Trump will maintain American leadership in the alliance and will maintain a strong commitment to European security.” Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe similarly expressed his conviction “that President-elect Trump is a leader we can trust” following their tete-a-tete in New York. Such engagement with American allies is an encouraging sign.
But in addition to our closest allies, Trump spoke with a foreign leader who defines his interests in opposition to those of the United States -- Vladimir Putin. And there is nothing wrong with that. The right sort of dialogue with Russia is vital. What will be problematic come Jan. 20 is if the president-elect intends to follow through on campaign rhetoric regarding U.S. policy toward Russia.
Trump should know that Putin is going to make it extremely tempting for him to remain committed to what was said before the election. Putin will play nice for the next year or two in order to extract the sort of policy concessions from the United States that he wants and in some cases desperately needs. These include first and foremost the lifting of economic sanctions against Russia, downgrading U.S. relations with its partners in Central and Eastern Europe, reducing or preferably eliminating American support for Ukraine, and legitimizing Russia’s presence and actions in Syria.
Sound familiar? The nature of these demands will in many ways resemble what Putin asked of President Obama in the context of the so-called reset of U.S.-Russia relations. And if Trump goes along with Putin’s supposed quid pro quo approach -- where the United States provides lots of quid but receives little quo in return -- the outcome will look like Obama’s reset policy on steroids. What this means is that U.S. concessions and their consequences today will be far more detrimental than the concessions Obama made to Putin under the reset and what followed them.
In 2009, Russia had not yet invaded Ukraine and annexed Crimea. The Kremlin had yet to send troops to Syria to prop up President Bashar Assad and bomb moderate rebels. It had not sold sophisticated air defense systems to Iran. But today Moscow is taking real action outside its borders that goes far beyond saber-rattling at international forums like the Munich Security Conference or the U.N. General Assembly.
This behavior and the Russia we see today are a direct consequence of Obama’s reset policy. By attempting to satisfy Putin and believing he would establish friendly relations with Moscow on the basis of U.S. concessions -- from missile defense and one-sided cuts under New START to ignoring human rights and failing to implement the Magnitsky Act -- Obama created a permissive environment that allowed Putin to conclude he could undermine American interests around the world with impunity.
Trump must not repeat his predecessor’s mistakes. The United States cannot afford a Russian reset part deux.