The Kremlin is Starting to Worry About Trump
Vladimir Putin's entourage cheered the outcome of the U.S. election – until they saw exactly what they were dealing with.
By Ivan Krastev, Stephen Holmes
February 13, 2017
But Trump’s revolution is also ushering in a period of turmoil and uncertainty, including the likelihood of self-defeating trade wars. Still traumatized by the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Russia’s present leadership has no appetite for global instability.
With Trump in the White House, moreover, Putin has lost his monopoly over geopolitical unpredictability. The Kremlin’s ability to shock the world by taking the initiative and trashing ordinary international rules and customs has allowed Russia to play an oversized international role and to punch above its weight. Putin now has to share the capacity to keep the world off balance with a new American president vastly more powerful than himself. More world leaders are watching anxiously to discover what Trump will do next than are worrying about what Putin will do next. Meanwhile, using anti-Americanism as an ideological crutch has become much more dubious now that the American electorate has chosen as their president a man publicly derided as “Putin’s puppet.”
What the Kremlin fears most today is that Trump may be ousted or even killed. His ouster, Kremlin insiders argue, is bound to unleash a virulent and bipartisan anti-Russian campaign in Washington. Oddly, therefore, Putin has become a hostage to Trump’s survival and success. This has seriously restricted Russia’s geopolitical options. The Kremlin is perfectly aware that Democrats want to use Russia to discredit and possibly impeach Trump while Republican elites want to use Russia to deflate and discipline Trump. The Russian government fears not only Trump’s downfall, of course, but also the possibility that he could opportunistically switch to a tough anti-Moscow line in order to make peace with hawkish Republican leaders in Congress.
It is emblematic that, in their first telephone call, Putin refused to press Trump on lifting the sanctions or on America’s discontinuing support for Kiev. Moscow has also chosen to ignore some harsh anti-Russian statements issued by certain members of the new administration. The renewed fighting in eastern Ukraine might seem like a counterexample, but the Kremlin swears that the Petro Poroshenko government in Kiev is the guilty party, aiming at getting the attention of anti-Russian U.S. Congress members and thereby providing a potent argument against Trump’s appeasement of Putin. In any case, Russia has been trying to find ways to accommodate the U.S. president, including, for example, echoing the White House’s denials that Ambassador Sergei Kislyak discussed sanctions with Michael Flynn before Trump’s inauguration as well as announcing plans to reconsider Trump’s demand to set up safe zones inside Syria—a proposal that was initially rejected by the Russians.
Far more at this link:
http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/02/13/the-kremlin-is-starting-to-worry-about-trump/
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