Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and the art of a deal with Russia
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Mr Trump’s America will clearly try to strike a deal with Mr Putin’s Russia. But what would that deal look like? Here is my best guess.
The US will end its opposition to Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Although America may not agree to the formal legal incorporation of Crimea into Russia, it would accept it as a fait accompli. Following that, the US will lift economic sanctions. The Americans will also drop any suggestion that Ukraine or Georgia will join Nato. The build-up of Nato troops in the Baltic states will also be slowed or stopped.
In return for these large concessions, Russia will be expected to wind down its aggression in eastern Ukraine and not attempt to make further territorial gains there. Russian pressure and implicit threats towards the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania will be dropped. Military tensions on the front line between Nato and Russia will be dialled down. With their conflict in eastern Europe eased, the US and Russia will make common cause in the Middle East. The US will drop its commitment to the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad in Syria and will join the Russians in an attack on the Isis militant group.
The attractions of such a deal from Mr Trump’s point of view are obvious. If it worked, it would defuse an increasingly dangerous confrontation between the US and Russia. During his campaign, Mr Trump accused Hillary Clinton of risking a third world war: a reference to her promise to declare a “no-fly zone” over Syria, which might have led to confrontation between the US and Russian air forces. Abandoning the Obama administration’s goal of getting rid of President Assad would also resolve the longstanding incoherence in US Syria policy, which sometimes seemed to place America on both sides of a civil war.
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https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.ft.com/content/9bef31a4-aa57-11e6-a0bb-97f42551dbf4
