The US-Russia bromance: the triumph of hope over experience?

Back in the 1970s, the two Cold War adversaries – the United States and the Soviet Union – suddenly discovered a common interest in dialling down their ideological struggle and easing their military confrontation. A series of summits between the American President, Richard Nixon, and the Soviet Communist Party General Secretary, Leonid Brezhnev, ushered in a new age of ‘détente’. Nuclear arms control treaties were signed, the Soviets put pressure on their ally, North Vietnam, to enable the US to extract itself from the Vietnam War without the immediate collapse of its South Vietnamese ally and in Helsinki in 1975, the US and Soviet Union agreed to facilitate trade and to a number of confidence-building measures to reduce military tensions in Europe. Furthermore, they discussed troop and equipment reductions and the Soviet Union agreed to some limited measures to improve human rights within the Communist bloc. The bromance between two previously entrenched ideological adversaries worried many Europeans who feared that the superpowers would decide the future of Europe’s security over their heads, especially if an economically-stretched US took advantage of détente to scale back its military presence in NATO. The French foreign minister, Michel Jobert, spoke of a “condominium,” which would freeze out European views and interests. If the US withdrew its troops and nuclear weapons from Europe, NATO’s deterrence would suffer as they would most probably not return, whereas the Soviet Union would only withdraw its forces a few hundred kilometres to the rear, from where they could easily and quickly be pushed forward again. Those worries returned in the 1980s when Ronald Reagan was President and, despite calling the Soviet Union an “evil empire”, initiated a new US-Soviet bromance with the reforming Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev. At Reykjavik in 1986, the two leaders very nearly agreed to eliminate all their nuclear weapons, a deal that frightened European leaders who would be left to face the great superiority in tanks and artillery of the Soviet and Warsaw Pact forces in central and eastern Europe.

This brief trip down the memory lane of recent history shows that “getting on well with Russia” is not an invention of the Trump administration. Even a determined supporter of the Russian opposition to Putin such as Hillary Clinton, as US Secretary of State, pushed the famous ‘reset button’ with Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov. Every new US administration believes that it will be able to handle Moscow with the skill and dexterity that its predecessor lacked. The master stroke of Nixon was securing the opening to China in his famous visit to Mao Zedong in 1972. Russia and China had just exchanged blows along the Amal-Ussuri river border and were competing for the leadership of the global communist movement. So, it was a good time for Nixon and Kissinger to prise them apart. With Beijing moving closer to Washington, Moscow was suddenly isolated and more amenable to doing deals with the US while it sought to consolidate its control of its own sphere of influence at home. Certainly, beyond great power aspirations and a strong sense of their own national exceptionalism, the US and Russia do not have a centuries-old history of rivalry and conflict to overcome as with France and Germany or Britain and France. That could make their occasional bouts of cooperation easier. But what is clear is that the reconciliation attempts have ended in failure. After Nixon left the White House in 1974, détente collapsed in the wake of the Soviet incursions into Africa, its support for Egypt in the Yom Kippur conflict against Israel and ultimately the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. Later attempts also foundered. The George H. W. Bush administration did not give Gorbachev the compensations he was expecting for ending the Cold War, and soon fell out with Moscow following its brutal crackdowns in Chechnya and Lithuania. The Clinton administration upset Russia due to its (and NATO’s) interventions against Serbia in the wars of the former Yugoslavia, as well as its advocacy of the enlargement of NATO. And Hillary Clinton’s reset button did not work for long as Putin cracked down on US-funded NGOs and independent media in Russia, launched interference campaigns in Europe and North America, violated arms control treaties and began to bully and threaten his neighbours in Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova. The Obama administration proclaimed a pivot to Asia and may have hoped that a quiescent Russia in its box could be parked out of the way while Washington focused on its true geopolitical rival, namely China. But Moscow has long considered itself as a great global power, equal to the US. It hates being ignored or taken for granted by Washington and is skilled at methods of reminding the US that it can be a spoiler, making life complicated for American diplomacy if it is not given a seat at the top table. In this respect, US attempts to isolate Russia have proved as fruitless as efforts to engage it. As Russia’s great power aspirations are defined by the necessity to weaken the US and reduce its geopolitical influence, as part of a zero-sum game, inevitably US-Russia relations have returned sooner or later to the practice of managing confrontation rather than deepening cooperation.

This process occurred rather quickly during the Biden administration. Biden had no liking for Putin and even publicly described him as “a killer”. But even he was true to form in attempting at least one reset summit with the Russian leader, in Geneva in 2021. Yet, the meagre results of this meeting – essentially prolonging the START II nuclear treaty and agreeing to new talks on strategic stability – were soon nullified by Putin’s aggression against Ukraine. Previously, Trump in taking office in 2016, had flabbergasted US (and European) diplomats by professing his admiration for Putin and desire to get along with him without imposing conditions on Moscow’s international behaviour or treatment of its political opponents at home. When he met Putin in Helsinki, Trump told the assembled press corps that he trusted Russian intelligence more than his own intelligence agencies. Yet, what he was looking to gain from Putin was never clear beyond the need to show that he was able to have good relations with even the most dictatorial of autocrats. Moreover, Trump was not able to totally ignore the reality of Russia’s hostile actions against the West, its blatant interference in the 2016 US election campaign and its backing of Israel’s key adversaries – Iran and Assad’s Syria. When Russian intelligence (GRU) operatives used the Novichok nerve agent against a former Russian spy and his daughter in Salisbury, Trump found himself compelled to expel 60 diplomats from the US. He also scrapped a number of arms control treaties with Russia, for instance, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty and the Treaty on Open Skies. There were no particular crises between Washington and Moscow during Trump’s first term in office but no measurable achievements either. As with the Iran nuclear deal, the President consistently said that he would replace what he considered imperfect agreements with something better, but never did.

Now comes the Trump II administration with the latest version of the standard reset button with Russia. It is the foreign policy priority of Trump, who has put normalising relations with Moscow above a strategy for dealing with the competition from China, containing Iran or nudging Israel and Hamas towards stage two of their ceasefire agreement. For Trump, negotiating a ceasefire in Ukraine seems to be less about ending the war, and its appalling death toll, than about proving his goodwill towards Putin. How else can we explain his assertions that the Russian leader has “all the cards” in the war in Ukraine (as if the US and its allies have none) and his readiness to make so many concessions to Moscow before the peace talks have even begun? For instance, retracting the NATO commitment to make Ukraine a member one day (as if the allies have no say in the matter) or accepting that Moscow can acquire sovereign Ukrainian territory despite a naked act of aggression? Was there a need to tell Moscow in advance that the US will not participate in an international peace implementation force (to be led by the Europeans) or that, like Moscow, he considers President Zelensky to be an illegitimate leader because, in line with the Ukrainian constitution, he cannot hold elections in wartime? Or that he believes Russia was right in seeing NATO enlargement to Ukraine (even if it was not going to happen for several years hence) as a threat to its own security? Trump began his second term suggesting that he would put pressure on Putin to come to the negotiating table by working to lower the international oil price or confiscating Russian bank assets. Yet, since his 90-minute phone call with the Russian President, the talk has all been about carrots and the mention of sticks has disappeared from the debate. The US President has talked about gaining concessions from Moscow and his officials, like Secretary of State Marco Rubio, have affirmed that the US objective is “a fair and lasting peace” for Ukraine. Yet, the administration has presented no concrete peace plan or idea of which precise concessions it will be expecting from Russia. It has rejected NATO membership for Ukraine but not said which security guarantees it can offer Kyiv instead, beyond Trump’s media statements that US participation in these arrangements will be minimal, and that he expects the European participants to take care of themselves. Yet, what has been perhaps most harrowing for Europeans is the way that Trump and many of his senior officials have been using the speaking points of the Kremlin to describe Ukraine and the US’ own security interests. To hear Trump talk about the destruction and loss of life in Ukraine is as if the war is a tragedy inflicted by divine providence in which no human or earthly agency (read the Kremlin) is involved. Probably the lowest point in the history of US diplomacy was reached last week when Washington and Moscow, working together, tried to stop a resolution drafted by Ukraine and the Europeans condemning Russia for its invasion of Ukraine from being adopted by the UN General Assembly. It eventually passed with 95 votes in favour. Meanwhile, the Europeans abstained in the UN Security Council when an anodyne text ascribing no responsibility and presented by the US and Russia was adopted. At the UN, the US is now in the good company of Belarus, Venezuela, North Korea and Nicaragua along with Russia. It didn’t even bother to show up at the G20 foreign and finance ministers meetings in South Africa this week. It is a dystopian world in which autocrats can change their narratives and orientations overnight, a world familiar to readers of George Orwell, but not to Europeans of my generation.

Thus far, however, Trump’s charm offensive has only encouraged the Kremlin to take a maximalist stance on Ukraine. Visibly smiling and hardly able to believe his good fortune, Russian foreign minister Lavrov used his meeting with Rubio in Riyadh to double down. He sensed perfectly that Trump’s first month in office had allowed Russia to achieve more in Ukraine simply by Putin taking a phone call from the White House than in three years of fighting on the battlefield. What glee for Moscow to see its great adversary, the US, challenge Ukraine’s sovereignty as much as Moscow does itself. Lavrov ruled out any territorial concessions by Russia and even said Moscow would claim more Ukrainian territory to protect ethnic Russians being “persecuted” by the Ukrainian government. He insisted that Russia would need a “friendly” government in Kyiv, thereby eliciting American support to topple Zelensky, and would insist on the demilitarisation of Ukraine, ensuring that the future Ukrainian army would be little more than a militia unable to resist further advances by Moscow. Lavrov has stressed that a peace agreement must address the “root causes of the conflict” by which he means a Ukraine that has the temerity to want to be free and refuses to be subservient to Moscow. Finally, Lavrov said that Ukraine’s membership of NATO should be taken off the table not just for now, but for all time. He added that Russia would refuse both NATO and European participation in a postwar peacekeeping force, thereby signalling that Moscow will try to have a ‘droit de regard’ over the composition and mandate of this force. This was in rebuttal to Trump’s claim that Putin had accepted the deployment of a European force. All this is tantamount to reducing rump Ukraine to a vassal of Moscow. Surprisingly, Lavrov added that Russia would not object to cooperation between Ukraine and the EU, as the EU is not a military alliance, but this position seems inconsistent with all the other Russian demands aimed at incorporating Ukraine within Moscow’s sphere of influence. Given Moscow’s red lines and the Trump administration’s alleged commitment to preserving Ukraine as an independent state, it is difficult to see at the moment where the two sides can meet in the middle. If Trump is either unable or unwilling to push Putin back, he will not only be saying goodbye to Ukraine but to the European security order as it emerged after 1989. The US President’s stated unwillingness to implement his own peace deal is hardly encouraging. Trump’s security guarantee for Ukraine is his belief that “Putin will keep his word” despite all the historical evidence to the contrary. Meanwhile, Trump appears to be more interested in gaining reimbursement (or even a profit) for past US support for Ukraine by taking 50% of Ukraine’s mineral resources than in developing a viable concept for Ukraine’s future survival.

Russia is seeking a lot more than a ceasefire in Ukraine. Trump’s opening to Moscow has allowed Putin to come in from the cold and put a definitive end to the isolation that Moscow had progressively been escaping from in hosting the BRICS summit in Kazan and the Russia-Africa summit in Moscow last year, and Russia’s outreach to the Gulf states and Turkey. It is using negotiations on Ukraine as a lever to normalise relations with the US across the board, re-establishing its large diplomatic presence in the US and enticing Trump with offers of cooperation that appeal to his love of commercial and economic gain. For instance, Putin has responded favourably to Trump’s proposal to reduce defence budgets by 50%. This would suit the US President as he is seeking an 8% reduction in Pentagon spending every year and this would be easier if America’s rivals were disarming as well. But apart from playing Trump along, it seems highly unlikely that Russia will reduce its military spending. After a ceasefire in Ukraine, the Russian army will need to be reconstituted and rearmed. With military success finally in Ukraine, Putin will not be interested in disarming as his project to create a modern-day Tsarist empire will be on course and he will contemplate further expansion. A large Russian army parked on the borders of NATO and constantly intimidating a Western alliance abandoned by the US will suit his purpose well. Moreover, Putin has raised Russian defence spending to around 8% of GDP. Russia has become a national security state; its armaments industries are now operating 24/7 with three shifts a day and accounting for 50% of industrial production. Weapons and military supplies are increasingly driving Russian employment and the overall economy. It will not be easy for Putin to return his country to a civilian peacetime economy. The same goes for nuclear weapons, an asset that Moscow has long used to claim equal status with the US and to intimidate Europe, as recently in Russian threats to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine or to deter the West from giving Kyiv more advanced weaponry. Russia also needs its nuclear arsenal to have parity with China and to be able to trade its nuclear technology for drones, missiles, ammunition and troops from Iran and North Korea. Moreover, Putin’s entire power structure has been based on Russia’s manifest destiny and its right to occupy its natural space deep into Europe as well as on the existential threat to that project posed by the US and its European allies. A Russia at peace with itself and its neighbours would undermine the entire basis for Putin’s autocracy. So once peace talks between the US and Russia get underway, expect Putin to also demand the withdrawal of US and NATO forces from central and eastern Europe back to the line of 1997 before NATO began its post-Cold War enlargement. Also expect Russia to push for the withdrawal of the US tactical nuclear weapons from the 5 five NATO countries where they are currently based and to ask Trump to cancel the decision of the Biden administration to deploy intermediate-range conventional missiles in Germany from 2026. Putin’s aim is to break the security link between the US and Europe embodied in NATO and this is precisely how he will try to do it, convincing Trump that these concessions will make Russia feel safer within its borders and therefore less likely to carry out a future aggression.

At the same time, Putin is trying to lure Trump with economic and business carrots. It was no surprise that Kirill Dimitrov, the head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, was part of Moscow’s delegation to the first contact with the US in Riyadh. Seeing Trump’s interest in acquiring the mineral and rare earth resources of Ukraine, Putin has put his own offer on the table. Russia has the fifth largest reserves of rare earths after China, Brazil, India and Australia. These are estimated at 3.8mn metric tonnes, but Russia has been mining only 2,500 metric tonnes of concentrate per year. It also lacks processing capacity. Before the war in Ukraine, Russia supplied 15% of the US’s aluminium needs and Putin has suggested that with a US investment of around US$15bn and joint production, this figure could reach two million metric tonnes a year. He has also proposed cooperation on hydropower and even that the US could invest in mineral extraction in the provinces of Ukraine occupied by Russia. Yet, joint ventures in Russia have always been a hazardous affair for US and Western companies given the absence of the rule of law and arbitrary taxation regimes. Trump may well prefer the safer environments of Ukraine or Greenland where arguably the US would have more advantageous terms and more control.

What is Trump up to in caving into Russia’s narrative and demands so brazenly? Unfortunately, he doesn’t do reflective policy speeches in which he lays out a considered strategy, outlining the desired objectives and balancing risks and opportunities. There has to be more than simply a vague desire to get on well with every foreign leader. The only half-rational explanation is that Trump believes that he can prise Russia away from China and thereby isolate China on the global stage. A replay in reverse of what Nixon achieved in 1972 by prising Beijing away from Moscow. Given that Moscow has so much more to gain from the lifting of sanctions and the normalisation of its relations with the US than Washington has to gain (the US economy being in a vastly stronger position and its trade with Russia almost insignificant) there is no other possible reason. But is a split between Russia and China likely to happen?

First and foremost, if Trump is giving Moscow everything that it wants, and putting no economic or military pressure on Russia to make concessions of its own, there is no need for Putin to distance himself from his ally, Chinese President Xi. He is paying no price in pursuing good relations with both Beijing and Washington. Ultimately, China is a predictable autocracy where an anti-Russian opposition is not going to take power anytime soon. The US is different. Trump is volatile and unpredictable and he will be president for four years, leaving the future of American democracy in a highly fragile state. Four years is not a long time in global geopolitics. The next US administration may be more Russia-sceptic, as are the majority of the members of Congress and the US national security establishment. So, if Putin is looking for a stable, predictable ally whose society and political class will not be critical of him and Russia more generally, he is bound to choose Beijing (the devil he knows) over Washington (the devil that no one knows at the moment).

Second, China is where Russia’s economic future lies, not the US. Even before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the imposition of sweeping sanctions against Moscow, Putin was reorienting Russia’s trade towards China, particularly in the energy and agriculture sector. Gazprom has been building a new pipeline, the ‘Heart of Siberia’, to transport gas to the Chinese market and much of the discounted Russian oil, transported by Moscow’s shadow fleet, has found new buyers in China and India. Although China is the world’s primary producer of rare earths, it is looking to Russia to supply other raw materials for its economy. Yet, as Russia’s dependence on the Chinese market grows, and as long as the current sanctions against Moscow are in place, Beijing will use its leverage to push down the price of Russian energy compared to international markets. Meanwhile, as the Russian economy stalls with rising inflation, slowing growth and a faltering rouble, Moscow is seeking greater access to Chinese finance and investment, particularly to replace the 1,000+ Western companies that left Russia after its invasion of Ukraine. If US-Russia relations are normalised, it is difficult to see the US replacing the Chinese market for Moscow. The US is now the largest global producer of fossil fuels and with Trump in the White House and advocating “drill, baby, drill” will be exporting energy rather than importing it in future – with the exception of some oil from Canada or Venezuela. US business is also focused on China, despite the administration’s new restrictions on technology transfers in Europe and Latin America. Apart from energy and raw materials, Russia has few goods or services to export to the US market. In short, here again, Putin is unlikely to abandon China for the US.

Fourth, a warming relationship with the US would force Moscow to sacrifice its emerging network of partnerships with radical regimes around the world. Most notably with Iran, a major source of drones for Russia to use in the war against Ukraine and with which Moscow recently signed a long-term defence agreement. Trump has recently announced a new raft of sanctions against Iranian companies and individuals as part of his “maximum pressure” strategy against Tehran and shown no desire to respond to Iranian overtures to resume talks on a nuclear agreement. As Iran moves ever closer to a nuclear weapons capability, the hostility of the US and Israel is bound to grow and Trump will put pressure on Putin to cut Russian aid and the supply of nuclear technology to Tehran. Similarly, if Trump is unable to stop the rapidly growing military cooperation between Russia and North Korea, which is giving Pyongyang access to space rocket and satellite technology as well as helping to train and modernise the North Korean forces fighting against Ukraine, the US allies in the Asia Pacific will become alarmed and lobby for more US pressure on Putin, including sanctions against Russian companies and banks involved in North Korea. Yet, Putin is helping other regimes hostile to the US, such as Venezuela and Nicaragua in America’s backyard, or enticing countries formally friendly towards Washington into new alignments with Moscow and Beijing. This is the case notably with South Africa, currently chair of the G20, that has been holding naval exercises with Russia and China. Putin has also developed an African policy that has led to Russia acquiring bases in Libya and Sudan and the departure of US and European forces – notably France – from the Sahel and West Africa, to be replaced in many countries by Russian economic aid, mining rights and Moscow sponsored Wagner mercenaries. Old Soviet military ties with Egypt are being rebuilt. Russia has been active in the Gulf too, particularly in the UAE, and has drawn a number of African and Gulf countries into the expanded BRICS framework. Putin has progressively reconstituted the global power and influence capacity once enjoyed by the Soviet Union, even if this is based today more on a marriage of convenience among autocracies than a common communist ideology. Putin’s expanding network is also constraining the power and outreach of the arch-enemy, the US, and turning many erstwhile loyal allies of Washington into swing states. So it is hardly likely that the Russian leader will refrain from exploiting these contacts to please Washington.

Finally, Trump underestimates the fundamental hostility towards the US, which is ingrained in the Russian power elite. Instead of welcoming the release of US citizens arrested by Putin’s police on fabricated charges and condemned to exaggerated prison sentences, he should ask himself why Americans are detained in Russia in the first place. Essentially, as hostages to be exchanged for Russian arms dealers, assassins and spies Putin has long demonised the US and used it as a scapegoat for many of Russia’s ills. His bill on the foreign funding of Russian NGOs, which obliged them to register as foreign agents, was designed to counter what Putin saw as American democratic subversion of Russian culture and values. He never forgave Hillary Clinton for promoting US foundation projects and independent media and civil society in Russia when she served as Secretary of State and counterattacked by hacking into the Democratic National Committee and releasing confidential emails during her 2016 election campaign. For the entirety of Putin’s career, first as a KGB agent and then as an administrator in Saint Petersburg and finally as President, the US has been Russia’s implacable enemy. Protecting the Russian state and civilisation against its multifaceted efforts to bring Russia down has been the leitmotif of all of Putin’s election campaigns and his governing philosophy. Putin has banned US journalists and media from Russia, and now most of the US social media platforms as well. Many US think tanks and NGOs operating in Russia have been forced to close their doors. If the US is no longer an existential threat or even a friend, Putin would lose his legitimacy as the protector of Holy Russia almost immediately. The basis for his repression of the Russian people and of all political opposition, no matter how limited, would fall away. The US as a demon is simply the lynchpin of the entire Putin system. So, expect Putin to pocket whatever concessions he can from Trump while continuing his disinformation and propaganda campaigns inside the US, trying in particular to discredit the Democrats, the traditional media and those individuals in the US national security establishment who speak out against Moscow’s lies, obfuscations and destabilising behaviour. Biden tried to control these disinformation activities by cracking down on Russian state media activities and expelling Russian intelligence agents operating as TV executives. The State Department also forced Meta to take down the numerous Russian disinformation sites operating on its platforms, particularly Facebook. With the Trump administration doing less, and X and Meta firing their fact checkers and supporting free speech with virtually no reservations, Moscow will now step up its propaganda efforts targeted at the MAGA community and the right-wing populist social media. This will be a test for the US government, Congress and the justice system to push back. But the manner in which Trump and his acolytes are eviscerating the FBI, the CIA and the other intelligence services with multiple firings does not inspire much hope that Russia’s hybrid warfare against the US will be exposed and attributed.

Trump prides himself on the Art of the Deal in which he always comes out on top. But his approach to Moscow will make Russia great again before it does anything to help the US position in the world. During their testy exchanges at the White House this past week, President Zelensky told Trump that a victory for Russia in Ukraine would threaten America’s own security. Trump dismissed this claim as absurd, arguing that protected by its great oceans in the Atlantic and Pacific the US is immune from Russia. Yet, the reality does not bear this out. Through its hybrid warfare campaigns, organised criminal and cyber activities and aggressive espionage, as well as its treatment of US businesses, NGOs and citizens, Moscow has demonstrated in multiple ways its capacity to harm the US. Putin will see Trump’s overtures not as an offer to reach an understanding based on compromise and give and take but as evidence that Washington is “coming to its senses” and conforming to Putin’s view of the world in which great powers have their sphere of influence, the strong do as they wish and the weak suffer what they must. He understands that what Trump wants is not policy substance but flattery and quick wins for the US media, which give the illusion of substance. When he meets Trump, he will make sure that the US President’s craving for performative politics is satisfied but when it comes to his concept of Russia’s vital interests give nothing away. Asian allies seeing how readily Trump has abandoned European allies who have stood with the US for 80 years will hesitate to put their eggs into Trump’s basket and work to improve their relationship with Beijing rather than being dragged into a military and economic confrontation with it. And Europeans will do the same as they look to China to maintain the global trade system and open markets in the wake of 25% US tariffs on the EU. If indeed we are headed to a world of three dominant superpowers, all with autocratic governments, it would be an almost surreal paradox for the US, for decades the most powerful of the three with the largest network of friends and allies, to emerge as the most isolated and least influential as China and Russia collect allies and partners on nearly all continents. Trump would certainly achieve his ambition to enter the history books as a consequential US President, but in the category of Coolidge, Buchanan, Pierce and Johnson rather than Lincoln, Roosevelt, Truman and Reagan. Ultimately, the US political class will wake up to the reality of US decline and self-imposed isolationism and take steps to re-engage with its old allies, resume US leadership of a rules-based order and push back against its adversaries in the manner of a Truman or Reagan, or even the wrongly maligned Joe Biden. But as Edmund Burke said of the French Revolution: “rage and frenzy will pull down more in half an hour than prudence, deliberation and foresight can build up in a hundred years”. The more damage Trump is allowed to do, the harder that task is going to be.

The views expressed in this #CriticalThinking article reflect those of the author(s) and not of Friends of Europe.