Russia short of foreign policy options if bet on Trump fails

MOSCOW (Reuters): Russia long saw Donald Trump as the wild card in its strategy to improve relations with the United States.

But 14 months after he became US president, Moscow is close to viewing him as a busted flush, unable to enact his pledge for better ties.

Trump reluctantly signed off on new sanctions against Moscow last summer over allegations of Russian meddling in the 2016 US presidential election. Last week he backed the expulsion of 60 Russian diplomats and the closure of Russia’s Seattle consulate over the poisoning of an ex-Russian agent in Britain.

After betting the farm on Trump, Russia has seen relations with the West sink so low that there is talk of a new Cold War. President Vladimir Putin’s options for a change of strategy, banking less on Trump and his ability to sway those around him on Russia, is severely limited as he prepares for a new term.

One option being explored is to try to widen splits in the West by courting France and Germany. Another is to draw closer to China and India. But the relationship with Washington is still seen in Moscow as central to Russian foreign policy.

“Washington has become fixated with the fight against a non-existent, so-called Russian threat,” Sergei Naryshkin, Russia’s foreign intelligence agency chief, said on Wednesday.

“This has reached such proportions and acquired such absurd characteristics that it’s possible to speak of a return to the dark times of the Cold War.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said earlier this week that the standoff was worse than during the Cold War between East and West after World War Two.

“…Then some kind of rules and appearances were kept up. Now, as I see it, our Western partners … have cast aside all proprieties,” Lavrov said.

The Cold War saw the Soviet Union square off against the United States, with the threat of nuclear war hanging over the world until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

But the standoff was kept under control by arms treaties, superpower summits and both prescribed and informal rules of engagement.

The new standoff, raw and unpredictable, has been likened to a “fight without rules” by Konstantin Kosachev, head of the upper house of Russian parliament’s foreign affairs committee.

The risk of miscommunication, miscalculation and sudden escalation into a hot war is higher than during the original Cold War, he says.