The Art of the Deal: Russian Style
President-elect Donald Trump has long bragged about his ability to negotiate good deals. The opening line of his 1987 book claims: “Deals are my art form.” A good test of that facility will come when he is dealing leader-to-leader with President Vladimir Putin of Russia.
President Barack Obama has had his share of sharp disputes with the Russian leader. Much of the early cause of the venomous relationship between the two men dates back to Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, which Russia claims was initiated to protect the ethnic Russian majority living on the peninsula. Simultaneously, Russia has played a significant role in the conflict in Eastern Ukraine, though it has systematically denied its military presence in the region.
Russian nuclear-capable aircraft have buzzed near NATO borders and ships. The Russians recently announced that nuclear-capable missiles are being based in Kaliningrad. Senior Russian officials had made unsubtle threats of nuclear war and Russia’s brutal bombing campaign in Syria has expanded the humanitarian catastrophe there.
The White House has also accused the Russians of violations of the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. And there have been strong accusations — denied by Mr. Trump — that Russia is behind the hacking of Hillary Clinton’s campaign e-mails. On October 7, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson charged that “Russia’s senior-most officials” had authorized cyber attacks that were “intended to interfere with the U.S. election process.”
Of course, the Russians have their share of grievances against the United States, from enlarging NATO and encircling Russia by placing U.S. troops near the Russian border, expanding a missile defense system which they claim threatens their nuclear deterrence, and the supposed U.S. refusal to treat Russia as a great-power force.
These provocations and sharp disagreements have, in part, led former Secretary of Defense William Perry to warn: “Today, the danger of some sort of a nuclear catastrophe is greater than it was during the Cold War and most people are blissfully unaware of this danger.”
This is where Mr. Trump comes in. During the election campaign, he repeatedly expressed his admiration for Vladimir Putin as a strong leader — much to the dismay of both Democrats and Republicans. He declined to endorse the sharp Obama critique of Russian interference in Ukraine. He suggested that the U.S. and Russia must cooperate in and around Syria and Iraq to destroy the ISIS threat in the region. Trump has argued, “The United States should focus on defeating the Islamic State, and find common ground with the Syrians and their Russian backers.”
One of the first calls that the President-elect had after the election was with President Putin on November 14, when, according to a Bloomberg report, “Putin’s and Trump’s ‘assessments of the current state of relations coincided — essentially that they couldn’t be worse.’” In the same call, Trump and Putin agreed “terrorism is ‘the main enemy for America and Russia.’”
Mr. Trump calls himself a “brilliant deal maker.” In contrast, when the U.S. and Russia failed to reach a cease-fire deal on Syria, he tweeted that Mr. Obama is “not a natural deal maker” and “only makes bad deals.”
So there can be early tests of Trump’s ability to negotiate deals with Putin:
►Can he achieve a bargain that eases tensions with Russia over Syria and limits the carnage there?
►Can he suggest ways for Russia to draw back from its interference in Ukraine — something that the European Union has been unable to do — and put together an arrangement that satisfies all parties to the conflict?
►Can he collaborate with Russia to avoid its nuclear provocations and overflights that raise fear of nuclear war?
►Can he resolve the disagreements over past nuclear treaties?
Our new President talks big. Let’s see if he can negotiate big too.
