The Kremlin on Sunday welcomed US president Donald Trump’s new national security strategy and said it largely accorded with Russia’s own perceptions. It is the first time Moscow has given such high praise to a document from its former Cold War foe.
The US National Security Strategy described Mr Trump’s vision as one of “flexible realism” and argued that the US should revive the 19th century Monroe Doctrine, which declared the Western Hemisphere to be Washington’s zone of influence.
The strategy, signed by Mr Trump, also warned that Europe faces “civilisational erasure”, that it was a “core” US interest to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine and that Washington wanted to re-establish strategic stability with Russia.
“The adjustments that we see correspond in many ways to our vision,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told state television reporter Pavel Zarubin when asked about the new US strategy.
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Such public agreement between Moscow and Washington on the tectonic plates of global politics is rare. They did, however, co-operate closely after the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union on returning nuclear weapons from former Soviet republics to Russia, and after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the US.
During the Cold War, Moscow portrayed the US as a decadent capitalist empire doomed by the historical certainties of Marxism. In 1983, US president Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union an “evil empire” and the “focus of evil in the modern world".
After the Soviet collapse, Moscow expressed hopes for a partnership with the West. However, as Washington moved to support the enlargement of the NATO alliance, as outlined in US president Bill Clinton’s 1994 strategy, tensions began to mount. They were pushed to breaking point under Russian president Vladimir Putin, who rose to the top Kremlin job on the last day of 1999.
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Asked about the pledge in the US document to end “the perception, and preventing the reality, of the Nato military alliance as a perpetually expanding alliance”, Mr Peskov said it was encouraging.
But the Kremlin spokesman also cautioned that the US “deep state” saw the world differently to Mr Trump. The US president has used the “deep state” term to refer to an allegedly entrenched network of US officials who seek to undermine those who challenge the status quo, including Mr Trump himself.
Critics of Mr Trump say there is no such thing as a “deep state”. They say Mr Trump and his allies are pushing a conspiracy theory to justify an executive-branch power grab.
Since Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and its 2022 invasion of Ukraine, US strategies have designated Moscow as an aggressor or a threat that was trying to destabilise the post-Cold War order by force.
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In comments to the state-run Tass news agency, Mr Peskov said calling for co-operation with Moscow on strategic stability issues rather than describing Russia as a direct threat was a positive step.
The Trump strategy describes what it calls the Indo-Pacific as one of the “key economic and geopolitical battlegrounds”, saying it would build up US and allied military power to prevent a conflict with China over Taiwan.
Russia pivoted to Asia – and China in particular – after the West imposed sanctions on Russia for the war in Ukraine and Europe sought to wean itself off Russian oil and gas.
Mr Trump in March told Fox News that “as a student of history, which I am – and I’ve watched it all – the first thing you learn is you don’t want Russia and China to get together". – Reuters
