The Kremlin has welcomed US President Donald Trump’s new national security strategy, saying it largely aligns with Russia’s own perceptions.
The US National Security Strategy describes Mr Trump’s vision as one of “flexible realism” and argues that the US should revive the 19th century Monroe Doctrine, which declared the Western hemisphere to be Washington’s zone of influence.Â
The strategy, signed by Mr Trump, also warns that Europe faces “civilizational erasure”, that it is a “core” US interest to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine, and that Washington wants to re-establish strategic stability with Russia.
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“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.
Such fulsome public agreement between Moscow and Washington on the tectonic plates of global politics is rare. However, they did cooperate closely after the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union on returning nuclear weapons from former Soviet republics to Russia, and after the deadly September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.
Trump’s strategy largely agrees with Russia’s view
During the Cold War, Moscow portrayed the United States as a decadent capitalist empire doomed by the historical certainties of Marxism, while then-US president Ronald Reagan in 1983 called the Soviet Union an “evil empire” and the “focus of evil in the modern world”.
After the Soviet collapse, Moscow expressed hope for a partnership with the West, but 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.
When 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.
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But Mr Peskov also cautioned that the US “deep state” saw the world differently to Mr Trump. The “deep state” is a term for 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, and that Mr Trump and his allies are trafficking in a conspiracy theory to justify an executive-branch power grab.
Washington and Moscow look to China
Since Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and its 2022 invasion of Ukraine, US strategies have designated Moscow as an aggressor 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 US cooperation 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 will 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.
Reuters