Valdai Club

Over most of the sixty years following the Cuban missile crisis, the danger of a deliberately launched nuclear war steadily declined. That, however, has been changing over the last decade. The slow deterioration at the level of major nuclear powers has now, after February 24, suddenly taken a dramatic turn. Large-scale war among major powers, unthinkable a year ago, no longer is, writes Valdai Club expert Robert Legvold.

US-Russian relations are more fraught than ever or, to quote Dmitry Peskov, “The relations now have hit the bottom.” That each country’s ambassador to the other country has been recalled “for consultation” is simply one manifestation of the new level of tension. More specifically, it is at Russian initiative. Russia recalled its ambassador from Washington in anger after President Biden in a TV interview labeled President Putin “a killer.” It then urged the US ambassador to return home in the wake of the latest wave of US sanctions imposed on Russia. Both of these triggering events, however, are but the tip of an iceberg in which the relationship remains frozen.

The World Bank now estimates that in 2020 the U.S.-China trade war will lower global economic growth by nearly 1 percent. Disrupted markets and falling growth, however, will be but one malign effect from the return to the zero-sum national economic policies of the 1930s.

Based on past experience, normally a favorable economy and incumbency favors a sitting president. And election analysts are charting a path by which Donald Trump could repeat his 2016 victory.

The death of the INF treaty is but a last piece in the story of how the half-century effort to control nuclear weapons and stabilize the U.S.-Russian nuclear relationship perished. When the INF treaty disappears, as key members of the Trump Administration are keen to see, the way that it ends will almost certainly spell the end to U.S.-Russian strategic arms control.

All of this has led not merely to put the summit in very bad political odor in the United States, but to motivate his enraged critics in the Congress to weigh measures to further punish Russia that are, in fact, perversely primarily designed to punish Trump. And for good measure Trump’s misstep at the summit and continued bungling of the issue in the days since appear likely to make the call for a harder line toward Russia an election issue from now until November.

Presidents Putin and Trump will meet for the third time in Helsinki July 16 with expectations more spectacularly fluid than in either of the two earlier meetings. Both leaders clearly want the meeting and both clearly want something to come out of the meeting. Yet, neither side appears to know what that might be, and the cautious betting is that not much will.

On Tuesday, March 13, US President Donald Trump fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and nominated CIA Director Mike Pompeo as his successor. Valdai Club expert Robert Legvold explains the reasons behind this decision and shares his view of its consequences for the US foreign policy.

Donald Trump enters the second year of his presidency as one of the most controversial politicians in the US history. Opinions vary greatly, but one thing is clear: the past year has been marked by fundamental changes in the United States’ domestic and foreign policy, with many results of the previous administration virtually wiped out.

Disappointment—extreme disappointment—marks what the year 2017 has been in US-Russian relations. The relationship is stuck. The hole in which is stuck is deep and dark—and growing more so. Each side had hoped for better.  Moscow, having given up on the Obama Administration, momentarily deluded itself into thinking the fuzzy campaign talk of Donald Trump heralded a fresh U.S. approach to the relationship.