by Nikolai Sokov
The upcoming meeting between President Donald Trump and Russian president Vladimir Putin in Helsinki has generated a storm of warnings about the possible collusion between two presidents intent on crushing the existing international system, on the one hand, and the rest of the international community—the collective West first and foremost—that built that system and is trying to preserve it. This view, although attractive and popular, is, unfortunately, inaccurate. Donald Trump is, indeed, a consummate Realist. He has little use for international institutions and is not averse to dismantling them in pursuit of short-term goals. Vladimir Putin, in contrast, can be classified as “conservative institutionalist” who values international institutions as they emerged by the end of the Cold War and the traditional tenets of international law. Their opponents should more correctly be characterized as “democratic institutionalists” who seek to quickly remedy drawbacks of traditional international law and develop new institutions by using the rule of majority in roughly the same way it works in domestic politics.
U.S.-Russian relations during President Barack Obama’s tenure developed as conflict between the two latter worldviews. Common misidentification Putin as a Realist makes them concerned about possible collusion with Donald Trump, but, in fact, any cooperation between them can only be temporary and tactical. There is no doubt that they can achieve limited progress, but only because U.S.-Russian relations today are at an unprecedentedly low point.
Donald Trump and his supporters pay primary attention to power. They see that balance of power has been shifting away from the United States. They also see that the institutions, which were created under the leadership the United States during the Cold War, do not benefit the United States in the same way because it simply does not have the necessary resources. They employ classic Realist prescriptions—shift the burden to other players (demand that European allies significantly increased defense spending), redraw trading rules to better support U.S. economy (the end result should probably benefit primarily traditional industries and the associated middle class, which is gradually disappearing), and generally gain greater freedom of hands in pursuit of U.S. national interests. When existing institutions stand in the way of these policies, these institutions are smashed.
Trump’s view of Russia is very much consistent with Realist prescriptions. He apparently treats it as just another pretty influential power, which should be maneuvered to its proper place on the international arena—first and foremost, to the U.S. side in an emerging conflict with the true competitor, China, as well as in support of policies aimed at dismantling liberal international institutions, which, in his view, no longer benefit the United States. On this global chessboard, the ongoing conflict with Russia is seen as detracting from the already limited U.S. resources and, moreover, is waged over international norms for which Realists have little use. Viewed from that perspective, for example, the issue of the status of Crimea is, indeed, of secondary, if not tertiary, importance.
Donald Trump administration’s policy toward the European Union and NATO are essentially Realist in the sense that he finds it more expedient to deal with each ally individually, rewarding or punishing each depending on its policies—in that format, the United States clearly holds all the cards. It can also find ad hoc allies for these policies—for example, Poland and Baltic states appear to value U.S. security guarantees more than collective NATO guarantees.
These policies have two major drawbacks. The most obvious one is that their pursuit is inefficient and will likely hurt U.S. role and power even more than continuation of previous policies. Unrestricted trade wars and hasty deals, lack of serious calculation of consequences, inept tactics and style—all of them have the potential of accelerating decline of U.S. influence.
More serious is the lack of understanding that, on balance, a developed network of international institutions benefits the United States much more than a classic Realist power game. Costs of such behavior are at least as great—perhaps even greater—than its potential benefits. Although rules of existing regimes might need to be adjusted and the burden of costs redistributed to better reflect the limited resources United States could commit to common policies, the true source of American influence lies within the existing institutions and close cooperation with allies.
The withdrawal from the JCPOA, which limited the Iranian nuclear program and imposed a strict verification regime on it, is a case in point: it antagonized friends and allies and drew the United States into an unnecessary conflict with Iran, not to mention the deal with a potentially unrestricted Iranian nuclear and missile program in coming years (the chances that JCPOA is able to continue as the United States plans to sanction its other participants, including the closest allies, are small, at best). In that fight with Iran the United States will be virtually alone and will need to commit massive political and economic resources.
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