A senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity on what has become one of the most sensitive diplomatic problems facing the Trump administration, said the White House had not given up hopes for a better relationship. Mr. Putin’s interview on Russian television, in which he announced the reduction in staff, was free of bombast, the official noted. Russia seems uncertain about the direction of the relationship, leaving open the possibility of a reversal.
that downturn accelerated in the last days of the Obama administration, he argued, “when emotions took over the relationship.” Now, said Mr. Mowatt-Larssen, who recently became director of intelligence and defense projects at the Belfer Center at Harvard’s Kennedy School, “fear has replaced anger in dealing with Russia.”
Sergey V. Lavrov, the savvy Russian foreign minister, has struck a measured tone in his conversations with Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson. In public, he has blamed not Mr. Trump, or the investigation into the Russian influence operation around the election, but Congress.
“The latest developments have demonstrated that the U.S. policy turns out to be in the hands of Russophobic forces that are pushing Washington toward confrontation,” the Foreign Ministry said on Friday, after the passage of the latest sanctions act.
Forty-eight hours later, Mr. Putin announced the huge reduction in diplomatic staffing. He said the order would take effect Sept. 1. That leaves time for haggling.
But the fundamental issue will not go away by then. Mr. Putin has now concluded that his central objective — getting relief from the American and European sanctions that followed the annexation of Crimea in 2014 — is years away.
Once new sanctions are enshrined in law, like the ones Congress passed and Mr. Trump has reluctantly agreed to sign to avoid an override of his veto, they generally stay on the books for years.
Moreover, Washington is awash in warnings that the attacks on the election system last year are just a beginning. “They are just about their own advantage,” James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director, told the Senate Intelligence Committee just before he was fired by Mr. Trump. “And they will be back.”
James R. Clapper Jr., the former director of national intelligence and a veteran of the Cold War, echoed that thought recently and mixed in more than a few issues that sounded straight out of the 1980s nuclear competition. “What we don’t mention very often is the very aggressive modernization program they’re embarked on with their strategic nuclear capability,” he said.
And that, in the end, is the real risk. With the exception of Syria — where the militaries of both nations have had sporadic, if mutually suspicious, contact — there is virtually no military-to-military conversation of the kind that took place routinely during the Cold War. And with Russian and American forces both operating near the Baltics, and off the coast of Europe, the chances for accident and miscalculation are high.
This latest plunge in relations comes at the 70th anniversary of “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” an article George Kennan, the architect of Cold War strategy, published in Foreign Affairs in July 1947 under the pseudonym “X.”
It defined the strategy that dominated Washington for the next four decades, captured in Mr. Kennan’s line that the “United States policy toward the Soviet Union must be that of a long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies.”
That was not the approach Mr. Trump had in mind a year ago. It may now be the approach forced upon him.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/30/...trump-presidency-backfires-spectacularly.html
said Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, who has served in a number of senior intelligence roles for the United States, including in Russia. We’ve been in a new Cold War for some time now Any hope for a short-term improvement in relations is gone.”
that downturn accelerated in the last days of the Obama administration, he argued, “when emotions took over the relationship.” Now, said Mr. Mowatt-Larssen, who recently became director of intelligence and defense projects at the Belfer Center at Harvard’s Kennedy School, “fear has replaced anger in dealing with Russia.”
Sergey V. Lavrov, the savvy Russian foreign minister, has struck a measured tone in his conversations with Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson. In public, he has blamed not Mr. Trump, or the investigation into the Russian influence operation around the election, but Congress.
“The latest developments have demonstrated that the U.S. policy turns out to be in the hands of Russophobic forces that are pushing Washington toward confrontation,” the Foreign Ministry said on Friday, after the passage of the latest sanctions act.
Forty-eight hours later, Mr. Putin announced the huge reduction in diplomatic staffing. He said the order would take effect Sept. 1. That leaves time for haggling.
But the fundamental issue will not go away by then. Mr. Putin has now concluded that his central objective — getting relief from the American and European sanctions that followed the annexation of Crimea in 2014 — is years away.
Once new sanctions are enshrined in law, like the ones Congress passed and Mr. Trump has reluctantly agreed to sign to avoid an override of his veto, they generally stay on the books for years.
Moreover, Washington is awash in warnings that the attacks on the election system last year are just a beginning. “They are just about their own advantage,” James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director, told the Senate Intelligence Committee just before he was fired by Mr. Trump. “And they will be back.”
James R. Clapper Jr., the former director of national intelligence and a veteran of the Cold War, echoed that thought recently and mixed in more than a few issues that sounded straight out of the 1980s nuclear competition. “What we don’t mention very often is the very aggressive modernization program they’re embarked on with their strategic nuclear capability,” he said.
And that, in the end, is the real risk. With the exception of Syria — where the militaries of both nations have had sporadic, if mutually suspicious, contact — there is virtually no military-to-military conversation of the kind that took place routinely during the Cold War. And with Russian and American forces both operating near the Baltics, and off the coast of Europe, the chances for accident and miscalculation are high.
This latest plunge in relations comes at the 70th anniversary of “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” an article George Kennan, the architect of Cold War strategy, published in Foreign Affairs in July 1947 under the pseudonym “X.”
It defined the strategy that dominated Washington for the next four decades, captured in Mr. Kennan’s line that the “United States policy toward the Soviet Union must be that of a long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies.”
That was not the approach Mr. Trump had in mind a year ago. It may now be the approach forced upon him.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/30/...trump-presidency-backfires-spectacularly.html
