2 bad outcomes loom for Trump Russia reset: Column

Team Putin-Trump vs. Team Obama-Congress-FBI-CIA? The Russia focus in Washington has made it look that way.

The strange story so far: U.S. intelligence agencies have signed off on a joint report — President Obama was briefed on it Thursday, President-elect Trump on Friday — that concludes, and details, how Russia interfered in the U.S .election by hacking. In particular, it hacked into, and Wikileaks released, embarrassing Democratic National Committee emails.

The beneficiary: Trump.

In retaliation, Obama expelled 35 diplomats and shuttered two Russian compounds. Senior Republican members of Congress applauded. Not Trump. He declared: “It’s time for our country to move on to bigger and better things.”

When Russian President Putin then rejected the Russian foreign ministry’s recommendation of Cold War-style tit-for-tat expulsions — even inviting American diplomats’ children to a Kremlin Christmas party, saying he would wait for the Trump administration to decide what to do — Trump tweeted: “I always knew he was very smart!” He went on to promise he would reveal information “that other people don't know” to cast doubt on the Russian hacking charges, but then did not. And he asserted Friday after his briefing that "there was absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election," though intelligence officials have said there is no way to tell.

All this as Sen. John McCain began congressional hearings into the hacking.

Here’s the question: Is there any way to avoid one of two very troubling outcomes? The first would be that reality and competing strong Trump and Putin personalities morph the bromance into vicious confrontation. A chilling thought, given that Russian forces in Syria have thrown the war in favor of Syrian strongman Bashar Assad — whom the U.S. had insisted be removed from power — and that Putin is in Syria talks with Turkey and U.S. nemesis Iran. Just for starters.

The second unhappy outcome: That the bromance flourishes, with Trump nodding, winking and lifting U.S. red lines that have triggered sanctions — such as for Putin’s annexation of Crimea, supporting Ukraine separatists and mistreating opponents. That would send the United States and the foundation of its foreign policy, supporting democracy, back a century. It would be, as Foreign Policy magazine put it, "making the world safe for dictators.”

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Is there a third way? That slim chance depends on those on Trump’s team who have done business with Putin and Russia. Most importantly, Rex Tillerson, secretary of State nominee and ExxonMobil CEO. A Putin friend after years of business deals, Tillerson understands Putin’s personality, his need to be taken seriously and ways to engage him.

One definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over, and expecting different results. When new president George W. Bush first met Putin in 2001, he famously said he got a sense of his soul and found him “trustworthy.” Bush ended up frustrated when Putin curbed democratic freedoms, sent troops into neighboring Georgia and more. When Obama in 2009 tried a “reset” of relations, that didn’t stop a souring to near-Cold War levels over Crimea and much more.

Could the Trump team avoid the same outcome? Putin’s ambition is to revive Russian prestige, might and territory, lost with the Soviet Union’s 1990s collapse. And to be taken seriously. His modus operandi has evolved in 17 years in power. Early efforts, such as joining Western “clubs,” did not get him what he wanted. Now, as CIA director John Brennan put it in a PBS interview this month, Putin "plays by his own rules.” Rules by which he has consolidated a grip on power, a cult of personality and an anything-it-takes approach.

Putin would like Trump to play back-to-the-future Big Man, Great Game politics on the world chess board. Can he be checkmated? While preserving what the U.S. stands for? Is there a will to do that?

As the Putin reality forces Trump and his team into thorny decisions, they might bear history in mind. A century ago this year as World War I raged, President Woodrow Wilson — spurred by land-grabbing, nationalistic strongmen — had a message for Congress: “The world must be made safe for democracy.” After World War II repeated the tragedy, President Franklin D. Roosevelt strengthened that principle by enshrining it in the Atlantic Charter with allies. History, it is said, repeats itself — first as tragedy, then as farce. To twist that Star Wars saying: May the farce not be with us.

Louise Branson, co-author of Gorbachev, Heretic in the Kremlin, is a former Paste BN editorial writer and former Moscow correspondent for The (London) Sunday Times.

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