Will Trump let Russia off the hook?

Donald Trump, who takes his oath of office as the 45th president of the United States this week, appears desirous of working toward a friendlier relationship with Russia. This past Monday, he floated a trial balloon suggesting an end to U.S. sanctions on Russia if the Kremlin would agree to a major reduction in its nuclear arsenal.

The Russian ambassador to the United States responded quickly that the sanctions and nuclear weapons are not related, and that such a deal would go nowhere.

But the fact that Trump suggested it at all raises serious questions for the future of U.S. relations with its NATO allies and with Russia.
Our allies, particularly those in Eastern Europe, have reason for concern.

President Obama imposed sanctions on Russia in 2014 following the Kremlin’s annexation of Crimea, the peninsula that extends from southern Ukraine into the north part of the Black Sea. Russia, which lies five miles east of Crimea across a Black Sea strait, invaded and occupied Crimea by sea.

Russia then lent financial and military aid to Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, where fighting reached a stalemate after a few months.

Obama’s sanctions outlawed financial relations between U.S. banks and Russia and forbade investments by U.S. corporations in Russia’s oil industry. The sanctions significantly weakened Russia’s economy at a time when oil prices were already low. Russia depends heavily on its oil production and export.

Then this past fall, after American intelligence agencies fingered Russia for interfering with the U.S. presidential election, Obama ordered additional sanctions, sending 35 Russian operatives out of the U.S., shutting down a pair of Russian compounds that served as intelligence headquarters and sanctioning several key Russian government and financial individuals.

The sanctions were all issued by Obama as executive orders. Trump could therefore simply declare them inoperative and end them, restoring U.S.-Russian relations to the status quo before the 2014 annexation of Crimea.

Trump correctly notes that most of Crimea’s population is Russian by nationality and favored the annexation. But in 1954, Russia, acting under Khrushchev’s orders, ceded Crimea to Ukraine. When the Soviet Union broke up some 26 years ago, Ukraine became independent and retained its ownership of Crimea.

Now Trump appears ready to let Putin’s Russia have its way in Ukraine

What will our new president do if Russia moves deeper into Ukraine?

His offer to lift the sanctions suggests he might be OK with such a move.

The term “appeasement” comes to mind.

The United States does not have many options to retaliate against Russian military aggression. Sending American troops into Ukraine would be logistically unfeasible. We could provide Ukraine with more powerful weapons, something President Obama has refused to do.

Sanctions are therefore about the only choice we have to try to make Russian aggression more costly than it’s worth for the Kremlin.

Ukraine may not be the only target for Russian expansion.

Putin has made statements and taken steps to suggest he would like to restore Russian dominance over the western parts of the former Soviet Union, including Georgia and the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The Baltic states were annexed by the Soviet Union following World War II, and regained their independence in 1991 when the Soviet Union broke up.

Poland is also nervous.

Russia isn’t likely to invade Poland militarily, but the Kremlin can exert financial and diplomatic pressure on the Poles.

Ukraine and Georgia are not members of NATO. But Poland and the Baltic states are. And the U.S. is therefore their ally by treaty. We are bound by that treaty to come to their defense.

Some opponents of Trump claim that the new president has financial interests in Russia and is therefore open to giving Russia a free hand in Eastern Europe in order to protect his investments.    

No evidence has yet been forthcoming to prove that accusation. Trump denies he has any investments in Russia, or has any loans from there.

There’s an easy way to prove that, of course.

He could finally produce his tax returns, which he so far has refused to do on the grounds that they are under audit by the IRS. There is no legal requirement that an audit is grounds for withholding them from public view.

I prefer to think that once Trump becomes president, he will come to realize the danger of his anti-NATO stance, and what letting Russia off the hook would do for America’s image among its friends around the world.

I hope I’m right about that.