A confrontation with China, and other foreign-policy complications, might force Washington to seek a rapprochement with Russia
Mr. Trump will have to find an accommodation with the Republican Party establishment. His administration’s foreign-policy and defense appointments may well become a bargaining chip in that difficult process. As a result, some very unexpected figures, including outspoken hawks, may be put at the helm of the State Department and the Pentagon.
.. On foreign policy, both Mr. Trump’s campaign and Bernie Sanders’s Democratic primary bid highlighted a renewed American proclivity toward isolationism. Large segments of the American public are tired of endless military campaigns in the Middle East, and weary of the burden of America’s foreign commitments.
.. The American political elite remains almost universally interventionist and supportive of globalization.
.. And Moscow has very little to offer to Washington at the moment. There are few areas for possible cooperation. Even if Mr. Trump does want to improve relations with Russia, he will find out when he moves into the Oval Office that the United States has little to gain from such an improvement.
.. The new president is unlikely to be willing to pay the steep domestic political price, especially since improving relations offers no tangible benefits to America.
.. The basic problems in Russian-American relations stem from Moscow’s fundamental aspiration to return to the global arena as a great power, and even to contemplate integration into the American-led, pro-Western world order only on the condition of being recognized as a great power that dominates most of its former Soviet neighbors.
.. A confrontation with China, and other foreign-policy complications, might force Washington to seek a rapprochement with Russia