Putin should temper hopes of US alliance

Washington, DC

DONALD Trump won't be the first American president to "reset" relations with Russia following an assault on Western interests and values. In March 2009, President Barack Obama launched his own version of a reset - only seven months after Russia's brazen invasion of Georgia, an ally of the United States that had been on track for Nato membership. Yet whereas Mr Obama's outreach was met with the approval of his own party, Mr Trump's ambitions have fractured a Republican national security establishment that condemns Mr Obama for treating American adversaries with kid gloves and favours a tougher approach.

Russia policy therefore poses the first test of whether Republicans in Congress will bend to the wishes of their party's leader in foreign affairs or pull him in a direction more consistent with his party's principles. It also poses a test for Congressional Democrats now in opposition. After eight years in which a Democratic president allowed competitors such as China, Iran and Russia to make strategic gains at American expense, and failed to enforce a White House "red line" against Bashar al-Assad's use of chemical weapons against his own people in Syria, will Democrats return to their historic posture, under Cold War presidents and the post-Cold War administration of Bill Clinton, of advocating that the United States stand firm against aggressive authoritarian rulers?