MOSCOW, May 23. /TASS/. US President Donald Trump has reviewed relations with Russia, realizing that Washington's foreign policy has reached an impasse due to numerous attempts to impose democracy by military means, said Andrey Sushentsov, Dean of the MGIMO School of International Relations.
"Trump accuses the NATO allies of dragging the United States into the Ukrainian crisis, which has nothing to do with American national interests. In his opinion, the strategy of liberal democratization is false. It was based on the experience of the post-war occupation of Germany, Japan, and South Korea, when the countries abandoned foreign policy subjectivity for the sake of American capital, but achieved economic prosperity. They tried to apply this experience mechanically to other regions, including the Middle East. But last week in Saudi Arabia, Trump said that this idea was not working, the United States had lost trillions of dollars and decades on a dead-end strategy of the early 2000s - the invasion of Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria," Sushentsov, who is also member of the Expert Council at the Russian Security Council, told TASS.
"The American leader actually recognizes the existence of a multipolar world. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar have become centers of influence not because of democratization, but in spite of it. This criticism is knocking the ground out from under the Europeans. Their strategy is based on the idea that Russia allegedly cannot be a democracy and therefore must be isolated. While Trump believes that not everyone is obligated to copy Western democracy. This is a blow for Europe. With their inability to pursue an independent foreign policy, they view this as a betrayal by the United States."
According to Sushentsov, "the American leader understands that if the United States follows the path of sanctions and confrontation with Russia imposed by the Europeans, it will inevitably be defeated in the Ukrainian crisis. Trump rightly calls the conflict [former President Joe] Biden's war and emphasizes that he inherited it and did not start this conflict. This is why Trump ignores the Europeans, does not allow them to impose their point of view on him.
"Trump is also aware that the actions of the United States have made a strategic partnership between Russia and China inevitable. But at the same time, he sees Russia not as an object of pressure, but as a rival to be reckoned with. In the big politics of the 21st century, according to Trump and his voters, those who are able to act independently will compete. These are the US, China and Russia. He does not consider Europe to be such a player. Trump is ready to meddle with the Europeans, trip them, split them, threaten to withdraw from the participants in the Ukrainian conflict," the expert concluded.