YEREVAN. - As his campaign promises revealed, Trump will likely seek to ease, if not lift U.S. sanctions on Russia.
Political analyst and Director of the Regional Studies Center (RSC), Richard Giragosian, stated the aforementioned to Armenian News – NEWS.am.
This policy, modeled on concerted consideration of Moscow, will, according to him, grant Putin a virtual free hand to both consolidate and even extend Russian power and influence over many of its neighbors.
“This will also, as Trump has stated, not only tend to passively endorse the Russian annexation of Crimea but will also undermine the Western commitment and resolve in supporting Ukraine. The decreased scale and scope of U.S. commitment to Ukraine is also likely to impact economic assistance. And already plagued by corruption, the course of Ukrainian reform will suffer a new blow as American financial backing will be significantly reduced,” the analyst noted.
In his words, extending further, such a reversal of U.S. policy toward Putin will also weaken security in Central and Eastern Europe, thereby only further endangering the Baltic states.
And in another related impact, both the NATO alliance and the European Union would be challenged by an abrupt vacuum of engaged leadership, leaving each stranded in assuming the mantle of Western security, the expert added.
Nevertheless, despite negative forecasts, Giragosian pointed the resiliency of the American model of governance, which stems from the reliability of institutional stability over the threat of reckless individual “statesmanship.” “Such optimism is rooted in the reality of the limits of the presidency, where the checks and balances of the system will impose real limits of any imperial presidency. And in foreign policy, the Congress is the key actor, especially given the paradox of a Republican-controlled Congress that differs and diverges from President Trump and which may actually challenge the risk from such reckless reversals in the fundamental tenets and strategic drivers of U.S. foreign policy,” he noted.
