Are we seeing a tactical tilt toward Russia?

[Zorro]

The Trump administration sent a characteristic mixed message on arms control this week: It announced a plan to quit the Open Skies agreement with Russia, even as it proclaimed its eagerness for a wider arms-control process that would include both Russia and China.

Many analysts focused on the treaty withdrawal as a sign of worsening relations with Russia, but I think there’s something more complex at work, and more hopeful for U.S.-Russia relations. At a time of increasing rhetorical confrontation with China, the United States is expanding its engagement with Moscow on arms control, humanitarian assistance to Russia for covid-19 and other issues of mutual concern.

As always with the Trump administration, to be sure, there are conflicting voices internally. Some officials dislike arms control and would like to sever all agreements that limit U.S. options. But there’s a camp that has always favored more engagement with Moscow, led by President Trump himself, and I suspect they are driving policy. Administration officials don’t say it explicitly, but my guess is that the net effect of the administration’s actions this week is a tactical tilt toward Russia.

For a half-century, strategic negotiations have been a three-way balancing act involving Washington, Moscow and Beijing. President Richard M. Nixon’s opening to China in 1972 was partly an effort to gain leverage in bargaining with the Soviet Union. Similarly, the Trump administration’s new outreach to Russia may be prompted by fears of a rising China.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/are-we-seeing-a-tactical-tilt-toward-russia/2020/05/21/9e0b2730-9ba4-11ea-ac72-3841fcc9b35f_story.html

And Republicans were always the ones pasting the "commie-lover" label on Democrats...

[lostnfound]

1. Preparing the way to give russia more concessions.

It’s always about that.

If Putin wants to violate a treaty, he gets trump to withdraw from it first.

Then if there are “negotiations” to reinstitute some treaty, he can end up getting the us to tie its own hands while leaving him free on things that matter to him.

[FreepFryer]

2. Does the Russian Bear shit on the taiga?

Of course that’s what trump is attempting, and Russia hopes to make permanent as many of these fucked up concessions as possible before an actual American president is actually elected again.

Yes we had payback coming for our destabilization, predation and role in the gangsterism that arose after the fall of the Soviet Russian state - but they know they went way past the line here, and they know they are gonna get theirs.