Is it time for rapprochement with Vladimir Putin?

Donald Trump has either a year left in office or five years. Either way, there has got to be a better chance of improving relations between Moscow and Washington under a Trump presidency than, say, a Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders administration. So 2020 could be a big year for US/Russia relations if Vladimir Putin and Trump play their cards right. Trump could well take a risk and go hellbent on bringing Putin back into the international family, like inviting him into the G7 group to revert it to the old G8. You might ask, why should we forgive Putin for all his horrors and move to improve relations? Well, Putin can never be forgiven for invading and annexing Crimea, for grabbing a slab of Georgia, for inciting a war in eastern Ukraine and for sending his GRU military intelligence agency hit squad around Europe bumping off his opponents - notably his clearly authorised attempt to fatally poison Sergei Skripal and his daughter with novichok nerve agent in 2018. But, despite all that, we are about to enter a new decade and we in the West cannot afford, in every meaning of that word, to regard Russia as Enemy 1 and a potential adversary in what would the most destructive war ever to be witnessed on the planet. Putin may be regarded as a rogue president who cannot throw off his KGB past but the fact is the world will be a whole lot safer if we talk to the Russian leader and attempt to be amicable and engaging. It's time for a big effort to get Russia and the West on a more sensible footing. Putin of course may not want to be friends with the West, especially now he possesses the fastest and longest-range nuclear-capable missile in his weapons inventory, the hypersonic Avangard missile claimed by the Russians to be capable of reaching a maximum 27 times the speed of sound and so manoeuvrable it can switch direction instantly, like a lion chasing an antelope. Putin, like all his predecessors, remains convinced that the West, Nato in particular, would love to destroy Russia. But of course that is and always was rubbish paranoia. There were never any Nato plans to invade Russia but all the Cold War Russian leaders told their people that Nato was the Big Enemy ready at any moment to send its hordes of troops across the border. All paranoia, although, to be fair, we in the West suffered the same paranoia, believing that the Soviet hordes were at any moment going to launch a conventional attack on western Europe. In 2020 we can no longer afford to suffer from this tyoe of paranoia. There are too many other dangers facing this world. So let's break down the barriers with Russia and start being friends. The most positive moment of 2019 came in a phone call from Putin to Trump last week when the Russian president thanked the US president for helping to stop a planned terrorist attack in St Petersburg, following a tip-off from American intelligence services. That's a good sign. Putin saying thank you. So, Mr Trump, in the time you have left in the White House, get relations with Russia moving in a more friendly direction. In my humble view, Nato's expansion to the Baltics and Black Sea was a mistake. It might have looked a smart move after the Soviet Union collapsed but Nato went too far and revived Russian paranoia to a new level. It's too late to change all that. But the Pentagon's current strategy is to openly regard Russia and China as America's main future enemies. I always thought that was unwise if this world is ever going to move to a more stable situation. The West needs to make friends, not enemies. If Putin reads every day that Russia is viewed as America's Enemy Number 1, no wonder he is so enthusiastic about his new Avangard missiles. The arms race is truly back on the schedule and that can't be good news as we progress into the next decade.