![]() Reagan’s administration could not tolerate the Russians occupying, say, Afghanistan, and spent time and money trying to drive them out Trump couldn’t give a trump about who’s in power in Kabul. He will define America’s interests in such a way as to suit Moscow. That’s where Trump is different to his hero Trump would make such a peace. Hillary Clinton, in full Hillary Rodham Clinton, ne Hillary Diane Rodham, (born October 26, 1947, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.), American lawyer and politician. The option was not open to Reagan, for ideological and strategic reasons, to make an easy, early peace with the Soviet Union. He started as the coldest of Cold Warriors, outspent the USSR on defence, broke its will to win the arms race, and eventually made peace with an exhausted Mikhail Gorbachev. Ronald Reagan, who Trump consciously tries to emulate, was a different case. It is ugly, but it works, after a fashion. Even if that means sacrificing smaller nations and former allies (as with the expendable South Vietnamese). Sometimes, as in Nixon and Kissinger’s time, that means making overtures to unpleasant regimes and taking bold initiatives in the cause of a broader, wider peace. ![]() She is wrong by the Kissingerite doctrine of placing the American national interest first and last in foreign policy. She is right, in the sense that that is what America’s best traditions call for. She thinks, like President Obama, that her job is to stop Russian aggression in Ukraine, in the Baltic republics and elsewhere in eastern Europe, and around the world generally. How about Hillary? Well, she is certainly needled by Trump’s laser-guided focus on the US national interest, accusing him of being a Russian puppet, joking that he reads his speeches translated from the original Russian. They would share a goal to destroy Isis, even though they have not been able to do so recently, because it would be part of a wider cooperation. The US-Russia Strategic Partnership would be the fruit of that particular liaison, with secret provisions, no doubt, on assassinating terrorist leaders, and public pledges on intelligence sharing, with the whole relationship consummated by series of joint bombing raids in Syria. It is all too easy to imagine a state visit by Vladimir Putin to Washington where he is feted and falls into the arms (we hope no more) of an affectionate President Trump. Trump is fixated to the point of racism on the militant Islamist violence that he tells his fearful audience is “just around the corner”. Donald Trump is the first presidential contender, more even than George W Bush, who looks like he’d actually want to take them up on the offer. The Russians, more than a little cynically, have asked the West for decades to join them in a war against “Islamist terrorism”, but which they principally mean the separatist movements in Chechnya and elsewhere.
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