US-Russia Normalization Will Be Long & Difficult, Ex-US Diplomat Says

The normalization of relations between the United States and Russia will be long and difficult, former US diplomat Jim Jatras told RIA Novosti on Tuesday.

“The road to normalized US-Russia relations, cooperation in mutually beneficial endeavors, and enhanced European and global security will be long and difficult—if it can be achieved at all,” Jatras said, commenting on the phone call between Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump.

The realization that NATO is losing the proxy war may be behind Washington’s course toward warming, the US national added.

“Let there be no mistake: the Trump administration is signaling its interest in pursuing this course only because NATO is losing its proxy war against Russia in Ukraine and because the US wants to transfer its primary focus to the Middle East and China,” Jatras noted.

The US uses peace overtures to Russia to extricate it from the Ukraine debacle without suffering a total defeat. Washington is also prodding the Europeans into rearmament and hopes to induce Russia to distance itself from China and Iran, he pointed out.

“In short, despite protestations to the contrary, the US is seeking to use genuine Russian desires for improved relations over the long term — 'a full and permanent peace' — as bait for a Minsk 3.0-type short-term truce of the sort Moscow has repeatedly said it won't accept,” the ex-diplomat added.

Jatras is a former US diplomat who worked in the US embassy in Mexico and served at the State Department’s Soviet desk in the early 1980s. Later, he was a foreign policy advisor for the US Senate Republican leadership for many years.

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19 March, 09:14