The Game Putin Plays

Diplomacy is like chess, a sport Russia excels in. Putin is a grandmaster of something else.

- Peter Coy

President-elect Donald Trump is correct that he has a huge opportunity to improve relations with Russia. Under President Obama, they have soured to the point where Russia interfered in the presidential election and Russian jets routinely buzz U.S. Navy ships. Americans’ feelings toward Russia are the coldest in 30 years, according to a survey by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. Trump could change all that by concluding a deal that committed Russia to stopping cyber warfare, cooperating on fighting ISIS, getting tougher on Iran over its nuclear weapons program, and ending the deployment of intermediate-range nuclear missiles that threaten Europe.

In business terminology, a deal that met U.S. objectives such as those, in return for the lifting of sanctions on Russia and other concessions, would be a win-win. It would be a natural culmination of Trump’s extensive dealings with wealthy Russians as investors and customers. “The Russian market is attracted to me,” he once said.

The obstacle is Vladimir Putin. Trump may be showering praise on Russia’s president now, but he’ll discover in office that Putin doesn’t view the world in the same transactional, let’s-get-this-done way. Take it from Sergey Aleksashenko, who was deputy chairman of the Central Bank of Russia in the late 1990s when Putin was director of the Federal Security Service, which replaced the KGB. Putin, he says, isn’t a win-win guy. More of a win-lose guy, actually.

“Putin is a proponent of zero-sumgame thinking,” says Aleksashenko, who left Moscow when he began to worry that his antipathy toward Putin could expose him to harm. Now a senior nonresident fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, Aleksashenko says that in dealing with Putin “you should demonstrate your force, your mighty capabilities.”