Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov declared on March 8 that Donald Trump’s foreign policy agenda aligns with Russia’s. The US policies to which Peskov referred include US pressure on Ukraine to agree to a cease fire and cede territory to Russia; a downgrading in the importance of NATO;support for Russia in the United Nations; and an end to sanctions. In addition, the US discontinued US cyber operations against Russia, and one might also include reduced US military spending and a weakening of US intelligence capabilities via cuts to the CIA and FBI personnel and budgets. These benefits for Russia could in theory all be worth it for the United States if it received something of equal or greater weight in return. Let us examine the possibilities in each of the three commonly understood goals of foreign policy: security, prosperity, and the spread of values.
Security
The most consequential action Russia could take to support US security would be to side with the United States in its strategic competition with China. China, because of its greater wealth, power, and global ambitions, presents a much greater long-term threat to the United States than Russia, and is the focus of the Trump Administration’s defense efforts. However, days after President Trump announced his tilt toward Moscow, Putin made clear he had no intention of abandoning China. It is possible that Putin was being disingenuous with Xi Jinping, but that is unlikely; China supports Russia in ways the US cannot, most significantly economically. More detail on this follows below in the discussion of the economic relationship.
If quitting China is too expensive for Russia, it still has three, much less expensive ways it can enhance US security: discontinuing cyber attacks, ending nuclear targeting of US cities and military assets, and dropping support for US adversaries. The first two are especially easy because they do not involve third parties. Putting a stop to Russia’s persistent and damaging cyber-attacks on the US private sector and critical infrastructure would produce immediate security and economic benefits for the United States. This cyber standdown would also have to include ransomware attacks by so-called private gangs based in or supported by Russia. To this point, US cyber defense companies report that Russian hacking continues unabated. Russia could also easily improve US security by ending its targeting of the United States with nuclear weapons. Maybe this is the plan, but again, thus far, Russia continues to deploy more than 1700 nuclear weapons, targeted mostly at Americans.
Russia could also stop backing US adversaries, including Iran and North Korea. Russian pressure on Iran to abandon its nuclear program and cease its support for terrorism would be of great benefit to the United States and could be the beginning of a grand bargain with Iran and a complete remaking of the Middle East. However, Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ruled out any possibility of a deal with the United States. Similarly, it seems improbable that Putin will try to convince Kim Jong-un to abandon North Korea’s nuclear program, given that Putin owes North Korea for its contribution of troops and supplies for the war in Ukraine. Even if Putin did agree to press Kim, Putin has nothing to offer North Korea to go along with a deal except subsidized energy, and Russia can little afford to subsidize anyone.
Prosperity
In theory, the new relationship with Russia could also benefit the US economically, but the path to this result is difficult to discern. Russia would not appear to offer much that the United States needs. US GDP in 2023 was almost $28 trillion. Russia’s official GDP was $2 trillion, and that is certainly an exaggeration, as dictatorships grossly overstate their economic wealth and income statistics. Moreover, as the Trump Administration seeks to redress trade imbalances, Russia is not a significant market for US goods. Trade between the United States and Russia in 2024 was valued at $3.5 billion, a relative pittance. For context, in 2024, US trade with the EU in goods alone (no services, which add another 50 percent) was almost $1 trillion, or 285 times the volume of trade with Russia. Of course, sanctions are part of the reason for this low level of trade with Russia, but even absent sanctions, Russia is simply too small a market to make a difference in the US balance of trade.
Moreover, Russia is not a particularly reliable partner. Businesses like predictable environments. Russia is unpredictable. It has no enforcement of contracts or protection of intellectual property, and is given to capricious confiscation of foreign assets. Beyond sanctions and legal restrictions, unpredictability is one reason few US companies operated in Russia at significant levels. By contrast, the European Union, which the US Administration accuses of harming the United States, is the most open US trading partner in the world and has a stable legal and regulatory environment.
In addition, the US and Russian economies are hardly complementary; both countries are net energy exporters. The two governments could coordinate oil production like OPEC, but Russian and US interests diverge with respect to oil: Russia’s commodity economy depends on high prices for oil and gas, while the United States, with a much more energy intensive, diversified economy, often (though not always) benefits from low oil prices—especially during periods of higher inflation, which tariffs often create.
Russia does have the world’s fifth largest supply of rare earth minerals, which are so key to modern technology. In theory, Russia could take up some of the slack from China, which dominates rare earth extraction and restricts access to those minerals to the US. However, Russia’s rare earth minerals are difficult to reach, mine, and process. (So too are Ukraine’s, which would be part of the proposed cease-fire deal.) In either case, Australia, Brazil, and India all are far more reliable economic partners and have larger rare earth mineral deposits. Moreover, the bottleneck for the US is not access to the rare earths themselves, but processing, which China dominates.
Values
That leaves values. What values does Russia promote? Russia is a totalitarian state. Vladimir Putin tolerates no rivals or critics. The lucky ones end up in exile; the unlucky ones end up in prison or murdered, like Alexei Navalny and Boris Nemtsov. Russia explicitly rejects the rights articulated in the US Constitution, including free speech, freedom of assembly, and real elections. Russia claims to respect freedom of religion, but in practice reserves that right only for the Russian Orthodox, who rule the country. Jews, Muslims, and non-Orthodox Christians are second class citizens. Protestants face discrimination and may not proselytize.
As described above, Russia has no rule of law. The judiciary takes its orders from the government. Russia does not respect private property. The state can seize anyone’s property at any time for any reason without due process. The oligarchs who own the wealth of Russia are oligarchs because they work for Putin. None of these practices conforms to US values of free markets, democracy, and human rights.
Conclusion
In sum, then, an initial analysis does not reveal how US alignment with Russia can deliver benefits in the areas of national security, prosperity, or promotion of American values. However, it is possible that what is visible to the public at this point in the relationship is only part of the picture. That is, Russia and the United States may be negotiating a grand bargain in which Russia receives everything it wants from the United States up front in exchange for a commitment to deliver some combination of security and economic benefits at a later date. (A Russian-American agreement on shared values is simply too unlikely to deem worthy of consideration, unless the US abandons democracy and embraces autocracy.) Thus, at a minimum, Americans should expect as the quid for Russia’s quo an end to Russian cyberwarfare and economic sabotage against the United States, a redeployment of Russia’s nuclear arsenal, a complete reorientation of Russia’s Iran and North Korean policies, and guaranteed access to Russia’s rare earth minerals. Even with all that, however, it would still appear to be a net loss for the United States, as it would be poorer, without reliable allies, and still confronted by the same Sino-Russian military alliance. The reasons for the US-Russia tilt, therefore, remain a mystery.