Nixon was gone in ten days after Congressional Republicans abandoned him, leaving the Kremlin with the fixed verdict that the Washington Cold Warriors had successfully engineered a coup d’etat rather than accept “accommodation” with Russia.
Perhaps the inheritors of the Soviet–era Kremlin see the same formula at work today in Washington, with Congressional hawks aiming to prevent any move by the administration to reach an “accommodation” with President Vladimir Putin, and perhaps to test the Trump administration with a Constitutional crisis.
The fact that Trump did not mention Russia in his address to Congress on February 28 has raised still more questions about whether the president is either too unskilled or too vulnerable to manage détente.
The Kremlin is not waiting for better days. Moscow is moving to deepen its ties to the Eurasian superpower, Beijing, and may leave Congress to its blame-shifting self-regard as Russian leaders brace for the international crises and brinksmanship that may be part of the failure of this round of détente, just as they were during and following Watergate.
