The Politics of Deals Instead of the Politics of Values

The Russian government, by all appearances, continues to pin its hopes on Donald Trump, and the U.S. president-elect* is diligently stoking these hopes. In an interview with the Times and Bild newspapers, he called for seeing if the U.S. could manage to make “good deals” with Russia, such as on the issue of nuclear disarmament. Trump explicitly linked the success of possible deals with the topic of sanctions. In Russia, this was taken as a sign that sanctions might be relaxed or scaled back.

“Deal,” of course, is a word from the language of business. Trump is a businessman. Rex Tillerson, the head of oil giant ExxonMobil, is to become the new U.S. secretary of state. There are 10 billionaires on Trump’s team of economic advisers. It’s in the new U.S. ruling elite’s entrepreneurial pragmatism that Russia has placed its hopes. But then this isn’t the first time this has happened. After sanctions were imposed, the Russian government was expecting in the very same way that the conflict of interests between European politicians and businessmen would sooner or later lead to a lifting of restrictions.

In other words, the Russian leadership and the media that support it believe that the cognitive and behavioral habits of businessmen are useful for politics, that they make politics more moderate, balanced, rational, and oriented toward mutual benefits. It’s worth noting that in Russia’s domestic politics, businessmen have a different image. The successful entrepreneur, especially a billionaire, is almost always an unsavory character, a plunderer of the people’s property who profited from fraud in the ’90s and who can atone for his sins only by serious social work, like sponsoring the arts or building an athletic stadium.

In Russian politics, a person with Trump’s background would be doomed to failure. First of all, he’s really rich. Second, his team of billionaire advisers would immediately be presented as the “New Semibankirschina,” a transition to oligarchic rule of the country. Third, practically the first thing Trump is going to do is begin to abolish the universal health insurance program for which Barack Obama fought. In Russia, such moves would absolutely, unequivocally be interpreted as politics against the people.

The ruling elite in Russia pursues predominantly left-wing politics with a noticeable touch of populism, focusing on population groups that are dependent on government. No matter what relations were like between the Kremlin and Obama, it would seem that left-wing Democratic initiatives could elicit if not support, then understanding in Russia on the level of ideology and values. But you won’t hear or read anything of the kind about Obama’s health care law from Russian politicians or state media.

There’s an explanation for this. The Russian government talks a lot about values (above all, national values), but in reality its policies aren’t focused on them. Russia’s ruling elite is only partly, among some of its representatives, ideologically leftist. By and large, its leftism is a tactic to keep its position at the top. Conceptually, its moves might be close to those of U.S. Democrats or French socialists, but the ruling elite doesn’t evaluate either Obama or Hollande based on such criteria. In the arena outside Russia, the only criterion is a desire to deal with Russia (to make deals) and treat it like a country that sets its own rules.

Donald Trump seems convenient for the Russian government (for the time being) because he isn’t promoting any values to the outside world. At the moment, his political rhetoric is woven entirely of electoral devices and tactical declarations; he offers compromise where the previous government insisted on conflict. That doesn’t mean the businessman Trump doesn’t have any values. He does, of course, but to the Russian government, they seem like values for domestic consumption.

*Editor’s note: This article was written prior to the inauguration of Donald Trump on Jan. 20, 2017.