An increasingly isolationist America led by Donald Trump would represent a major security threat to the nations of central and eastern Europe, as a revanchist Russia looks to reassert its presence across the region, analysts warn.
Russian president Vladimir Putin has done little to disguise his desire to see Russia regain its “great power” status by expanding its sphere of influence. He has long viewed Nato as an outright enemy designed to keep Russia in check, and democratic revolutions in neighbouring states as evidence of US-led Western meddling.
Experts say any sign that the US would be willing to scale back its investment in Nato — or defund the intergovernmental military alliance entirely, factors that cannot be entirely ruled out if Trump were to win the race for the White House — would embolden Putin, and put the entire region in peril.
“The question is what would happen if the US pulled back from the region,” said Timothy Ash, head of CEEMEA desk strategy at Nomura in London. “Would Russia jump into the space left by the Americans? I believe Putin will jump at any chance to take what he can get, on the basis that possession is nine-tenths of the law.
“He would see American military strategy under Trump as a temporary weakness and take what he can, as quickly as possible. A more isolationist America with a hostile view of the world would be a terrible thing for pan-European security.”
Charles Robertson, global chief economist at Moscow-based emerging markets investment bank Renaissance Capital, said the danger was that a Trump presidency “would disarm the US, and defang it as a valuable ally” for countries across emerging Europe and central Asia. “His isolationist nature would encourage those who would like to change the regional status quo.”
Guillaume Tresca, senior emerging market strategist at Crédit Agricole, said Trump’s “US-centric” rhetoric was likely to lead to “less US engagement” across the region.
SABRE RATTLING
Analysts pointed to Ukraine as the country with the most to lose in the event of a Trump win — and an ensuing attempt by the new US commander-in-chief to save cash by withdrawing at least some US funding from Nato.
“Ukraine would be the big prize for Putin,” said Nomura’s Ash. “The problem there would be that the majority of Ukrainians would never return to the Russian yolk,” leading to the prospect of a wider and more hostile conflict between Ukraine and Russia.
But other nation states should fear the rise to power of the US Republican populist. The Kremlin has successfully embedded frozen conflicts into several regional states, including Ukraine and Georgia, thereby preventing those economies from spinning off into the West’s orbit.
Putin’s sabre rattling has also been directed at countries ranging from Kazakhstan to the Baltic States, and it is the latter group — particularly Latvia, with more than 550,000 ethnic Russians — that faces an increasingly unsettled future. “Baltic states do not feel sure about their own peace and security,” said Ash. “They will be feeling very nervous about a President Trump. Western politicians are young and naïve. They have forgotten how nasty and Orwellian Putin’s regime is. Their politicians have not.”