donald trump on monday took one of his first truly important calls as america<u+2019>s next commander in chief, and vladimir putin was on the other end. mr. trump told the russian supreme leader that he seeks a <u+201c>strong and enduring relationship<u+201d> with moscow, per the kremlin readout. his promised re-reset with moscow is on track. rapprochement starts in syria, where the president-elect has welcomed u.s.-russian cooperation against islamic state. that<u+2019>s not a departure from current policy, contrary to hysteria on the left. mr. trump didn<u+2019>t forge the de facto alliance with moscow in syria; his predecessor did. but to avoid the missteps of the last reset, mr. trump would do well to understand the ideological vision that shapes kremlin strategy. there is perhaps no better guide to russian thinking today than the philosopher alexander dugin. one of the main <u+201c>ideologists<u+201d> behind moscow<u+2019>s aggressive foreign policy, mr. dugin is an influential intellectual with ties to the kremlin. he has argued vociferously in favor of russia<u+2019>s annexation of crimea, and the u.s. treasury sanctioned him last year over his alleged role in <u+201c>violations of ukraine<u+2019>s sovereignty and territorial integrity.<u+201d> mr. trump<u+2019>s election elated mr. dugin. <u+201c>for us it is joy, it is happiness,<u+201d> he says in a telephone interview this week. <u+201c>you must understand that we consider trump the american putin.<u+201d> correctly or not, mr. dugin views the president-elect as a kindred spirit<u+2014>a <u+201c>conservative nationalist<u+201d> and <u+201c>realist<u+201d> who speaks mr. putin<u+2019>s language. <u+201c>two realists can better understand each other,<u+201d> mr. dugin says of the two men. by realism mr. dugin means a worldview that emphasizes <u+201c>the sovereignty of nations.<u+201d> a realist washington, he says, <u+201c>will focus on domestic affairs and leave in peace europe and the middle east.<u+201d> take ukraine and syria. these two trouble spots <u+201c>don<u+2019>t enter into the immediate interests of the united states,<u+201d> he says. the implicit message is that they do implicate russian interests. a white house willing to concede these areas would find a russia where <u+201c>there is no reason for anti-american feeling.<u+201d> perhaps that sounds like music to the ears of some in mr. trump<u+2019>s coterie. but the incoming administration should weigh the price associated with such a deal. mr. dugin isn<u+2019>t asking for an exchange of mutual strategic respect between washington and moscow. at stake is america<u+2019>s political and military supremacy over a liberal international order centuries in the making. <u+201c>liberalism<u+201d><u+2014>by which mr. dugin means individual rights and free markets<u+2014><u+201c>is globalist by its very nature.<u+201d> since they were first proclaimed by the philosophes of the enlightenment and their followers in the american colonies, liberal ideas have conquered the globe, and a succession of liberal powers, most recently the u.s., has overseen world order. mr. dugin equates liberalism with moral license and spiritual poverty. <u+201c>liberalism is totalitarianism,<u+201d> he says, an invasive weed that orthodox russia, forever poised between east and west, must resist. a u.s. that no longer seeks to uphold liberal order, then, would be a long-brewing triumph for ideas that mr. dugin and like-minded thinkers on the nationalist far right in russia and europe have championed for decades. such a development would represent a passage from <u+201c>unipolarity to multipolarity,<u+201d> he says. <u+201c>all those who reject universalism and globalization have an opening. . . . that is a theological and metaphysical shift, and we underestimate what is going on.<u+201d> it would be <u+201c>a real shift in the balance of power.<u+201d> in his book <u+201c>the fourth political theory,<u+201d> mr. dugin puts it less delicately: <u+201c>the american empire should be destroyed. and at one point, it will be.<u+201d> developing structures to replace the old liberal international order is the other half of mr. dugin<u+2019>s philosophical project. in a post-liberal world, he says, the great powers would pursue <u+201c>regional globalization<u+201d> instead of <u+201c>global globalization.<u+201d> the aim wouldn<u+2019>t be to resurrect the pure nation-state <u+201c>as it existed before globalization.<u+201d> instead, there would be <u+201c>balanced spaces of integration,<u+201d> with an anglo-american sphere, a european sphere as well as a eurasian sphere that encompasses russia, shiite iran and parts of eastern europe. if that latter sounds a bit like a sophisticated philosophical alibi for mr. putin<u+2019>s imperial ambitions in the territory between the baltic and black seas, well, it is. but mr. dugin says the eurasian regional integration he envisions needn<u+2019>t be coercive. <u+201c>eurasianism is a defensive step against a globalization applied by all the power of the u.s.,<u+201d> he says. but if washington were to step back, <u+201c>we can accomplish this more democratically.<u+201d> and what about the bad memories, in places like poland and the baltic states, of the last time russia <u+201c>integrated<u+201d> its neighbors? mr. dugin says he<u+2019>s sympathetic but that these nations must <u+201c>adapt to multipolarity.<u+201d> he adds: <u+201c>there were also good memories.<u+201d>
how the kremlin sees trump<u+2019>s re-reset with moscow - wsj
sohrab ahmari