MOSCOW. Jan 16 (Interfax) - The idea expressed by United States President-elect Donald Trump of making a deal with Russia, whereby sanctions would be lifted in exchange for a reduction of nuclear arsenals, cannot be taken seriously, it means that the future U.S. administration has yet to formulate the concept of its course, according to Fyodor Lukyanov, chairman of the presidium of the Council for Foreign and Defense Policy.
"Such an idea should not be perceived in any way. This, regrettably, is an indicator that President-elect Trump so far does not quite understand the problem and is only trying to approach it in some way. But, in all likelihood, he is doing so on the basis of some preliminaries someone has been giving him. Trump does have a team in charge of foreign policy but the way the idea was formulated means that the future head of the White House has nothing to say yet," Lukyanov told Interfax on Monday.
"The idea of lifting sanctions in exchange for a reduction of nuclear weapons - the issue is phrased in a way that makes it impossible to start anything or get anywhere. Basically, it is simply pointless. In my view, one should not react to this in any way. There will be clarity once the new administration has formulated priorities of its political course more coherently," the expert said.
In his view, this statement by Trump contradicts others he made on nuclear problem. "What he said contradicts his own statements about the need to strengthen nuclear forces. Where did [he] suddenly get the idea that there must be great reductions - probably from what many often say, that nuclear arms should be reduced, the Trump team decided to speak out in the same vein," Lukyanov said.
Besides, Trump's remarks on the deal of a possible lifting of sanctions in exchange for nuclear arsenal reductions contradict to his critical stance on the idea of a "reset" in relations with Moscow, which was proposed under the administration of Barack Obama, Lukyanov said.
"Trump earlier stated decisively that there will be no resets in relations with Moscow because he rejects everything that Obama has done. However, his idea of the deal is, effectively, an offer to return to a 'reset', build some new relations around nuclear disarmament," the expert said.
An indicative fact is that two key figures in the new administration, the president and the secretary of state, are coming from big business, he said.
"We are about to gain a very interesting experience. Two key figures in the administration, the president and the head of the State Department, Donald Trump and Rex Tillerson, have the mentality of big business representatives. It will be interesting to see what that means in practice as applied to world politics," Lukyanov said.
"It is logical to expect that Trump will somehow be implementing this approach. That everyone has their own ideas of the deal is another question. In business, if a deal fails to go through, the parties get up and got their own ways. If a deal fails in international relations, there is nowhere they can go away from each other," the expert said.
Trump said earlier that nuclear arsenals must be significantly reduced in exchange for lifting U.S. sanctions on Russia. In an interview with The Times and Bild newspapers Trump said that the issue of nuclear weapons must be part of the deal and nuclear arsenals must "reduced very substantially" in exchange for lifting U.S. sanctions against Russia.