Trump may try to reset the reset with Russia

Imagine how Vladimir Putin must be feeling. His government hacks the e-mails of leading Democrats, and his friends at WikiLeaks make sure to drip them out in the final weeks of the presidential campaign. In a shocker, the party the Russians didn't hack wins. Less than a week after the victory, the incoming president tells him he wants to explore greater cooperation against the Islamic State.

Putin must be experiencing deja vu.

In President Bill Clinton's second term, U.S.-Russian relations began to fray as the U.S. supported the ouster of Russia's ally in Serbia, Slobodan Milosevic, and Russia launched a vicious war against Chechen separatists.

Then, in 2001, President George W. Bush looked into Putin's eyes and found the soul of a decent man. Russia and the U.S. cooperated against Al-Qaida after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Then Putin turned his attention to his political foes. His agents poisoned a former Russian intelligence officer in London and his army invaded the Republic of Georgia. By the end of Bush's presidency, the U.S.-Russian relationship was in tatters.

Not to worry. Americans in 2008 elected Barack Obama, who set out to bring hope and change. For a few years things seemed to be going OK. Russian forces were still in Georgia. But the Russians agreed to a new nuclear arms-control agenda and to cooperate on disarming Iran. Then in 2013 there was a revolution in neighboring Ukraine. Russia annexed Crimea the following year. In 2015, the Russians set up airbases in Syria and started bombing the rebels the U.S. trained to fight against the dictator Bashar al-Assad.

It should be said that we've never elected anyone like Donald Trump before. He's not a professional politician. What's more, Trump has shown some elasticity when it comes to his promises. We are now assured that he does not intend to deport all 11 million people who are in the U.S. illegally. He told "60 Minutes" on Sunday that he would like to keep the part of Obama's health-care plan that bars insurance companies from denying coverage to people for preexisting conditions. So it's early days.

But the early signs do not look good. According to a statement from the Kremlin, Putin and Trump discussed "joint efforts in the fight against common enemy number one" in a phone call on Monday.

If Trump would like a road map on how to accomplish this reset, he should talk to Secretary of State John Kerry. In September, Kerry believed he had a deal for a one-week cease-fire, which would build confidence between the various forces in Syria. After that, the U.S. would begin to share targeting information with Russia to go after the Islamic State and Al-Nusra, a group that until recently was Al-Qaida's franchise in Syria.

That plan soon fell apart. Less than two weeks after Kerry reached his cease-fire, the Russians bombed an aid convoy trying to deliver food and medicine to the besieged city of Aleppo.

Perhaps Trump believes he can succeed where others failed. That's what Bush and Obama thought. Just as Bush overlooked Russia's bloody war in Chechnya and Obama overlooked the occupation of Georgia, Trump would be overlooking Russia's annexation of Crimea and aggression in Syria. This pattern gives Moscow the impression that it can wait out each sitting president and wipe the slate clean with whoever follows.

Trump may face other problems, too. Already his phone call with Putin has raised alarm bells in Congress. Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona,chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee that will vote on Trump's nominations for top Pentagon posts, issued a rebuke on Tuesday.

"At the very least, the price of another 'reset' would be complicity in Putin and Assad's butchery of the Syrian people," McCain said in a statement.