Vladimir Putin could do very well out of Donald Trump

FOR decades, Russian leaders insisted that America had no claim to moral superiority. For every Soviet and post-Soviet misdeed, from labour camps to invasions, they adduced an American counterpart. Such equivalence was anathema to American statesmen, who claimed to abide by higher standards.

Until now. In an interview with President Donald Trump broadcast on February 5th, Bill O’Reilly of Fox News described Vladimir Putin as a “killer”. A nod from Mr Trump seemed to allow that this might be the case, which would in itself have been an arresting evaluation of another head of state. The president then went on to say that there were “a lot of killers” and to question whether his own country was “so innocent”. His tough-talk tarnishing of America’s reputation was unprecedented. But the equivalence it posits sits easily with the way Mr Trump seems to see Mr Putin’s Russia: as a potential partner.

In 2016 Mr Trump was consistently effusive about Mr Putin—“very smart!”—contrasting his popularity among Russians favourably with Barack Obama’s standing in American polls. He poured scorn on evidence that the Kremlin was behind the hacking of Democratic bigwigs’ e-mails during the election campaign, preferring to denigrate America’s intelligence agencies. Kompromat or collusion have been suggested as possible explanations for this unshakable warmth. Official inquiries—if they are allowed to proceed—may shed light on claims that Mr Trump’s campaign team collaborated with Moscow.

Scattered comments by the president and his aides imply an alternative explanation: the administration envisages a grand diplomatic bargain with Russia that encompasses arms control, counter-terrorism, the status of Crimea, economic sanctions and relations with China, an arrangement in which the two leaders indomitably face down all comers like some maverick geopolitical wrestling team.

This stance does not just go against the views of those Republicans who, along with much of America’s foreign-policy establishment, regard Mr Putin as a gangster. It also contradicts Mr Trump’s two predecessors. Mr Obama blithely wrote Russia off as an irksome regional power, nuclear-armed and prone to harassing its neighbours but doomed to decline into irrelevance. George W. Bush, who on meeting Mr Putin professed to have looked into his soul and to have liked what he saw, later oscillated between symbolic protests against the Kremlin’s depredations and fitful efforts to ignore them.

This all means that any bargain will face opposition in Congress and quite possibly even in Mr Trump’s cabinet. Still, public opinion provides an opening: polls suggest Mr Putin is viewed more favourably, and his country less warily, than before Mr Trump embraced him.In Russia state propaganda has burnished Mr Trump’s image and soothed anti-Americanism.

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