President Trump's Secretary of State Rex Tillerson reportedly drafted a classified document that he intends to use as a guide on how the administration should deal with Kremlin in relation to world affairs and America's interests. The document includes a three-point framework in hopes that the United States can develop a more constructive relationship with Russia, according to Buzzfeed.
US-Russia tension over Syria
A senior State Department official admitted to Buzzfeed in an article titled: "The Trump Administration Has A New Plan For Dealing With Russia," that the relationship between both countries was "in the gutter." Recent reports stated that the Russian military has taken a more aggressive stance against the United States for its actions against their Syrian allies when the U.S.
military shot down a Syrian fighter jet while battling ISIS over Raqqa.
The Russian military was been in Syria since September 2015 when the Assad regime asked for their assistance in the Syrian Civil War.
Rebel fighters backed by the U.S. that were fighting against the Syrian government are now engaged in fighting the Islamic State, trying to push them out of strongholds such as Raqqa. Since the Russian military has been in Syria, they have targeted those rebels as terrorists -- such as they did in Aleppo -- but have also been accused of committing war crimes and killing innocent civilians.
The Syrian Network (Observatory) for Human Rights, for instance, reported that Russians have killed more civilians in Syria than the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, IS and ISIL.
In April, the Trump administration took military action against the Syrian regime by hitting one of their airfields with 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles. As a hint of the relationship between the U.S. and Russia over the attack, it was suggested that Russia had actually allowed the attack in retaliation for Syria's chemical attack on their own civilians.
The unpredictable Trump administration against the world
Since then, many media outlets have reported increased tensions between the U.S. and Russia, even during Rex Tillerson's visit to Moscow when he traveled to meet President Putin and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. Buzzfeed reported that U.S. allies see the classified document as the source of "anxious speculation" as they are not sure if Trump is committed to pushing back against Russia in support of NATO allies.
Last year, NATO sent more troops to their borders after Candidate Donald Trump became the President-elect as he even declared during his campaign that NATO was obsolete.
Though he changed his statement in April as President, saying that it was "no longer obsolete", he would pay NATO members a visit again during his trip to Europe this year where he accused some of them again of being a financial burden. More recently, Trump stood next to a NATO leader in the White House Rose Garden and vowed his support of Article 5 which says that an attack on one NATO nation is an attack on all. However, as shown -- since Donald Trump has been in office, he has been unpredictable with establishing relations with the international community and continues to make leaders in the western world uneasy.
Officials have said about the document, that it's designed to be a more aggressive and yet engaging approach to Russia, where Washington promises to push back if Russia takes action against the U.S. Since the downing of a Syrian jet and more recently, an Iranian drone -- another country that is an ally to Russia -- the Russian military has said that they will now shadow American fighter jets over Syria.
Before he was Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson was the CEO of Exxon Mobil and made deals with the Kremlin, even opposing U.S. sanctions against them over their annexation of Crimea in 2014. Tillerson was even awarded the highest honor for an outsider by President Putin called the Friendship Award.
