Donald Trump's relationship with Russia would be far more dangerous for global stability than Hillary Clinton

America, with varying levels of success but consistent bravery, resisted Russian domination of Eastern Europe and it is unthinkable that Washington would now stand idly by while Putin re-establishes Stalin’s empire

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally (AP)

Extreme. Alarmist. Unvarnished. Yes, it’s another Donald Trump statement on diplomacy. Mr Trump, who may or may not be growing more desperate as he falls behind in the opinion polls – he is, after all, extreme, alarmist and unvarnished even when relaxed – now claims that Hillary Clinton’s plan for Syria would “lead to World War Three”. That is quite something, even for him.

The insidious aspect of this remarkable intervention is that there is something in it. Many Americans, and many across the world, believe that Isis is indeed a more potent and evil force than President Assad’s Syrian Arab Republic could ever be. Bashar al-Assad hasn’t beheaded any Western aid workers, for example, or fomented terrorism in Paris, or blown up ancient monuments, and has no ambition to invade his neighbours and impose extreme sharia law upon them. Therefore, the argument runs, the Americans should cooperate with the Russians in propping up Assad. The US and Russia could, it is argued, act together to obliterate Islamic State.

That is what Mr Trump says he would do.

Hillary Clinton, it is correctly observed, would not. She would be much more likely to confront and challenge Russia than Mr Trump over Syria and across other disputes too, notably Ukraine. Her relationship, like Barack Obama’s, with Vladimir Putin is cold, and the fear is that a President Hillary Clinton would spark a second Cold War, if not World War Three.

There are critical flaws in this superficially compelling case. First, President Assad has his own brand of evil, gassing his own people, bombing civilian sites and, with assistance of the Russians, humanitarian aid convoys. Whether he is more dangerous than Isis is debatable, for it is he who has helped create the conditions in which they flourished. What is important is that the choice for Syria, and the world, is not between Assad and Isis; there are other forces and factions capable of forming a restively civilised and peaceful government. It was those groups that the original US-Russian ceasefire proposal a few weeks ago was designed to help. Its failure has left us in the false position of having to choose between Isis and Assad. That is no choice at all.

Second, we have to consider the wider price President Trump would pay to secure his friendly relations with Russia; allowing the Russians to do more or less as they like in what would be their modern-day “sphere of influence”. In President Trump’s semi-isolationist policy, America would have its vital interests, and the Russians theirs, and they would carve up the globe accordingly. Yet there is no guarantee that that carve-up would actually be sustainable and that there would never be any turf wars, leaving aside the immorality of condemning entire peoples and nations to Russian hegemony. America, with varying levels of success but consistent bravery, resisted Russian domination of Eastern Europe and it is unthinkable that Washington would now stand idly by while President Putin re-establishes Stalin’s empire. It would certainly not be in the interest of anyone in Europe.

Third, even if Hillary Clinton confronted the Russians, so did some of her predecessors in the White House, and, while it frightened the world to have a nuclear stand-off and imminent Armageddon, presidents such as John F Kennedy and Ronald Reagan did win their Cold War battles with the USSR. Mr Trump wouldn’t even try to resist Russian aggression; and in the long run that would make the world a much more dangerous place.