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Can one ally with Russia, in any sense that requires future commitments rather than presently verifiable terms? What has changed in between the Berlin Blockade and now that makes them less likely to use such an alliance when it might benefit them but then ignore it as soon as it might cost them? (Fun aside: though it sounds like one of Aesop's, The Scorpion and the Frog is a Russian fable)
China is already our third-largest trading partner (right after the two that each share thousands of miles of border with us), and though our diplomatic relationship is somewhat strained by philosophical tensions similar to our tensions with Russia, e.g. between "conquest is bad" versus "if the other guys are basically the same ethnicity then it shouldn't even really count as an invasion when we send in the military", I don't think the proper resolution here is to just switch teams. There are a lot of potential Sudetenland "special military operation" opportunities in the world, and it's a better place when they're unrealized opportunities.
Despite my suspicions above, I would agree that if Russia agrees to an unconditional surrender, demilitarization and disarmament, an American rewrite of their constitution, and acceptance of military occupation to enforce it all, that would be ample evidence of sufficient change for us to ally with them afterwards.
I'd say probably not. No alliance is truly reliable, but alliances with Russia seem far more dicey than most. But probably not as dicey as a "lasting understanding" with China! This is just a bad idea all around.
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More to the point, why would Russia ally with a country that has indicated willingness to do 180-degree turns in foreign policy and abandon previous allies at will due to local power shifts?
Very fair point.
I suspect the answer intended by the US Constitution was also the one you'd get from game theory: treaties are supreme over other laws, and require a 2/3 Senate vote to ratify, and naturally you're not going to swing wildly from "2/3 in favor of ratification" to "2/3 in favor of nullification", so once a treaty is ratified it should be relatively trustworthy.
Unfortunately the Constitution doesn't actually spell out the "2/3 in favor of nullification" part of that, and so the status quo for terminating a treaty ended up somewhere in between "big legalese mess" and "the President can do whatever he wants", leaning towards the latter. I would still trust the US with an alliance more than Russia, but not as much more as I'd like to.
Thank God for that oversight. If we needed 2/3rds of the Senate to get out of a treaty we would not be a sovereign nation but a mere puppet of the many countries we have signed unwise treaties with in moments of weakness.
In a better world, treaties should automatically sunset and be renewed after some period of time. Perhaps 10 years.
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