Center on the United States and Europe

[The leak of memos from British Ambassador Kim Darroch to London] appears to be a very limited number, very specifically targeted at [his] assessment at Trump. It’s hard to conclude that this is anything other than politically motivated... [Likely future prime minister] Boris Johnson is really going to be in a bind. On one hand, he’s really going to want to get off to a good start with President Trump. On the other hand, he’s also going to have a domestic audience that he’s going to have to respond to as well as a very serious morale issue within the Foreign Office about how you handle a veteran diplomat who’s just doing his job.

If it’s just [President] Trump dealing with [British Ambassador Kim] Darroch, it’s not as much of a problem because the two of them were not dealing directly with each other anyway. The bigger problem is if word goes out within the administration to senior White House officials and senior State Department officials that they aren’t allowed to engage with Darroch—then that’s really going to handicap his ability to work.

The leak of cables has a chilling effect on what diplomats are prepared to put in writing and send back. I’m sure that British diplomats in embassies around the world are now going to be having similar concerns about things that they are writing in cables and sending back to London. 

[President Trump] has said on a number of occasions that he was prevented from working more closely with Putin in the first two years because of the Russia investigation...This is the first meeting with Putin since the Mueller report. And so if his own remarks are anything to go by, we may sort of expect to see him trying to open up a sort of deeper period of cooperation with Putin.