Russia & Eurasia

[Putin] sees a vacuum of power, for example in Syria where the U.S. didn’t have a strategy, and he sees an opportunity to reassert Russian influence and Russian power in the region...You could make the same argument about Ukraine. There was an opportunity that presented itself. He took a risk and it paid off...In broad terms, Putin has defined his legacy at this point as the Russian leader who has ‘brought Russia back up from its knees in the 1990s.'

Just meeting with Putin by the U.S. president is not an issue. All U.S. presidents have met with the Russian president...The problem here is that this administration has done this in reverse: Usually there’s a long period of process, of prep work and negotiations…The meeting between the leaders happens last to affirm the negotiating process...So I could see—I’m not saying I’m subscribing to this view—from Trump’s perspective, that this is an important relationship that has gone a little bit off the rails…and that he needs to fix it...And, of course, every single U.S. president has come into office thinking he could fix it because of his charisma and persona, and it was…the last guy who got it wrong, and in that way Trump is not that different from Obama, or even Bush.