A nation must think before it acts.
U.S. President Donald Trump evidently expects his summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin to be the easiest of his upcoming high-level meetings. If so, he has brought that condition upon himself.
Trump’s choleric, ignorant, menacing, and, to be honest, strategically illiterate ramblings about NATO not being in the U.S. interest and too costly, about the EU’s trade barriers, and Putin himself, have not only generated alarm across the entire Western political class, but also given Putin an inestimable victory at no cost.