A nation must think before it acts.
Despite some predictions that President Donald Trump would announce U.S. recognition of Russia’s annexation of Crimea, or cancel U.S. military deployments to Eastern Europe and the Baltic states, his summit in Helsinki with President Vladimir Putin resulted in very little change to existing U.S. policies on Russia. The sanctions regime remains intact, and American commitment to the “enhanced forward presence” in the eastern part of the NATO alliance is unchanged. Moreover, given the tenor of the joint press conference, and the swell of reactions that followed in Washington, it is clear that Trump enjoys almost no U.S. domestic political support for any effort to engage in a rapprochement with Russia.