one of the problems we have with the u.s./russia relationship, is making it a person-to-person thing. president putin to president trump. people have to be coordinated and brought together. and what we saw happen in the g20 hamburg meetings was donald trump go in without preparation, without a coherent plan of what the united states wanted to get out of those meetings. and what we got out of that was the russians got some of what they wanted. the united states got nothing. and so i think that part of what has to happen now, and i think with general john kelly, who is a systems guy, hopefully hr mcmaster getting a boost up, we ll see if that happens. nonetheless, more systems people who will bring that capacity to donald trump. and i think that helps create within the u.s./russia context more opportunities for a healthy, complex management of an important strategic relationship. and while rick may be right, that, you know, to some degree, you know, there aren t that many people there, i
election. so as my colleague at the atlantic wrote today, julia yoffey, this is a response 20 times bigger than barack obama, who expelled 35 russian diplomats from the united states. so it s a big deal and the world is going to pay notice. i think it s getting u.s./russia relations back into a sort of no illusion track, and that s, to be honest, quite healthy. do you see this as healthy, rick, and what do you think the message is that vladimir putin was sending? you know, i don t necessarily think it s quite as big a deal as steve said, in the sense that it s not some kind of gigantic world-changing, climatic thing. well, it is something he can do fairly easily. yes. but 755 out of, what, 1,200, we think. there aren t 755 americans at the moscow embassy. no, a lot are rof them are n russians but they do do the job. but it resets the table a