Foreign Policy reports today that Brookings scholar Fiona Hill—a former US intelligence officer and a sharp critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin—has been tapped to become White House senior director for Europe and Russia. Hill’s hiring would likely find a welcoming audience in Congress, where disquiet is growing over election-season contacts between associates of Donald Trump and representatives of Vladimir Putin. Of Putin, Hill has written in the Bulletin that “the Soviet-era international paradigm has not changed so much. Yes, communism is gone, and the Soviet Union has crumbled, but… [m]ilitary might still makes right, and wars still frame the playing field.” For a White House perceived as suspiciously cozy with Russia, Hill’s hiring might send an important countervailing signal.
Also, from the current issue of the Bulletin’s digital journal, see Hans Kristensen and Robert Norris’s 2017 assessment of Russian nuclear forces.
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