The Best-Laid Plans for Deterring Russia

Not just predictable, but predicted. Twenty-five years ago, not long before his death, the man who pioneered the policy of containing the USSR throughout the Cold War emerged from his retirement as a cragged old man with a warning:

He would predict to Thomas Friedman in the New York Times, “Of course there is going to be a bad reaction from Russia, and then [the NATO expanders] will say that we always told you that is how the Russians are — but this is just wrong.”