What this meant, she said, was “stop waiting for [the Russians] to move and then react. Try to create the environment in which we want to live,” she told me in late 2021. Yes, there was lots of room to work with Russia on issues like climate change and nonproliferation and Iran—all areas where Putin had cooperated before. But Nuland believed that Putin respected only a show of strength, and that meant “being absolutely firm in strengthening our deterrent and the deterrent of our allies against malign influence and aggressive behavior by Russia.”
