What Russia wants
What does Vladimir Putin really want? It may sound like an easy question, or maybe a setup for a bad joke. But according to John Beyrle, a former U.S. ambassador to Russia who spoke Monday evening at a Harvard Institute of Politics roundtable on that nation and its leader, it’s a crucial question for the next White House occupant to understand. What Putin wants, said Beyrle, is respect, and he can choose startling ways of getting it. “Our nuclear relationship with Russia is the main existential issue,” Beyrle told the Harvard Kennedy School panel on “Challenges for the Next President: The Crisis With Russia.” “Putin has boasted about Russia’s nuclear might, so the taboo of using one’s nuclear arsenal as a bragging point has been broken. That should give us all pause. Most people wouldn’t understand the details of a modern nuclear arsenal, but they do understand a senior Russian official who...