(Vice) An expert in US-Russia relations explains how we got to where we are today. The Trump campaign's alleged ties to Russia have spiraled out into a story that's birthed a thousand conspiracy theories about how and why Donald Trump teamed up with the Kremlin to "hack" the 2016 election. Many Trump supporters dismiss the allegations as a liberal ploy to undermine the president, even as the FBI continues to investigate communications between Trump's associates and people linked to Russian president Vladimir Putin.
What often gets lost in the sometimes paranoid, always partisan debates over Russia is the underlying questions beyond the controversy of the 2016 election. Why would Putin favor Trump over Hillary Clinton? What does Trump's relatively friendly attitude toward Putin mean for US foreign policy and the world? How did we reach this place where Russia is once again seen as America's leading adversary—and is that impression even accurate?
To sort through those questions, I called up Timothy Frye, professor of post-Soviet foreign policy and the chair of the political science department at Columbia University, and got him to to separate fact from wild speculation and explain how Bush- and Obama-era decisions led to what's happening today.
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