Albert R. Hunt, Columnist

Trump Has Made Russia the Top Foreign Policy Issue

The president-elect's approach to Putin could upend a quarter-century of U.S. policy.

December 18, 2016 at 4:08 PM UTC

Albert R. Hunt is a former Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He was the executive editor of Bloomberg News, before which he was a reporter, bureau chief and executive Washington editor at the Wall Street Journal.

Changing course.
Photographer: Savo Prelevic/AFP/Getty Images

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For 40 years after World War II, the dominant national security issue for any new U.S. administration was dealing the Soviet Union. After a quarter-century hiatus, it's deja vu.

Donald Trump has praised President Vladimir Putin and nominated a secretary of state and a national security adviser with Russian connections. The president-elect has consistently rejected most criticism of Putin, including high-level intelligence reports that Russia illicitly hacked into private e-mails to try to affect U.S. elections.