Fiona Hill

not just with Russia as the former Soviet Union, but also with China, with Iran, with North Korea.

He does actually want to make the world a safer place from a nuclear perspective.

And I feel that's the tragedy because, you know, he perhaps could have done something to that if he'd been more disciplined and more focused and less worried about whether he was going to get all kinds of accolades for it.

That was what he was trying to do in Helsinki, you know, back before that disastrous press conference and his first proper meeting with Putin in

And he's, I mean, I think it's a genuine sentiment on his part.

Absolutely.

Look, and you still get lots of people saying, look, he's warm, he's charismatic.

You know, I've seen flashes of that.

But, you know, that's not sufficient in my view to normalize a person who is doing an enormous amount of damage.

And the other thing is that just like Putin, he's a pattern breaker, but he's even more of a pattern breaker than Putin.

which actually means he does obviously see all of the problems that we're facing.

He's identified them all, I think, extremely well.

He's broken the pattern, but he's just not somebody who, beyond real estate, is actually really building something.

And because his tendency is towards dividing everyone and conquering them, again, like Putin, he's not bringing people together to do things, which, you know, perhaps...

perhaps he could have done so i think it it's almost shakespearean for me as that you know you have the hero the person who's the hero in their own telling of the tale but their own flaws prevent them from doing the things that they actually think that they want to do and for actually addressing the issues that they have correctly identified as being the key ones

It requires patience and some strategic thinking.

It requires working with others and not short-circuiting the process, which is what he often does, and declares peace when it hasn't actually happened, which then enables the people like Putin and others to come back around again and take advantage of the situation.

Right.

I mean, look, and we can list all the different places where that has particularly happened.

I mean, we all know that creating and building peace is very difficult.