In the current political environment, developing any kind of effective strategy toward Russia is fraught with difficulty. A two-year, bipartisan task force convened by Carnegie Endowment and the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, has recommended that instead of fueling unrealistic expectations of a breakthrough, the Trump administration should seek incremental progress on specific topics, based on a set of guiding principles. In the latest Carnegie podcast, two of the authors of the report, Carnegie's Andrew S. Weiss and Eugene Rumer, share their thoughts on how to manage the relationship and what some of those guiding principles should be.

Andrew S. Weiss is vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment and oversees research in Washington and Moscow on Russia and Eurasia. Weiss previously served as director for Russian, Ukrainian, and Eurasian Affairs on the National Security Council staff, as a member of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff, and as a policy assistant in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy during the administrations of Presidents Bill Clinton and George H. W. Bush.​

Eugene Rumer is a senior fellow and director of Carnegie’s Russia and Eurasia Program. Prior to joining Carnegie, Rumer was the national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia at the U.S. National Intelligence Council from 2010 to 2014. He has also served on the National Security Council staff and at the State Department, taught at Georgetown University and the George Washington University, and published widely.