But is it? Or is it actually no different than it’s ever been, except that the current administration implied for a brief period of time we might see the relationship repaired?

Trump essentially blames Congress for a supposed deterioration in relations. And it’s true, Trump signed into law new sanctions against Russia, which spurred Moscow to respond with claims it amounted to full-scale trade war, and that the Trump administration had demonstrated “utter powerlessness,” in the words of Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev via Facebook.

But let’s take a moment to examine Trump’s own dealings with Moscow. It’s important to note first that President Vladimir Putin and Trump have no relationship — not really. So much of the so-called mutual respect was promoted before the two had even met in person, and emerged by way of soundbites during the campaign and after.

More general optimism about the U.S.-Russia relationship filtered out through press briefings or interviews, including my own with the Rostec CEO Sergey Viktorovich Chemezov — reportedly a long-time associate with Putin. None of the commentary about great potential for future cooperation was spurred by policy. It was politics. Moreover, it was rhetoric.

For Trump, Putin was a provocative symbol early on of what his negotiating skills could supposedly accomplish, and how he would turn Obama doctrine on its ear. For Putin, Trump has been a pawn — someone to bolster to the advantage of Russia influence and policy, perhaps through illegal means, as the antithesis of Hilary Clinton.

Many would actually like to see improved relations with Russia, whether for the sake of countering extremism, further repairing relations with China, or managing the threat of North Korea. Perhaps even military co-development, as far-fetched as that may seem in the current environment. But the practical challenges get in the way. Whether it’s an impasse on Syria or Ukraine, or just the general distrust that exists between the two nations — common ground has been elusive.

None of that changed with the Trump administration. And nobody would have expected that it would, if the president hadn’t hung his hat on the great potential of the relationship. In fact, some might argue that such implications, along with claims of mutual respect, only made matters worse. When the same old issues emerged, as they did with the recent sanctions, the relationship got nastier. Now Trump finds himself in quite a quandary, not living up to claims made to the American people or to expectations of Moscow.

So then, are relations with Russia at a historic low? Not really for the U.S. But perhaps for the president.

So yes, when there’s a clear and articulated effort to not cooperate with the media, it’s difficult to do our jobs. And I suppose that’s the point. But what I have often said to sources, and what I’d offer to the president, is that closing the door on the press makes it awfully difficult to do your job as well. 

What we know in media right now, for example, is that the Trump administration is advocating for a defense buildup. We know President Donald Trump wants more Navy ships — vowing to expand the number of carriers the United States fields and decrease the cost of building them. We know he submitted a $30 billion supplemental funding request for the military, including $24.9 billion in Defense Department base-budget programs.

What we don’t know is the strategy behind the defense buildup — the grander plan. We don’t know how more ships would be deployed as part of the larger fleet, what that could mean to personnel and development costs, whether that means modernization efforts will get sidelined. We also don’t know how the added program funds for 2017 could possibly get the green light, when they would bust budget caps. 

I’m not saying that there aren’t explanations. I’m just saying we haven’t heard them. Good explanations would probably go a long way in selling such a bold proposition to the Hill and to the American people, big factions of which are skeptics of big increases in defense spending. President Ronald Reagan advocated for his own defense buildup with specifics because he needed the endorsement. And he was successful. 

Trump views the media not just with skepticism but with a degree of disdain. And I’m not naïve enough to think no other leadership in past administrations felt similarly. Watergate ushered in a new more adversarial dynamic between media and government. 

That’s a good thing, I’d argue. 

But any government that wants backing for policies needs the media to make sense of them. Make your case so we can filter that into our reporting. Because the reality is this: Any president faces a self-fulfilling prophecy if his reaction to perceived unfair or one-sided reporting is refusing to offer his perspective or that of his administration. We as journalists quite simply can only report what we’re told. 

John F. Kennedy said in 1962: “There is a terrific disadvantage not having the abrasive quality of the press applied to you daily, to an administration, even though we never like it, and even though we wish they didn’t write it, and even though we disapprove. There isn’t any doubt that we could not do the job at all in a free society without a very, very active press.” 

With or without you, President Trump, the best journalists have access to the information and the sources to write the story. And they will write the story. So why not be a part of it.

US Secretary of State John Kerry’s search for common ground with Moscow has had no shortage of critics, including this writer. The prospect of military collaboration between American and Russian militaries in Syria is troubling given the track record of Russian aerial assets, whose appetite for engaging civilian medical facilities is particularly appalling. The absence of consequences for noncompliance by the Assad regime with American-Russian undertakings is telling. The piling of risk onto the backs of Syrian rebels disposed to cooperate with the US is unworthy. Yet the undertaking has had one central merit: It aims to end mass homicide and collective punishment in western Syria, the overwhelming bulk of which is the work of the Assad regime and its two principal enablers: Russia and Iran.

Kerry has been fixated on several indisputable facts. First, the civilian-centric war of the Assad regime has created a humanitarian abomination nearly indescribable in its horror. Second, the abomination has had dire consequences for American friends and allies in the region and beyond, spawning (among other things) a migrant crisis roiling the politics of Western Europe in ways Moscow finds pleasing. Third, mass homicide forms the core of the Assad regime’s political survival strategy: The regime was deeply alarmed when a cessation of hostilities seemed to be working in late February and early March of this year. And fourth, the industrial-strength targeting of civilians in their markets, mosques, hospitals and homes has produced a recruiting bonanza for ISIS and other al-Qaida-related or -descended entities.

Kerry has, at least, tried to address the center of gravity in Syria’s agonizing downward spiral: the protection of civilians.

If the initiative dies, the choice for American policy is stark: go to a real Plan B challenging the Assad mass-murder free ride, or fall back on the arm’s-length observer approach to slaughter in Syria that has produced unintended, negative policy consequences across the board. Kerry’s recent statement to National Public Radio about the only alternative to his initiative being resumption of official American passivity in the face of civilian mass casualties was ill-advised, but chillingly likely to be true. Passivity — at least in a meaningful, operational sense — has been the hallmark of the Obama administration’s policy for five years. Unless US President Barack Obama changes his approach and materially challenges the Assad regime’s cost-free campaign of mass homicide, how can the alternative to Kerry’s initiative be anything other than that described by America’s chief diplomat?

John Kerry deserves a chance to resurrect the prospect of a real ceasefire. Without leverage — without the ability to share a credible “or else” with his Russian counterpart — his odds of success are not good. But if the alternative is: “we sit there and do nothing” — as Kerry told radio listeners — then Godspeed, John Kerry.

If, on the other hand, the American commander in chief determines that the wholesale slaughter of civilians by the Assad regime runs counter to the interests of the US and its allies, he will direct his defense secretary to produce options to exact a price. This is not about invasion and occupation. It is not about protecting everyone in all places at all times. It is about confronting physical and moral cowards with cost.

Speaking to the UN Security Council on Sept. 21, a clearly distressed Kerry said the following: “So I want to emphasize this, and I emphasize this to Russia: The United States continues to believe there is a way forward that, although rocky and difficult and uncertain, can provide the most viable path out of the carnage. Our shared task here is to find a way to use the tools of diplomacy to make that happen, and that’s exactly what we’ve been trying to accomplish.”

The tools employed by John Kerry to date have been those of energy, persistence, and charisma. They are, considering the nature of those for whom civilian slaughter is as natural as breathing in and out, insufficient. Arthur Miller would have described him as “a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine.” He deserves a better toolkit from his Oval Office boss.

Frederic C. Hof, director at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East, served as a special adviser for transition in Syria at the US State Department in 2012.

Perhaps we’ll get to that place. But for now, there seems a lot of factors in the way.

Consider that Vladamir Putin is not Stalin in the eyes of the Western World, nor is ISIS the same as Nazi Germany. That’s not to rank Western adversaries, but rather to point to notable distinctions that could prevent a true, productive partnership to be forged.

For one thing, at the time of Stalin’s rule, the Soviet Union was a superpower. It also had tried, albeit with limited success, to cooperate with Nazi Germany. Such cooperation would have posed a perhaps insurmountable challenge to the West. A carefully crafted union between Stalin, Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, the allies had to figure, diminished that threat of a bigger, more powerful enemy.

Contrast that with today’s Russia. It’s not a superpower, despite actions that hint at a desire to be. And any other potential cooperation with the common threat of the moment – the Islamic State and other terrorist groups – does not exist. That common threat does not seek political expansion as much as philosophical domination. Russia offers no advantage to those groups. By the same token, the world has changed. Eastern Europe is not under the thumb of a communist superpower. It rather is attempting to combat insurgency, and looking to the West to support such efforts. A union between the west and Moscow would run counter to that, at least in the eyes of the countries that feel most threatened.

The US and Russia continue to struggle to create even a basic information sharing agreement in Syria in order to target ISIS forces there, with the Pentagon last week warning that those conversation cannot go on indefinitely. If the two countries cannot operate together against terrorism, as they did in the early days of the post-9/11 era, it throws cold water on the idea of a broader realignment between Russia and the US.

Could the dynamic shift? Even Pukhov concedes that chances are pretty low until the situation in Crimea is resolved – a situation that the Ukraine Ambassador in the US Valeriy Chaly called not only occupation, but an information war from Russia that attempts to blackmail Europe.

Nor could any true partnership happen when Russia poses such a threat to NATO members along the Eastern Flank. It’s a political quagmire.

So here we are. The odds of that degree of cooperation seemingly so small. And yet, as Pukhov said, “whenever I feel full of pessimism, some terrible terrorist attack happens, like the one in Nice.”

And then he thinks, maybe.

In “Defensive Shield: An Israeli Special Forces Commander on the Front Line of Counterterrorism,” Hirsch engagingly escorts the reader through his 34 years in uniform, starting at age 15 in a pre-military academy up through the backbiting post-war period when he’s forced to fall on his sword for perceived wartime failings.

Timed to coincide with the 10th anniversary of that hybrid war with Hezbollah, Hirsch’s account of the 34-day fight and its aftermath is a compelling, albeit subjectively cautionary tale of the best and the worst of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

From the former commander of the 91st Division that bore the brunt of the fight in that summertime war, we gain insight into forces trained for high-threat ground maneuvers, yet relegated to a deterrence-sapping, anti-ambush posture across more than 100 kilometers of the border.

From his impassioned yet narrow field of view, Hirsch paints a chilling portrait of comrades in arms who conspired and cowered in the face of the faltering leaders they were honor-bound to obey and the casualty-averse public they were sworn to defend.

“An evil spirit struck the IDF at that time, and officers — mainly senior — acted behind the scenes in subversive and manipulative ways. ‘Me’ came before ‘we’ and I was stunned by the extent of this phenomenon,” he writes.

In the year leading up to the war, Hirsch’s division thwarted four abduction attempts and engaged more than a dozen, limited responses to cross-border provocations; responses Hirsch dismissed as “firing at rocks.” All the while, Hirsch insists he repeatedly warned that the defensive strategy of restraint — adopted following Israel’s withdrawal in 2000 from its 18-year occupation of South Lebanon — was unsustainable.

When Hezbollah eventually managed to pull off a July 12 attack on Israel’s side of the border fence — killing two reservists and absconding with what later was determined to be the bodies of two more — Hirsch ordered an air power-supported tank and infantry force on cross-border pursuit. But Hezbollah was well-prepared with a massive mine that sent the tank up in flames, killing all of its crew along with two more sent on the rescue mission.

Within 30 minutes of the attack that would trigger Israel’s second Lebanon war, the IDF lost 10 men. By the time it was all over — after three weeks of standoff strikes followed by a too-little, too-late ground offensive — the IDF had lost 121 of its best and brightest, 60 of them under Hirsch’s command.

Another 44 civilians would die in the more than 4,000 rockets that pummeled the homefront.

Once the war fog cleared and the cease-fire took hold, Hirsch writes bitterly about his no less brutal battles with peers maneuvering to supplant him; an “hysterial” media seeking a fall guy; and superiors who hoped one head on a platter would spare them a similar fate.

In detailed accounts of after-action confrontations, Hirsch exposes critical intelligence that never made its way to Northern Command; petty and costly changes to operational plans in the name of morale-boosting photo ops; kangaroo hearings and other wrongs done to him by active-duty cadre and retired officers clamoring for his head.

And he names names.

His j’accuse includes Lt. Gen. Dan Haultz, then-IDF chief of staff; deputy IDF chief Moshe Kaplinsky; Udi Adam, the former commander of the northern front who now serves as director-general of Israel’s Defense Ministry; and then Maj. Gen. Gadi Eizenkot, since promoted to the country’s sole three-star billet as IDF chief of staff.

“I was naïve and focused only on fighting the enemy, even as I was being stabbed in the back,” he writes.

Gal Hirsch, center, here as an Israeli army division commander, talks with the service’s chief of staff, Dan Halutz, right, as they watch troops advance from Israel into Lebanon Aug. 12, 2006, from an observation point along Israel’s border with its northern neighbor.

Photo Credit: Abir Sultan/IDF via Getty Images

At times, Hirsch’s road to redemption reads like that of a jilted lover. “I loved you for 15 years,” he tells Halutz, urging the IDF’s top officer to back him against trumped-up accusations.

At other times, the book reads like a white-knuckled thriller.

Two memorable scenes take place far earlier in his career that give readers a sense of the true grit Hirsch would draw upon a decade hence in his quest to remain in the IDF’s top ranks.

The first involved an April 1995 overnight mission deep inside Lebanon. Hirsch at the time commanded the Air Force’s Shaldag (Kingfisher) elite commando force. As dawn approached, superiors back home were frantically urging him and his team to head for the CH-53 extraction point. But Hirsch refused to abort until the mission was complete.

The other scenario, as chief of operations for Central Command’s Regional Division in February 1998, was far more personal yet similarly illustrative of how Hirsch favored risk over rules to overcome adversity.

In a well-planned ambush, as he drove through the West Bank town of Birzeit, Hirsch’s jeep was literally crushed by a boulder dropped from a bridge overhead. With collapsed lungs, broken ribs, a shattered collarbone and a fractured spine that left him partially paralyzed, doctors doubted whether he would ever walk again.

After a year of painful recuperation, the wounded warrior had resumed his upward trajectory throughout the ranks.

A stint at the IDF’s Operational Theory Research Institute — an internal think tank for developing new battle concepts — was followed by assignments as brigade commander in the West Bank and then chief of operations (J-3) for Central Command. It was in his J-3 capacity for Central Command, the theater responsible for the West Bank and Jerusalem, that Hirsch put into practice the theoretical concepts he helped coin.

At times, Hirsch’s words read like that of a jilted lover. At other times, the book reads like a white-knuckled thriller.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Gefen Publishing House

Israel embarked on its 2002 Operation Defensive Shield in response to a suicide attack that killed 30 on the eve of the Jewish holiday of Passover. Designed primarily by Hirsh (hence the title of this book) with the promise of “defeating Palestinian terror,” the operation marked the largest campaign in the West Bank since the 1967 Six Day War.

Fourteen years after the fact, that operation and the technologies, tactics and procedures it prescribed are still credited in large part for maintaining the relative calm in the occupied territories.

But the most provocative parts of the book ultimately bring the reader back to Lebanon, where Hirsch, on balance, offers constructive criticism based on his experiences at the front lines. He devotes a full chapter to lessons learned, key among them:

• Accomplish the mission, regardless of changes in plan.
• Clearly identify war aims and communicate operational orders in language that is clearly understood.
• Don’t allow fear of casualties to blunt momentum during ground maneuvers. “War is not a cake walk. … It is essential to do everything possible to avoid hysteria emanating from singular events; and to refrain from making sweeping, all-encompassing decisions based on them.”
• View airlift operations not as special missions but as another form of transportation for crack forces.
• Make ample use of engineering forces to prepare the battle space.
• Employ “swarms” of infantrymen to overtake key areas and outskirts of urban areas before sweeping in with armored forces driving on defined routes.
• In all but cases of moral failings, commanders must assume responsibility for their subordinates — not “deflect criticism by throwing lower echelons under the bus.”

It took six years for the high command to welcome Hirsch — a man who could have risen to IDF chief of staff — back into the fold as an active reserve officer and deputy commander of the new special operations Depth Command.

Two years into that position, which he held from 2012-2015, Hirsch finally found full redemption by the judge who headed the government’s official commission of inquiry into the war. In a January 2014 letter to then-IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz, Judge Eliahu Winograd exonerated Hirsch, insisting he would have done so earlier but that his commission at the time was precluded from appearing to interfere in personnel matters:

“Ever since the submission of the Winograd Commission report pertaining to the events during the Second Lebanon War, my conscience has tormented me, as we could not, as we had meant, include a warm recommendation that the IDF offer Gal Hirsch to return to full service in its ranks. … It would be an expression of respect and appreciation to the man and his deeds in the IDF after the difficult years he underwent and is still suffering, since his forced retirement.”

As evidence of the full circle traversed by Hirsch, the book’s back cover bears this message from the IDF chief of staff, one of his former detractors: “Gal Hirsch [is] one of the main people to whom the residents of the north owe the [peaceful] period since the Second Lebanon War. I think you are a role model. You are an Israeli patriot.”

“Defensive Shield: An Israeli Special Forces Commander on the Front Line of Counterterrorism” was written by Gal Hirsch and published by Gefen Publishing House in 2016 as an updated and adapted version of the 2009 Hebrew book “War Story, Love Story.”

That is the promise of one of the technologies now lined up for funding under the tutelage of the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit Experimental (DIUx) arm. In opening a Boston office for the outfit recently, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter raved that a company named Halo Neuroscience was tapped to see if its commercially offered technology could help US special forces improve “marksmanship, close-quarters combat skills and overall strength training.”

The device in question relies on a process called Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation, or TDCS. In the case of the company mentioned by Carter, what looks like headphones actually works by subjecting the brain to a weak electrical current. Depending on who is asked, that type of stimulation does one of the three things: It could generate some kind of benefit for the wearer – physiological, cognitive or otherwise; or it does nothing much at all; or it actually may cause harm.

Exactly where the science lands on this topic should be left to rigorous research, validated in peer-reviewed journals. That is all the more important in the social sciences, which, though relatively new in the context of national-security applications, stand to get a significant boost in the name of boosting human performance.

While the military sees itself as a partner and customer of scientific breakthroughs, government leaders should ensure that adequate safeguards exist to separate the good science from the bad. For example, one-off experimental results, while perhaps striking and revolutionary, or sample sizes that are too small to allow for meaningful conclusions, should be recognized as such and treated with the appropriate caution.

Brain research is tricky business. What works in mice may not have the same effect on humans. In addition, effects observed in clinical applications may not necessarily transfer to healthy brains.

In the case of the TDCS headgear, a trio of Canadian researchers in 2014 observed in an article in the journal Neuron a “rising tide” of the technology mentioned in the media and academic literature. At the same time, they wrote, some of the effects are still “poorly understood,” not to mention the chance of inducing “prolonged neurological changes that are as of yet unknown.”

Others in the community are more blunt. Vincent Walsh, of the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London, suggested in a 2013 article in the journal Brain Stimulation that the field of TDCS for the purpose of human-performance improvements is riddled with overpromises and academic shortcuts motivated by financial prospects.

“As a community we articulate concerns about garage mechanics making their own stimulators, companies [peddling] ‘enhancements’ and cures, people giving themselves brain damage, and unregulated use in areas such as gambling, ethical decision making and military training,” Walsh wrote.

As the military looks to the field of social and behavioral sciences to see what would work for national-security applications, the answers may not be as clear-cut as in other fields. And because the Pentagon has a tendency of focusing on results first and figuring out the finer details later, there is a chance of spending money on projects that yield little return on investment.

The Army has figured out that technology is unable to lift the fog of war, as was believed during the heyday of the Future Combat Systems. That learning experience came at great cost to taxpayers, as the program was eventually terminated.

The service’s more recent focus on the “human domain” appears to pivot away from traditional technology employment, focusing instead on the characteristics of individuals doing the fighting. At the same time, there is a similar allure to invest in social-behavioral techniques that promise boosting human functioning of one kind or another.

It will fall on Pentagon leadership, including the new DIUx offices, to be the gatekeeper for legitimate scientific investments, lest precious defense resources are spent on the wrong things.