These are career non-partisan apolitical staffers with a combined 150 years of experience at the State Department gone, just like that right off the top [right after Secretary Rex Tillerson was sworn in].

we ought to realize by now (see Korea, see Vietnam, see Afghanistan, see Iraq, see Iran) that deploying the US military, or dealing billions of dollars a year of arms to our ally of the moment that can serve as a regional rival to our enemy of the moment, is not always the best way to make threats go away. Our military and weapons prowess is a fantastic and perfectly weighted hammer, but that doesn't make every international problem a nail.

Anything I really want I can find online.

It makes sense in that environment that you would hold on in the U.S. government to the people who know their way around this particular block.

That was like seeing a dodo and a unicorn all wrapped up in one

[Dan fried] is the department`s foremost Russia expert and he, too, is now leaving at a time when arguably the State Department needs it most, the State Department will not have the benefit of his insight going forward.

When Vladimir Putin runs up against American power and American criticism and American leadership that reminds him of what Russia isn`t, when he runs up against people who he worries are funding his dissidents or supporting protests against him, when he runs up against criticism of the way he runs his own country, what he`s running up against is the State Department.