The media tend to have a very superficial view of Trump’s Russia policy. In his first term, everything he did to strengthen our position vis-à-vis Russia was ignored, with a focus instead on whatever he was saying about Putin or Russian interference in the 2016 election. This time around, there’s a lot of attention devoted (understandably) to his posture on the Ukraine war, but there are other balls in the air, as Walter Russell Mead notes in his latest Wall Street Journal column:

The Trump administration’s recent intervention in the Armenia-Azerbaijan dispute was a direct shot at the heart of Russian power and at Mr. Putin’s strategy to recover territories controlled by Moscow in the Soviet era.

By convening the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan in the White House to ratify an agreement that could end Russia’s ability to block the flow of Central Asian oil and gas to Western markets, the Trump administration embarrassed Mr. Putin and threw a wrench in his plans to restore Russian power in the Caucasus. Further, the agreement potentially weakens Moscow’s position across Central Asia, a region that was once part of the Soviet Union but where China now plays a growing role.