NEWSLINK Council on Foreign Relations: “A Conversation With James Clapper”

ROSE: I want to begin with Russia and the U.S. relationship with Russia. The Russian U.N. ambassador said in the last week that relations are as bad as he’s seen them in the last 40 years. Characterize the U.S.-Russian relationship.

CLAPPER: Well, it’s not-it’s certainly not at its peak by any stretch. We’ve had a lot of difficult issues, notably in Syria, Ukraine, just to name two. So it’s a stressed time for the relationship. I don’t know that it’s, you know, worse than times I can recall-I’m a Cold War warrior; I lived through all that-that it’s worse than that. There were some pretty bad times then where we weren’t getting along at all.

They’re still communicating. Secretary Kerry and Foreign Minister Lavrov are in constant dialogue, so that’s a good thing. But I think this will be clearly a challenge for the next administration is the management of that relationship.