U.S. Allies Fret over Who’s Up and Who’s Down in Trump’s Inner Circle

Top European and allied officials gathered here this weekend are frantically working to interpret who’s up and who’s down in President-elect Donald Trump’s inner circle, and what that could mean for their corner of the world.

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“We’re like Kremlinologists now,” said Jim Townsend, a former senior Pentagon official under the Obama administration, now at the Center for a New American Security think tank.

He was referring to how Western officials closely studied morsels of information coming out of the tightly controlled Soviet Union in the Cold War era, trying to speculate on who had influence inside the Kremlin based on, for example, photos of who stood next to who at military parades.

On Trump, Townsend said: “We’re reading into who’s standing next to him at a UFC fight, who’s playing golf with him and who’s not anymore.”

“It feels ridiculous to be in the position of being a Kremlinologist when it’s our own country we’re trying to figure out,” he added, laughing.

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