“I have to do it relatively soon,” he said to Jake Sullivan, his national security adviser. Mr. Biden had already spent the first two months of his presidency debating how to respond to Mr. Putin, and despite his acknowledgment in March that he needed to act quickly, his deliberations were far from over. “He has a kind of mantra: ‘You can never give me too much detail,’” Mr. Sullivan said. Quick decision-making is not Mr. Biden’s style. Those trips are often difficult for his advisers, who are peppered with sometimes obscure questions.

Source: New York Times May 14, 2021 07:00 UTC