Russia also matters because it can have a significant positive or negative impact on a broad range of U.S. foreign-policy priorities. Russia can supply S-300 antiaircraft missiles to Iran, or it can sustain its current ban. It can continue help the United States and NATO to supply troops in Afghanistan, and to ferry them back and forth, or not. It can share information about Islamist extremist terrorists targeting America, as in the case of the Boston Marathon bombing, or not.

Explaining the president’s decision not to meet Putin in Moscow, Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes said “we’ll still work with Russia on issues where we can find common ground, but it was the unanimous view of the president and his national security team that a summit did not make sense in the current environment.” He may be only half right. Taking into account how poisonous U.S.-Russian relations are becoming, an Obama-Putin meeting would not likely have produced much. But to find any “common ground” with the Kremlin in the future, the president and his advisors will have to do a much better job defining priorities and managing relations with Russia. Hopefully they will.

Paul J. Saunders is executive director of The Center for the National Interest and associate publisher of The National Interest. He served in the State Department from 2003 to 2005.