We’re all waiting to see what comes of President Donald Trump’s high-stakes meeting with Vladimir Putin on Friday.

Will Trump go with the harder line on the Russian president that he debuted last month? Or will he revert to his kid gloves treatment of Putin that reigned for many years before that ? And what are the actual prospects for some kind of ceasefire or even a peace deal?

These are the major unknowns.

But going into the meeting, a couple things are clear: Americans are more hawkish on the war in Ukraine than they’ve been in a long time, and Trump has his work cut out for him.

Trump’s recent moves toward criticizing Putin appear to have helped awaken some of the inner hawkishness that once dominated the conservative movement’s foreign policy.

A Chicago Council on Global

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