There was a time when the US State Department tried to get inside the head of world leaders by appointing individuals to immerse themselves totally in the character and behavior of particular politicians. Most famously Theodore Roosevelt’s grandson Kermit was given the top-secret job of “being” Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser. In the run-up to the Suez crisis, Kermit was taken by the US ambassador in Cairo to dinner with Nasser. According to the journalist Mohamed Heikal who was also there, after the meal, as they all sat by the Nile drinking their coffee, Nasser turned to Roosevelt and asked with a smile: “Now tell me Kermit, what will I do next?”

If anyone in the State department’s Foggy Bottom Washington home is currently playing the part of Russian President Vladimir Putin, either he is not doing a very good job of impersonation, or if he is, no one is taking any notice of his reactions.

As the dominant partner in NATO, the United States should never even have allowed Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko to raise publicly with visiting NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, the possibility of joining the military organization. Indeed, Stoltenberg should probably not have gone to Ukraine at all.

Yes, of course, Ukraine is a sovereign country and can talk to whom it likes. Yet the root of its current troubles was the decision to break away from the Russian economic area and seek a new and close relationship with the European Union.

Isn’t anyone in Washington trying to think through what Putin is thinking? Indeed for that matter, given the still resonant Soviet-era mantra that Russia is beleaguered on all sides by ravenous enemies who wish to destroy it, Putin’s reaction here is so predictable, it doesn’t need any deep immersion in his character to figure it out.

Putin, and most Russians with him, did not want to see Ukraine leaving Moscow’s economic sphere of influence. Hence, Kiev’s proposed EU links were viewed with genuine alarm and triggered the events which led to the seizure of Crimea and the careful fostering of revolt among Russian-speaking Ukrainians in the east of the country.

The threat for Putin becomes all the greater when there is the prospect of NATO tanks arriving in Ukraine and effectively being parked on the Kremlin’s lawn.

The question of course about Stoltenberg’s Kiev visit is not simply why, but why now? Trump made his inimitable mark on the G20 summit in the German port of Hamburg and there did seem to be some genuine connection with Putin. Yet someone in the White House team ought to have known of Stoltenberg’s imminent visit to Kiev. But perhaps they did not. Amid the torrent of anti-Trump rhetoric in most US media is the accusation that his administration is dysfunctional and chaotic.

Trump shares with scandal-stained former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi a certain degree of arrogance and rudeness. Both men have a thrust to their jaw that resembles nothing so much as the late Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. But posturing is no substitute for analysis and reflection. Someone in the Trump White House should be studying Vladimir Putin really hard and working out, in the light of what he surely regards as a NATO provocation, exactly what he will do next.