Trust, but verify had been popular in the USSR when Gorbachev was in college, saying that "The reward of a thing well done is to have done it." Following the 2013 Ghouta attacks, Secretary of State John Kerry told a news conference in Geneva on September 14, 2013 that the United States and Russia had agreed on a framework to dispose of Syria's chemical weapons. He said "President Reagan's old adage about 'trust but verify' ... is in need of an update. And we have committed here to a standard that says 'verify and verify'." The similar phrase "Trust and Verify" was also
Cold War II McKew said at "Politico" that the US would win the "new Cold War" if the war happens. "The New Republic" editor Jeet Heer dismissed the possibility as "equally troubling[,] reckless threat inflation, wildly overstating the extent of Russian ambitions and power in support of a costly policy", and too centred on Russia while "ignoring the rise of powers like China and India". Heer also criticized McKew for supporting the possibility. Jeremy Shapiro, a senior fellow in the Brookings Institution, wrote in his blog post at "RealClearPolitics", referring to the US–Russia relations: "A drift into a new Cold War has seemed