Barack Obama actually said...

An offer to scrap our missile defense plans just because the Russians offer 'help' does not seem like such a good deal.

The national security of both Russia and the United States will suffer if the world experiences a breakdown of the nonproliferation regime.

I'm skeptical of quid pro quo deals of this kind. Successful diplomacy rarely involves trades of completely unrelated issues.

Russian internal political developments have definitely been going in the wrong direction for some time now.