America Was Absurdly Soft on Russia

Quote from Victor Davis Hanson:
Four months after Obama’s promises of transformation, the romance of fundamental change went international with the idea of a foreign policy “reset” that focused on a new détente with Vladimir Putin. The idea was inaugurated in 2009 by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on the assumption that Putin’s past territorial aggressions had arisen from an absence of dialogue and ecumenical outreach from the prior “unilateralist” George W. Bush administration. Bush supposedly had wrongly sanctioned Putin for his 2008 miniature war with Georgia that resulted in the Russian absorption of South Ossetia. And the go-it-alone “cowboy” Bush apparently had also unduly polarized Putin and thus wet the ex-KGB operative’s beak for additional irredentist acquisition.
The reactive makeover that followed from the Obama-Clinton “reset” was unfortunately an utter failure. Its pompous declarations and talk of “listening” and “outreach” ended in fresh Russian aggressiveness, most notably in the 2014 Russian invasions of both Crimea and eastern Ukraine.
Such appeasement created the original seeds for Putin’s eventual spring 2022 catastrophic Russian invasion of most of Ukraine and attack on Kyiv.
In addition, Russia earlier in 2013 had reentered the Middle East, on Secretary of State John Kerry’s 2011 invitation, after a three-decade hiatus. Then followed Russia’s informal partnerships with both Iran and China, and Moscow’s much greater and more comprehensive crackdowns on internal dissidents.
In all talks of the Great Reset, we should recall that Vladimir Putin apparently interpreted “reset” as American laxity to be leveraged rather than as magnanimity to be reciprocated. In cruder terms, Americans speaking loudly while carrying a twig was no way to “reset” Putin.

1 Like

Yes, the appeasement agenda of the Obama/Clinton/Bidens was a failure that “created the original seed” of Putins aggression, progressing to the present “no exit” situation, in which too many lives have already been destroyed.
Just like every other grand plan our pretentious “enlightened planners” have imposed on the world, it has resulted in disaster.
Since negotiation seems to be off the table (that would take actual diplomatic skills, which none of them possess) there is no way out now but to continue to escalate in order to deter, which will result in further loss of life of the Ukranians, will aggravate an already dire unfolding world catastrophe, and comes with the risk of exploding into an even bigger conflict, which our current leaders are too incompetent to handle.

2 Likes