Charles Krauthammer on Russian Talks
Last week we blogged about Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s visit to Russia, a country she claimed was being “extremely cooperative.” She echoed the president’s intent to “reset” relations with Russia and agreed to stop criticizing the former Soviet Union about its human rights abuses.
Russia has refused to issue tougher sanctions against Iran. In fact, the country’s leaders didn’t even want to discuss the matter. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said, “At the current stage, all forces should be thrown at supporting the negotiating process. Threats of new sanctions and pressure against Iran under current circumstances are counterproductive.”
What, if anything, has the U.S. gained in talks between the two countries or from the compromise we made on missile shields in Poland and the Czech Republic? Columnist Charles Krauthammer asks these and other questions (Source):
“[W]hat’s come from Obama’s single most dramatic foreign policy stroke — the sudden abrogation of missile defense arrangements with Poland and the Czech Republic that Russia had virulently opposed? For the East Europeans it was a crushing blow, a gratuitous restoration of Russian influence over a region that thought it had regained independence under American protection.”
Krauthammer notes that despite how the talks were reported in the media, President Dmitry Medvedev didn’t budge on Iran sanctions. According to Lavrov, threats of pressure on Iran are of no use. At which point would it be productive to threaten tougher sanctions? The U.S. is retreating on missile defense, as Russia calls the shots, and Iran and North Korea defiantly continue their missile development.
Rather than dealing with Iran without Russia’s help, the Obama administration appears indecisive and desperate at the expense of resetting relations with a country that has all but refused to compromise.
“The Russian leadership, hardly believing its luck,” Krauthammer writes, “needs no interpreter to understand that when the Obama team clownishly rushes in bearing gifts and ‘reset’ buttons, there is nothing ulterior, diabolical, clever or even serious behind it. It is amateurishness, wrapped in naivet, inside credulity. In short, the very stuff of Nobels.”
Tags: Barack Obama, Charles Krauthammer, Czech Republic, Hillary Clinton, Poland, Russia