President Barack Obama took office with a promise to “reset” Russo-American relations, and it now seems to have been reset all the way back to the Cold War.
The president even admitted as much Tuesday on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno,” the sort of venue which the celebrity-in-chief prefers for discussing issues of national importance, when he said of the Russian government “There have been times where they slip back into Cold War thinking and a Cold War mentality.” On Wednesday he reiterated the point with some old-fashioned chilliness of his own, announcing the cancellation of a planned summit with Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
There are good reasons for the snub, several of which he explained to Leno in between the light banter. While conceding that Russia continues to be cooperative on supplying American troops in Afghanistan and with counterterrorism operations, both of which are very much in Russia’s self-interest, Obama cited the asylum granted to a former National Security Agency contractor who had leaked classified information, a recent crackdown on homosexuals, and a generally poor record of protecting everyone’s human rights as examples of what’s ailing the relationship. He also put Charleston, South Carolina, Jacksonville, Florida, and Savannah, Georgia, on the Gulf of Mexico, a fundamental transformation of America that no one anticipated, but never mind. The president seems to have a suddenly realistic understanding of our adversarial relationship with Russia and is showing some toughness about it, even if it is on “The Tonight Show,” and that is a welcome development.
It shouldn’t have taken so long, though, and a bit of realism and toughness earlier on might have averted this the current predicament. During his first presidential campaign Obama promised a friendlier foreign policy than George W. Bush had pursued, which he would suggested was the reason for any difficulties America might be having with any country, and during his first term he acted as if he believed it. He dispatched his Secretary of State to Moscow with a misspelled “reset” button to demonstrate their good intentions, backed out of a missile defense treaty with Poland and the Czech Republic to provide further proof, agreed to generous concessions in arms negotiations, and was overheard giving assurances to Russian diplomats that he would be even more “flexible” in a second term. While pursuing that second term he ridiculed his Republican opponent for suggesting that America had an unavoidably adversarial relationship with Russia, employing a moldy old “Seinfeld” gag to taunt that the ‘80s were “calling to ask for their foreign policy back because, you know, the Cold War’s been over for 20 years.” Until the Russians granted asylum to secrets-leaker, which Obama seems to have taken personally, they had every reason to think they could do as they pleased and count on American flexibility.
The tough new approach might not yield any immediate benefits, but it can’t do any more harm that the old squishy one. Flexibility didn’t win the last Cold War, and it won’t work in this one.
— Bud Norman
The Central Standard Times 