How the Russian 'Reset' Explains Obama's Foreign Policy

[Valin]

Foreign Policy:

The president's naivete about Vladimir Putin is the root cause of his failure.

DOUGLAS J. FEITH, SETH CROPSEY

OCTOBER 16, 2012

 

As violent mobs shouting Islamist slogans rampaged against U.S. diplomats across the Middle East and Southeast Asia in the weeks following the fatal Sept. 11, 2012 attack on U.S. officials in Libya, Russian President Vladimir Putin saw a chance to kick the United States when it was down. He did it by expelling the U.S. Agency for International Development, whose work -- advising private groups on democracy, as it has done since the 1990s -- he evidently resented. For good measure, he just cancelled the longstanding Nunn-Lugar program of cooperation on destroying and securing old Soviet weapons of mass destruction. His message: Russia doesn't need any help from the Americans.

 

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Anne-Marie Slaughter, who served Obama as the head of Policy Planning at the State Department, wrote a February 2008 Commonweal article called "Good Reasons to be Humble" in which she said that the United States "should make clear that our hubris ... has diminished us and led to tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths." Current White House adviser Samantha Power, while a Harvard University lecturer, wrote in the New Republic's March 3, 2003 issue: "Instituting a doctrine of mea culpa would enhance our credibility by showing that American decision-makers do not endorse the sins of their predecessors."

 

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Obama has never opposed human rights in principle -- on the contrary. But especially at the outset of his presidency, he seemed to believe America owed bows, apologies, and confessions to its many victims across the world and therefore had no right to put itself forward as a standard-bearer for human rights. Obama's new attitude undoubtedly played a role in persuading authoritarians that the cost of violating human rights would be relatively low during his presidency. Putin seems to have received that message loud and clear.

 

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[Valin]

Reset Update

Andrew Stuttaford

October 20, 2012

 

Via Novosti:

 

Russia plans to boost annual defense spending by 59 percent to almost 3 trillion rubles ($97 billion) in 2015, up from $61 billion in 2012, the head of the State Duma’s Defense Committee told RIA Novosti on Wednesday.

 

“Targeted national defense spending as a percentage of GDP will amount to 3.2 percent in 2013, 3.4 percent in 2014 and 3.7 percent in 2015,” Defense Committee chairman Vladimir Komoedov is quoted as saying in the committee’s conclusion on the draft budget for 2013-2015.

 

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If I were living in Eastern Europe...I'd be concerned.