Obama in Denial on Russia Jonah Goldberg | Mar 06, 2014 Jonah Goldberg Recommend this article Recommend 72 31 Things are moving far too fast in Kiev, Moscow and Crimea to write about events there. But the past isnt going anywhere. Though you wouldnt know that from the way the Obama administration talks about it. Throughout this crisis -- indeed, throughout all of Barack Obamas presidency -- the White House has been eager to insist that our long, unpleasant history with the Russians is behind us. Obviously, every administration wants a fresh start with long-time rivals. Thats why there have been four resets with the Russians since 1991, including George W. Bushs famous soul-searching gaze into Vladimir Putins eyes and Hillary Clintons comic effort to give the Russians a reset button (that actually said overcharge on it). Fresh starts are fine. But when Obama came into office, his administration implicitly blamed our poor relationship with Russia on Bush, as if Russias misdeeds were provoked by America. In 2012, Obama mocked Mitt Romney for his claim that the Russians are our No. 1 geopolitical foe, and scoffed: The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back. That scorn looks embarrassing enough given recent events. But the truth is Obamas hostility to Romneys policies had little to do with them being outdated. Obama didnt like Americas Cold War policies during the Cold War. In 1983, then-Columbia University student Obama penned a lengthy article for the school magazine placing the blame for U.S.-Soviet tensions largely on Americas war mentality and the twisted logic of the Cold War. President Reagans defense buildup, according to Obama, contributed to the silent spread of militarism and reflected our distorted national priorities rather than what should be our goal: a nuclear free world. Of course, its unfair to put too much weight on anyones youthful writings. Except theres precious little evidence his views have changed over the years. In his first term, President Obamas biggest priority with Russia was to get the two countries on the path to that nuclear free world. One of his -- and Secretary of State Hillary Clintons -- first actions in office was to betray our commitments to Poland and the Czech Republic on missile defense. Indeed, across a wide range of areas, it has been Obama who has been, in the words of The Washington Posts Jackson Diehl, in a 1980s-soaked foreign policy time warp. Two weeks ago, in response to tensions in Ukraine, the president explained that our approach ... is not to see (events in Ukraine) as some Cold War chessboard in which were in competition with Russia. This is a horrible way to talk about the Cold War because it starts from the premise that it was all just a game conducted between two morally equivalent competitors. Similar comments about Cold War rivalries and the like are commonplace of late, particularly during the Sochi Olympics, when NBC commentators were desperate to portray the entire Soviet chapter as nothing more than a pivotal experiment. My old boss, William F. Buckley, responding to claims that the U.S. and the Soviets were morally equivalent, said that if one man pushes an old lady into an oncoming bus and another man pushes an old lady out of the way of a bus, we should not denounce them both as the sorts of men who push old ladies around. While America surely made mistakes during the near half-century twilight struggle, the simple fact is that there was a right side and a wrong side to that conflict, and we were on the right side of it. The Soviet Union murdered millions of its own people, stifled freedom in nearly every form, enslaved whole nations and actively tried to undermine democracy all around the world, including in the U.S. President Putin, a former KGB agent, has said that the collapse of the evil empire was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century. That alone should have been a clue to this White House that misspelled reset buttons werent going to cut it. But they were too stuck in the past to see it.
Posted on: Fri, 07 Mar 2014 20:54:19 +0000
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