Amateur Hour: Obama’s Abandonment Of Missile Defense Has Backfired Monumentally
Last month, on the anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland, Barack Obama announced that he was hanging the Poles and other eastern European nations like Georgia out to dry on missile defense. After those countries defied the Russians and agreed with the Bush administration on missile defense installations Obama came into office and reversed course leaving them to face a snubbed and increasingly aggressive Russia.
The Obama administration defended this move claiming that in the larger diplomatic picture this cave-in to Russian demands would pay dividends. And indeed, for a while it seemed as though that may have been right as the Russians hinted at be willing to back sanctions against Iran for their push toward nuclear weaponry.
The problem? The Russians are now backing away from those hints, and Obama’s cave-in on missile defense was for naught.
The Obama administration was elated a month ago when the Russian president said sanctions against Iran for its nuclear program could become “inevitable.” Washington’s reaction may have been significantly premature.
Dmitry Medvedev’s words were seen as a major Kremlin shift and one that would buttress U.S. attempts to combine renewed negotiations with Tehran and a united front that threatened Iran with punishing global sanctions for failure to come clean about its nuclear ambitions. ...
While Medvedev said sanctions could become necessary, Moscow was not long in telling Washington—and major trading partner Iran—that the time had not come yet. That clearly deflated expectations raised when Washington drew so much attention to Medvedev’s much hailed remarks.
“Threats, sanctions and threats of pressure in the current situation, we are convinced, would be counterproductive,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said during U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s visit to the Russian capital last week.
So, in summary, we gave up missile defense to the Russians and in return got nothing in return.
Amateur hour continues in the white house.
