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Russian “Reset” Going as Well as Predicted
In 2012, Mitt Romney said of Russia, “This is without question our number one geopolitical foe. They fight for every cause for the world’s worst actors. The idea that [Obama] has more flexibility in mind for Russia is very, very troubling indeed.” Later, at a presidential debate, President Obama famously responded, “The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because the Cold War’s been over for 20 years.”
The press giggled at zinger just as they had mocked Romney’s concern about Putin’s growing belligerence. Let’s check the status of the US/Russia relationship today:
Secretary of State John Kerry has suspended diplomatic talks with Russia over Syria, citing President Vladimir Putin’s ongoing military intervention on behalf of incumbent dictator Bashar Assad.
“This is not a decision that was taken lightly,” State Department spokesman John Kirby said in a Monday statement. “The United States spared no effort in negotiating and attempting to implement an arrangement with Russia aimed at reducing violence, providing unhindered humanitarian access, and degrading terrorist organizations operating in Syria, including [Islamic State] and al Qaeda in Syria.”
Kerry attempted to negotiate a ceasefire that would have led to coordination between the United States and Russia to destroy the terrorist groups operating in the country. Under the terms of the deal, U.S.-backed groups and Assad would stop fighting and humanitarian aid would flow into rebel-held quarters of Aleppo, a critical city in northern Syria. After seven days of such behavior, the military coordination would begin to take place.
Before the Syria negotiations were declared dead, Putin stuck it to the US in another snub:
It comes on the same day that Putin announced he is canceling a plutonium disposal treaty, signed in 2000, designed to destroy material that could be used for making nuclear weapons.
But that’s not all! Monday the State Department belatedly revealed that Russia apparently drugged US diplomats while they visited St. Petersburg last year:
Two U.S. officials traveling with diplomatic passports were drugged while attending a conference in Russia last year, and one of them was hospitalized, in what officials have concluded was part of a wider, escalating pattern of harassment of U.S. diplomats by Russia.
The incident at a hotel bar during a UN anticorruption conference in St. Petersburg in November 2015 caused concern in the U.S. State Department, which quietly protested to Moscow, according to a U.S. government official with direct knowledge of what occurred.
But it wasn’t until a dramatic event in June, when an accredited U.S. diplomat was tackled outside the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, that officials in Washington reexamined the November drugging and concluded they were part of a definite pattern.
The State Department suggested the harassment has become a particular concern in the past two years.
According to the U.S. government official, and another former official also knowledgeable about the case, the drugged diplomats were part of a delegation of Americans attending the Conference of the States Parties to the United Nations Convention against Corruption, held on November 2-6 in St. Petersburg.
In other news, one of the key architects of our diplomatic “reset” with Russia is apparently running for the US presidency on the Democratic ticket.
Perhaps Putin will use the shiny red button to turn on the Jacuzzi at his new dacha in Crimea.
Published in Foreign Policy
And her opponent is a man who admires and actively roots for Putin. So there is that….burning trash pile is an understatement to describe this election.
I’ve heard about the “admiration” and don’t necessarily have a problem with it (depending on what he really said) but haven’t heard that he actively roots for Putin. So I wonder if that’s true.
By the way, Putin is a dangerous, bad actor, and Romney was right. Putin has also ruined the once-great Russian movie industry.
See, this is why we need to elect Hillary Clinton. She was one of the architects of the reset, but somehow the translation was wrong. If only the button had actually said “Reset”, things would be fine now, and we need her in power to oversee the presentation of the correctly-designed button.
Yes this is a joke. But it feels like the kind of thing that could be printed in Slate or Vox too.
…
But I repeat myself.
This is a frightening fact.
Appeasement fails again.
The children are in charge of both parties, the media and the government. There aren’t enough adults left in this country to matter. Putin knows this and is taking full advantage, along with every other evil adult in the world. Bad times, man.
Perfect response to “the 80s are calling, they want their foreign policy back”:
“The seventies are calling you and they want back theirs.”
Well one day (hopefully) we will wake up, and see the mess we have allowed to take shape. And on that day we will act appropriately and it may well be our finest hour as it was in days past. But on that day also, people will ask how it got to be this way and why no one did anything sooner?
On talk radio, they were talking about today starts a 4 day emergency drill for 40 million Russian citizens. Who is reporting this? Very few. Can you imagine what would happen if America did this? They are preparing for war while we haggle about politics. Whoever gets elected is going to have a tough time and will screw up. But it’s much bigger than that. Instead of worrying about the election, choose whoever you want, but get ready, and get your family ready – the world is about to change. The signs are all there – just like before both world wars. The elections in Europe with more fascist and communist leanings, refugee crisis, financial crisis and the mega-Russian re-set. Can’t believe so few followers or comments on this post. It needs to be front and center.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/1907902/russia-holds-massive-nuclear-war-exercise-involving-40million-people-as-military-tensions-rise-with-us/
This also took place last week
https://www.superstation95.com/index.php/world/2118
This is the first time I’ve seen a closeup of the “reset button”.
It’s a freaking knob, not a button. Can’t these idiots get anything right?
It’s actually an emergency stop button. It’s standardized. Any button like that brings everything to a complete stop immediately.
Jon,
This is just one more confirmation that Obama-Clinton-Kerry never touched down onto reality in eight years. Ben Rhodes tells us how he sold the Iran Deal. “We lied.”
The Assh#le Administration.
Regards,
Jim
So what do the directional arrows mean? Are they for resetting the emergency stop? Thus did some low level intern simply Google “reset button” and find an emergency stop button that had a rotate-to-reset function?
Yeah. It’s pushed to stop, then turned to clear the fault. I don’t know of any way this would be called a reset button.
I keep thinking that the reset button wasn’t the only misunderstanding that Obama has caused between our two countries. In 2012, Obama told President Medvedev that he would have a lot more flexibility after the election. Unfortunately, that must have translated into Russian that he would bend over a lot more for the Russians….
In English, too.