What the (Bleep) Just Happened? (40 page)

In early March 2009, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton boarded her jet to Moscow with a small surprise packed in her luggage. She couldn’t wait to arrive and present it to her host, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov. What awaited Lavrov was one of Obama’s olive branches. Actually, it wasn’t a real olive branch. It was a large, red, plastic button like the kind you hit on
Jeopardy!
when you’re ready to answer in the form of a question. During the 2008 campaign, Obama had criticized the Bush administration for damaging relations with the Russians through “provocative” acts such as promising our Eastern European allies a missile defense shield and criticizing Russia for its invasion of democratic Georgia. Obama promised that he’d work to restore relations with Russia through his ready incentives offensive. Bush had used sticks; Obama would use carrots. How could the Russians not want to give up their national interests and fall madly in love with Obama the way so many others had already done? Obama promised to hit the reset button in order to restart our bilateral relationship.

And so, somebody in the State Department—perhaps Hillary herself—came up with the button gimmick. With dramatic flair, she presented the plastic button to Lavrov. Stamped on top was the Russian word for “reset.” Or so she thought. “We worked hard to get the right Russian word. Do you think we got it?” Hillary asked eagerly. Lavrov took one look at the button and smiled broadly, suppressing a major eye-roll. “You got it wrong,” he replied. He then told the U.S. Secretary of Hope and Change that the Russian translation of the word wasn’t “reset,” but “overcharge.” Hillary laughed nervously and said, “We won’t let you do that to us.” Lavrov simply nodded, probably wondering how the United States had gone from Thomas Jefferson to this pantsuited fool. Lavrov would’ve been more satisfied with a T-shirt that had an arrow pointing in Hillary’s direction that said
I’M WITH DUMMY
.

The leftists were determined to make the U.S.-Russia relationship more Oprah and Gayle and less Kim and Paris. In order to move away from the Bush-era hostility and woo Moscow into being our BFF, Obama settled on the idea of a “reset,” which essentially meant giving away the store to the Russkies. He didn’t stop at simply “overcharging” the Russians; he let them take every advantage. Obama fell over himself to shower the Russians with unprecedented concessions in order to show them that we could be friends instead of frenemies or outright enemies.

This kook approach ignored several things. First, the cold war didn’t end when the Soviet Union collapsed. It simply changed form. The Russians remain as competitive with the United States over the global chessboard as ever, but the competition is more indirect, more economic than military, more stealthy and, in some ways, more dangerous. The only reprieve we got from this grand game of strategy was the eight years Boris Yeltsin was president and hammered on vodka all the time.

Second, Russia has its own national interests and ideology that are diametrically opposed to ours, and no matter how much schmoozing we do, that reality can never be changed. Warm personal relationships between leaders can soften relations at the margins but they never override clear-eyed pursuits of interests. Conflicts stemming from differences in national interests can be managed but not eliminated.

And third, Obama’s “I Heart Russia” approach ignored the fact that Russia had become far more authoritarian under Putin/Medvedev; had journalists, lawyers, and others killed who dared to speak about rampant corruption and oppression; was seeking to reassert control within the former Soviet Union; and was intervening in the Middle East on the side of bad guys like Iran and Syria, including providing crucial assistance to their nuclear programs.

Instead of confronting Russia on these issues, Team Obama sought to reward it for its bad behavior. The “reset” policy signaled one thing to Russia: the United States is in strategic retreat. That meant that they could go to town with their fellow villains around the world and the United States wouldn’t lift a finger to stop them. If the American president believed in restricting U.S. power, who were the Russians to stop him?

The first casualty of the “reset” was America’s close friends in Eastern Europe. During the fifty years of the cold war, the United States provided an unequivocal beacon of moral, political, and ideological support for the tens of millions of people trapped behind the Iron Curtain. U.S. policy was to seek the liberation of the “captive nations” by all available means, from materially supporting dissident movements such as Solidarity in Poland to broadcasting Radio Free Europe across the Soviet bloc. Everyone behind the Iron Curtain knew that the United States stood for freedom and that it was doing everything it could realistically do to support them. When liberation arrived with the fall of the Soviet empire in 1989 and in the years that followed, those nations enjoyed special relationships with the United States that involved political, economic, military, and moral backing as the young democracies found the Russian bear breathing down their necks. But they always knew that the United States would stand behind them, confront Russia when necessary, and defend their interests, which were, after all, American interests.

That is, until Obama became president. He would set aside inconvenient facts such as Russia’s support for the Iranian and Syrian nuclear programs, not to mention Hugo Chávez’s nuclear ambitions in Venezuela. He would overlook Russia’s intimidation of its neighbors. He would ignore Russia’s extortion over oil supplies to countries like Ukraine and Poland. Russian weapons proliferation to rogues around the world? Not a problem. There would be no more bullying from the United States. No more old-school cold war games. No more distrust.

In the fall of 2009, Obama made his first major anti-American move vis-à-vis the Russians. He announced that as a gesture of goodwill, he was canceling the Bush administration’s plans to deploy a missile defense shield in Eastern Europe. The missile system—which would have been comprised of ten ballistic missile interceptors in Poland and a radar center in the Czech Republic—was sold as a defense system against long-range Iranian missiles that would be able to reach deep inside Eastern Europe. But to the Russians, it was treated as a provocation that essentially would render useless their ballistic missile capability. Russian president Medvedev had threatened to station tactical missiles on Poland’s border if the United States went ahead. Bush, however, was committed to protecting our close friends in Eastern Europe, arguing to the Russians that the plan was defensive and not offensive in nature and that they should also be worried about the Iranian nuclear and missile threat. Not Obama. No missile defense for you! Instead, he announced a new, vastly scaled back and sea-based deterrent that wasn’t nearly as comprehensive as the Bush plan. It left our Eastern European allies bitterly disappointed. Former Polish president and Solidarity hero Lech Walesa said, “It’s not that we need the shield, but it’s about the way we’re treated here.”

Once the Russians knew they could roll Obama, they then did so routinely. Part of Obama’s motivation in dropping missile defense was to gain greater cooperation from Moscow in dealing with Tehran’s nuclear program. After Obama’s announcement, senior Russian officials said explicitly that no assistance would be forthcoming. When tougher sanctions came up soon after Obama threw Eastern Europe down the stairs, the Russians were said to be “very reserved,” which was diplo-speak for “go fly a kite.” From that point on, whenever new sanctions on Iran came up at the United Nations, the Russians balked. When missile defense cooperation between the two countries came up, the Russians were “noncommittal.” And on the new U.S. sea-based missile defense system (the one for which we chucked the land-based one in Eastern Europe), the Russians oppose
that
because it “could pose an even stronger security threat to Moscow.” This is generally what appeasement produces.

In a classic Obama maneuver designed to make him appear tough, he called Medvedev and said that he knew the real cause of the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown. Barry said he had secret video footage of why it happened and accused the Russians of storing radioactive alien technology that they had brought back from the moon. A stunned Medvedev said through his translator, “Mr. President, that was not real. That was the plot of
Transformers: Dark of the Moon
.”

Just when the Russians couldn’t believe their good fortune in getting everything they wanted on Eastern Europe without having to give anything in return, they got another dazzling gift from Obama in early 2010: a promise to never use nuclear weapons. Fully embracing the most far left position since the advent of the Bomb, Obama prohibited the use of these weapons, except in the narrowest of circumstances. According to the
New York Times
: “For the first time, the United States is explicitly committing not to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states that are in compliance with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, even if they attacked the United States with biological or chemical weapons or launched a crippling cyberattack.”

Let those words sink in. Your commander in chief told the world that he will not defend you or the nation with nuclear weapons
even if
we are attacked with a massive anthrax or poison gas attack that has people dying in the streets in the most horrific ways.
He will not defend you. He will not even threaten to defend you
.

He said he believes those threats could be “deterred,” but he also carved out exemptions for Iran and North Korea because they have either renounced the Non-Proliferation Treaty (North Korea) or blown it off (Iran)—as if they had
ever
held to the commitments on a piece of paper. (Hmm … Iran and North Korea. Two of the original three members of the “axis of evil.” See: Bush Was Right, Volume 38, 674.)

The single most frightening thing Obama said about the new policy was this: “I don’t think countries around the world are interested in testing our credibility when it comes to these issues.”

Testing our credibility is the
only
thing our enemies are interested in. Enemies poke and prod us, and when we bend, ignore, or appease them, they believe we are weak. When we fail that credibility test, they then step up their aggression. Witness: Pearl Harbor, the entire history of the cold war, and September 11. To his “no first use” policy, Obama added another longtime kook pipe dream: a “world without nuclear weapons.” In order to get the ball rolling, he decided the United States would develop no new nuclear weapons while he was president. His own first Defense secretary, Robert Gates, and many Democrats argued for allowing the development of new ones and the modernization of our current arsenal. Obama refused.

Speaking of nukes, ever wonder how many nuclear weapons we have? Wonder no more. It’s 5,113! For the first time in U.S. history, an American president revealed the precise size of our nuclear arsenal. And he followed up that outrage with another: on December 31, 2011, Obama issued a signing statement attached to the fiscal year 2012 defense authorization bill. In it, he indicated a willingness to share top-secret U.S. missile defense secrets with Russia. We spent decades, trillions of dollars, and countless lives to defeat the Russkies. Now Obama is just handing them our greatest national security secrets without asking for so much as a Mentos in exchange.

And he didn’t just disclose the particulars of
our
nuclear arsenal. Why, our allies should be in on the fun too, so Obama also disclosed top-secret intelligence about the
British
nuclear arsenal to the Russians, cavalierly disregarding our ally’s pleas to keep the information secret. Peace out, GB!

Obama then set out to complete the U.S.-Russia Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, a cold war–era relic that forced us to cut nuclear weapons as Obama pushed for their total elimination. The New START treaty cut our nuclear arsenal by 30 percent, hamstrung our missile defense and the Prompt Global Strike system (intercontinental ballistic missiles with conventional warheads), ignored tactical nuclear weapons (which are most available and vulnerable to terrorist acquisition), exempted Russian rail-based ICBMs, and failed to demand ironclad verification of Russian compliance. God-awful deal for us, great deal for Russia, so of course Obama heralded it as a landmark treaty. Most senators unfortunately agreed and ratified it just days before Christmas 2010.

The Russian response? The Kremlin stepped up its stonewalling on Iranian and Syrian sanctions, didn’t resume compliance with another cold war–era treaty, the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) agreement, and threatened to target U.S. missile defense sites in Europe with their offensive missiles unless Obama dropped
all
missile defense plans. They also threatened to withdraw from the New START treaty completely if Obama didn’t accede to their demands. In December 2011, even Hillary Clinton grew exasperated with the Russian intransigence and blurted out the
Bush
argument for missile defense in Europe: “This is not directed at Russia, it is not about Russia. It is frankly about Iran and other state or non-state actors who are seeking to develop threatening missile technology,” she said.

The Russians weren’t having it: Putin accused the United States of allegedly stoking protests against his party, United Russia, after a suspect parliamentary election win in late 2011, and a top Russian general warned of a new “arms race.” Obama gave the Russians a yard with the New START treaty and they took a mile. Personally, Obama went further. In March 2012, he was caught on mic telling Medvedev to tell Putin to wait until after November for more give-away-the-store deals: “After my election,” he whispered to Dmitry, “I have more flexibility.” He also gave the Russians his Social Security number, the PIN to his ATM card, the spot where he hides the extra key to the White House (under the flowerpot), and the name of his wife’s ob-gyn.