Everything was done to help the administration get out of the corner they’d backed themselves into and to get them back into the zone of international law.” “It showed everyone in the world that, if there is a will in these two countries, any problem can be solved,” the Foreign Ministry source said. The action Obama did take-avoiding a strike on Syria and instead forging a deal with Russia to get rid of Assad’s chemical weapons-represented not weakness but an unusual moment of reason, in Moscow’s view. The source from the Foreign Ministry echoed that sentiment. It’s totally clear that the Syrian and Ukrainian crises had nothing to do with one another.” It wouldn’t have changed anything.” “You shouldn’t think of Putin as such a primitive guy. It would’ve been clear even if Obama had hit Syria. “Risking war with a nuclear superpower over Ukraine was just not going to happen. “There are no obligations in the West and the United States to defend Ukraine,” he said. “In Moscow, they understood clearly what Obama now says openly,” said Lukyanov of what Obama told Goldberg-that Ukraine is not a NATO country and is always going to be subject to Russian meddling, regardless of what Washington does. Syria is Syria, and Russia is Russia, and you don’t punish nuclear superpowers. Even if Bashar al-Assad had been punished militarily for using chemical weapons, Putin wouldn’t have drawn the conclusion that he could be similarly punished for actions in Ukraine. That is, Russia sees itself as a power on par with America, and simply doesn’t group itself with a minor regional power like Syria. But Russia is a nuclear superpower, and this kind of rationale vis-a-vis Russia is senseless.” “Then Syria would have been yet another government that would’ve paid for doing something wrong. “Technically, it was possible then for Obama to hit Syria and destroy Damascus,” Lukyanov said. It’s totally clear that the Syrian and Ukrainian crises had nothing to do with one another.” For Lukyanov, it’s almost insulting to suggest a connection. “You shouldn’t think of Putin as such a primitive guy. “It is absolutely made up,” said Fyodor Lukyanov, the equally surprised editor of Russia in Global Affairs, who has a reputation for channeling the Kremlin view. These things are not connected to each other in any way.” “Wow, it’s kind of a revelation what you just said,” said a very surprised source from the Russian Foreign Ministry, who was not authorized to speak on the record, on hearing the question. It’s no surprise that Obama finds this approach as silly as it is ineffective, but Goldberg’s exploration of the Red Line Moment made me curious about how the Russians see this common and unexamined refrain: Obama showed weakness on Syria so Putin exploited it in Ukraine. (Ironically, this is the approach Putin’s domestic critics accuse their president of using: How do you get back at the West for blacklisting Russian officials involved in the killing of the Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky? Ban American adoptions of Russian orphans! They’ll never know what hit ‘em!) And as I recall, because apparently nobody in this town does, Putin went into Georgia on Bush’s watch, right smack dab in the middle of us having over 100,000 troops deployed in Iraq.” Obama repudiates the “crazy Nixon” thesis, which says, essentially: Be crazy, be unpredictably harsh, and geopolitics are your oyster. Bush was overly rational or cautious in his use of military force. “I don’t think anybody thought that George W. “Look, this theory is so easily disposed of that I’m always puzzled by how people make the argument,” Obama says. Just like the ‘costs’ Obama imposed on the Assad regime in Syria?”īut did Obama’s refusal to bomb Syria in 2013 really give Putin the green light in Ukraine? It is a question Jeffrey Goldberg poses to Obama, who, of course, swats it away. ‘Costs?’ Vladimir Putin must have thought. Bush speechwriter and American Enterprise Institute fellow, wrote in 2014, “you could hear the laughter emanating from the Kremlin-followed by the sound of Russian military vehicles roaring into Crimea and seizing control of the peninsula. “When President Obama declared Friday that ‘there will be costs’ for any Russian intervention in Ukraine,” Marc Thiessen, the former George W. Since the summer of 2013, when President Obama walked up to the red line over the use of chemical weapons in Syria and then pivoted away from it, it’s become something of a truism among Washington hawks that this bit of cowardice paved the way for Russia’s Vladimir Putin to take Crimea and invade eastern Ukraine some six months later.
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