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Syria and the “Reset”

Charles Krauthammer links his awful Syria commentary with some more uninformed “reset”-bashing: Assad, in contrast, has a real friend. Putin knows Obama. Having watched Obama’s retreat in Eastern Europe, his passivity at Russian obstructionism on Iran, his bended-knee “reset” policy [bold mine-DL], Putin knows he has nothing to fear from the U.S. president. Result? The […]

Charles Krauthammer links his awful Syria commentary with some more uninformed “reset”-bashing:

Assad, in contrast, has a real friend. Putin knows Obama. Having watched Obama’s retreat in Eastern Europe, his passivity at Russian obstructionism on Iran, his bended-knee “reset” policy [bold mine-DL], Putin knows he has nothing to fear from the U.S. president.

Result? The contemptuous Putin floods Syria with weapons. Iran, equally disdainful, sends Revolutionary Guards to advise and shore up Assad’s forces. Hezbollah invades Syria and seizes Qusair.

I doubt that Krauthammer really believes that Russia would not have delivered weapons to Assad had there been no “reset” policy. Likewise, Iran and Hizbullah were always going to provide support to Assad because his regime is their ally. It is ludicrous to think that they wouldn’t have provided that aid if the U.S. were more deeply involved in the conflict. They would have responded to U.S. escalation with more of their own. Indeed, that outcome is one of the dangers of a greater U.S. role in the conflict, which is why it has been wise for the U.S. not to increase its involvement.

It’s useful to remember that everything Krauthammer says about Russia policy in this column is wrong. His description of the policy is completely wrong on the facts. There has been no “retreat” in eastern Europe. Presumably Krauthammer is recycling old 2009 complaints about missile defense, but here, too, he gets his facts wrong. For good or ill (I think ill), the U.S. continues to promote missile defense in eastern Europe. Russia voted for a new round of U.N. sanctions on Iran. If anything, the “reset” policy has been mostly one-sided in our favor, but it nonetheless had some initial success in repairing the damage done to the relationship over the previous five or six years. The Syrian conflict began after the original goals of the “reset” had been met. U.S.-Russian disagreements on Syria have soured the relationship somewhat, but it is silly to think that Russia would have been more inclined to cooperate on Syria if relations with Washington had continued to be as bad as they were in 2007-08.

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