The Earnest "Why Does Putin Hate Us" Lament Continues

Ah, another entry in the "we are at fault for Russia's hostile policies" genre.

So basically, Russia worked with us in Afghanistan after 9/11, which Russia had an interest in pacifying given their own problem with Islamists in the Caucasus region--remember the Chechnya wars in the 1990s?

And Bush continued to see Putin as a man he could work with. Then in 2008 we wrecked the mood by accepting a Kosovo declaration of independence from Serbia (as if Russia has the veto over any actions affecting any Slavic people--let alone just ethnic Russians--anywhere in Europe); pulling out of the missile defense treaty with Russia (in order to defend against an Iranian threat that Russia helped prop up); and proposed to expand NATO into Ukraine and Georgia (shockingly, Russia has since seized land from both--just what were we thinking, eh?).

That wrecked our relations, the authors say.

Until the 2009 Obama administration "reset" which supposedly addressed the problem by accepting that we needed to do things to fix the relationship. We abandoned the Bush missile defense plan in eastern NATO countries that shook up our alliance there, agreed to a one-sided nuclear weapons agreement that left Russia's large stock of theater nuclear weapons intact, and fought jihadis in Afghanistan which the Soviet Union had fought but failed to defeat in the 1980s.

Yet despite those new efforts, Russia soon saw our evil hand in unrest within Russia in reaction to Putin's growing autocracy. So Russia went back to being all Russian-like, paranoid, and hostile.

I always find it amusing that the book of American sins that "caused" Putin to act aggressively never mentions the 2011 Libya War. The UN Security Council passed a resolution allowing a no-fly zone over Libya and Russia did not veto it. In my view, because a no-fly zone was pointless. But President Obama twisted that no-fly resolution into the legal basis for becoming the rebel air force and aiming for regime change in practice. Russia did not like being tricked that way, at all.

While I did not think it was worth it to go to war over Libya, I did not think it was immoral to overthrow the Khadaffi regime. And I don't blame the UNSC resolution bait and switch as something that justifies Putin's aggression in Europe and bloody hand in Syria. I'm just noting that if the war had taken place in 2008, it would be prime evidence of our blame (and let's not forget the lack of Congressional authorization and the administration's refusal to act under the War Powers Resolution, which would have led to impeachment talk had the war taken place in 2008--when Bush was in office, in case I'm not clear).

Face it, relations with Russia are bad because of Russia. Whether we think Putin has a soul that we can work with, deny that Russia has a veto power over the status of former colonies or our efforts to defend against nuclear rogue states, or operate under "reset," Russia eventually sees our plots to undermine Holy Mother Russia.

The funny thing is, as the article notes, Russia's paranoia about us developed in an environment where we actually didn't think much of Russia as we pursued other objectives. Plot against them? We were barely aware of them after 2001 as long as they didn't act against us out of spite and fond memories of pounding shoes on desks to shake the world.

If only we'd been nicer to Russia, all would be well. We should have scrapped NATO and included Russia in a new US-EU-Russia defense arrangement. Really? We should have pledged our country to a defense arrangement that put us on the line to defend Russia's border with China?

And if you want to argue that it could have been an anti-jihadi effort, why couldn't Russia have cooperated outside a formal alliance even with an atrophying--albeit expanding--NATO with nothing to do as Russia demonstrated it was nothing like the old Soviet Union the alliance was formed to oppose?

Yeah. If we do something abroad the left doesn't like, it is always our fault. Nobody on the left ever asks if we have reason to hate them.

And if some foreign nutball does something we don't like--well, ultimately that is our fault, too. Let the "why do they hate us?" debate begin. And they always have answers to that question.