Posted: 27 Apr 2010 07:34 AM PDT
Poor Barack Obama, he just can't make anybody happy with his reset policy toward Russia. His opponents on the right argue that he's selling the farm through weakness and undeserved concessions to an uncooperative, aggressive government. Other critics - like us - bemoan the ill-considered bargain of Washington's Iran obsession in exchange for the free pass given to the siloviki on values of human rights, rule of law, corruption, and democracy.
But I have to admit that I was a little confused by Dmitri K. Simes's take down of Obama's START replacement treaty with Russia, which he argues is much less substantive than the administration would like to claim. Simes points out that the new treaty "doesn't really require either side to eliminate weapons it wants to keep," that the agreement is void if the U.S. ever builds another missile defense system, and lastly, that the Russians themselves were giddy with excitement about they worked over their naive counterparts and didn't budge an inch.
Simes is a deeply knowledgeable observer on Russian affairs, and I would agree with most of his points made here on the shortcomings of this latest treaty with Moscow - but I am surprised that this is what we are hearing from the realist camp. The issue of realism as a foreign policy ideology and the incoherent application of U.S. partisan politics to the Russia debate has been a regular subject of discussion on this blog, and we had come to expect a consistent line out of Simes, Nixon Center, and the conservative National Interest set. These are the guys who have always argued that the West is much too "hard" on Russia, that the West should repent for not having helped the country more in the 1990s, that the leadership in Moscow must be "respected" at all costs, and so on. In fact, it seems that much of what Dmitri Simes was recommending should be done in the relationship with Russia is now occurring, but now all of a sudden he is writing about how Russia being satisfied with a deal based on their own definition of rational interests is a negative sign? After so much boosterism of the Russian perspective, now Simes criticizes the Obama administration's "benign" view of Moscow's position?
It looks like the realists only like their own realism, while the other regime sympathizers much further afield from these relatively centrist views are only comfortable operating in the context of confrontation and permanent displeasure with whoever is doing whatever in Washington.
Poor Barack Obama, he just can't make anybody happy with his reset policy toward Russia. His opponents on the right argue that he's selling the farm through weakness and undeserved concessions to an uncooperative, aggressive government. Other critics - like us - bemoan the ill-considered bargain of Washington's Iran obsession in exchange for the free pass given to the siloviki on values of human rights, rule of law, corruption, and democracy.But I have to admit that I was a little confused by Dmitri K. Simes's take down of Obama's START replacement treaty with Russia, which he argues is much less substantive than the administration would like to claim. Simes points out that the new treaty "doesn't really require either side to eliminate weapons it wants to keep," that the agreement is void if the U.S. ever builds another missile defense system, and lastly, that the Russians themselves were giddy with excitement about they worked over their naive counterparts and didn't budge an inch.
Simes is a deeply knowledgeable observer on Russian affairs, and I would agree with most of his points made here on the shortcomings of this latest treaty with Moscow - but I am surprised that this is what we are hearing from the realist camp. The issue of realism as a foreign policy ideology and the incoherent application of U.S. partisan politics to the Russia debate has been a regular subject of discussion on this blog, and we had come to expect a consistent line out of Simes, Nixon Center, and the conservative National Interest set. These are the guys who have always argued that the West is much too "hard" on Russia, that the West should repent for not having helped the country more in the 1990s, that the leadership in Moscow must be "respected" at all costs, and so on. In fact, it seems that much of what Dmitri Simes was recommending should be done in the relationship with Russia is now occurring, but now all of a sudden he is writing about how Russia being satisfied with a deal based on their own definition of rational interests is a negative sign? After so much boosterism of the Russian perspective, now Simes criticizes the Obama administration's "benign" view of Moscow's position?
It looks like the realists only like their own realism, while the other regime sympathizers much further afield from these relatively centrist views are only comfortable operating in the context of confrontation and permanent displeasure with whoever is doing whatever in Washington.
