Hillary needs to hit the reset button, again
In March, Hillary Clinton met with Sergei Lavrov and gave him a button labeled “overload”. She laughed, he laughed, they agreed to to pursue replacing the 1991 START agreement. AP and Reuters talked about how hard they were pursuing it. Now, the thing about it all is START was signed by Russia. Russia then collapsed about four months later. The ensuing individual countries had varying degrees of nuclear arsenal. Several countries wanted no0thing to do with nuclear weapons, and the expense of maintaining them, and destroyed their stocks completely. Call that a START success if you want, I call it a local economical decision. Basically all that was left with nuclear weapons was what was left of Russia. And, that was a load. In December 2001, the United States and Russia announced they had reached the desired start levels of 6,000 warheads. Over the ensuing years tension grew between Putin/Medvedev over the United States expanding it’s missile defense shield into Europe. This was not adding to the arsenal, it was moving them. The disagreement over these deployments angered Russia, but got the US allies it had never really had before in Poland and Czech Republic. It also gave former Russian states the nerve to separate themselves further from Moscow. And, it even gave current Russian states the nerve to try to secede. Russia became increasingly antagonistic.
Enter Barack Obama in January 2009.
His first real diplomatic effort was reaching out to Russia. He sent Hillary to do it for him. Neither Putin nor Medvedev would meet with her. So, she met with the Defense Minister and made him hit her reset button. A few months later, Obama announced he was at first removing the missile defense shield in Europe. That got met with such criticism from Poland and the Czech Republic that he changed his wording. Bottom line, he still screwed them over pretty bad. In essence, he sold out Poland, Czech Republic, Kazakhstan, Belarus, and Ukraine for Russia.
While Obama was in Norway accepting his Nobel Peace prize for what he might do someday, and boasting of the new cooperation with Russia since their “reset”, a strange event was happening in Norway as well. People freaked out when they saw it. It looked like a black hole, something alien. Not to worry said Russia, it’s just their new and improved nuclear ICBM that could circumnavigate the planet if necessary to strike anywhere they wanted. For Christmas Medvedev told Obama Russia is developing new missiles for the submarine fleet.
So, the result since Hillary hit the overload button in March is the US has substantially reduced its nuclear delivery capabilities and most likely lost several military allies while Russia has very aggressively increased theirs. Some are suggesting Hillary needs to go hit the reset button again. No telling what damage she’d do then. I love Putin’s latest advice, he’s suggesting Obama completely dismantle the US missile DEFENSE shield to level the playing field with all nuclear parties. I won’t rule out Obama taking Putin’s advice. He really is that naive.
