[StBernard] Debacle in Moscow

[Westley Annis]

THE CONSERVATIVE REVIEW - October 23, 2009

Debacle in Moscow
by Charles Krauthammer

WASHINGTON - About the only thing more comical than Barack 
Obama's Nobel Peace Prize was the reaction of those who 
deemed the award "premature," as if the brilliance of 
Obama's foreign policy is so self-evident and its success 
so assured that if only the Norway Five had waited a few 
years, his Nobel worthiness would have been universally 
acknowledged. 

To believe this, you have to be a dreamy adolescent 
(preferably Scandinavian and a member of the Socialist 
International) or an indiscriminate imbiber of White 
House talking points. After all, this was precisely the 
spin on the president's various apology tours through 
Europe and the Middle East: National self-denigration -- 
excuse me, outreach and understanding -- is not meant to 
yield immediate results; it simply plants the seeds of 
good feeling from which foreign policy successes shall 
come. 

Chauncey Gardiner could not have said it better. Well, at 
nine months, let's review.

What's come from Obama holding his tongue while Iranian 
demonstrators were being shot and from his recognizing the 
legitimacy of a thug regime illegitimately returned to 
power in a fraudulent election? Iran cracks down even more 
mercilessly on the opposition and races ahead with its 
nuclear program. 

What's come from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton taking 
human rights off the table on a visit to China and from 
Obama's shameful refusal to see the Dalai Lama (a postpone-
ment, we are told). China hasn't moved an inch on North 
Korea, Iran or human rights. Indeed it's pushing with 
Russia to dethrone the dollar as the world's reserve 
currency. 

What's come from the new-respect-for-Muslims Cairo speech 
and the unprecedented pressure on Israel for a total 
settlement freeze? "The settlement push backfired," reports 
The Washington Post, and Arab-Israeli peace prospects have 
"arguably regressed." 

And what's come from Obama's single most dramatic foreign 
policy stroke -- the sudden abrogation of missile defense 
arrangements with Poland and the Czech Republic that 
Russia had virulently opposed? For the East Europeans it 
was a crushing blow, a gratuitous restoration of Russian 
influence over a region that thought it had regained 
independence under American protection. 

But maybe not gratuitous. Surely we got something in 
return for selling out our friends. Some brilliant secret 
trade-off to get strong Russian support for stopping Iran 
from going nuclear before it's too late? Just wait and 
see, said administration officials, who then gleefully 
played up an oblique statement by President Dmitry 
Medvedev a week later as vindication of the missile 
defense betrayal. 

The Russian statement was so equivocal that such a claim 
seemed a ridiculous stretch at the time. Well, Clinton 
went to Moscow this week to nail down the deal. What did 
she get? 

"Russia Not Budging On Iran Sanctions: Clinton Unable to 
Sway Counterpart." Such was The Washington Post headline's 
succinct summary of the debacle. 

Note how thoroughly Clinton was rebuffed. Russian Foreign 
Minister Sergei Lavrov declared that "threats, sanctions 
and threats of pressure" are "counterproductive." Note: 
It's not just sanctions that are worse than useless, but 
even the threat of mere pressure. 

It gets worse. Having failed to get any movement from the 
Russians, Clinton herself moved -- to accommodate the 
Russian position! Sanctions? What sanctions? "We are not 
at that point yet," she averred. "That is not a conclusion 
we have reached ... it is our preference that Iran work 
with the international community." 

But wait a minute. Didn't Obama say in July that Iran 
had to show compliance by the G-20 summit in late 
September? And when that deadline passed, did he not 
then warn Iran that it would face "sanctions that have 
bite" and that it would have to take "a new course or 
face consequences"? 

Gone with the wind. It's the U.S. that's now retreating 
from its already flimsy position of just three weeks ago. 
We're not doing sanctions now, you see. We're back to 
engagement. Just as the Russians suggest. 

Henry Kissinger once said that the main job of Anatoly 
Dobrynin, the perennial Soviet ambassador to Washington, 
was to tell the Kremlin leadership that whenever they 
received a proposal from the United States that appeared 
disadvantageous to the United States, not to assume it 
was a trick. 

No need for a Dobrynin today. The Russian leadership, 
hardly believing its luck, needs no interpreter to under-
stand that when the Obama team clownishly rushes in bear-
ing gifts and "reset" buttons, there is nothing ulterior, 
diabolical, clever or even serious behind it. It is 
amateurishness, wrapped in naivete, inside credulity. In 
short, the very stuff of Nobels.