I don’t understand Obama’s foreign policy, WRT Russia.
On the one hand, we need a stable Russia (somebody has to hold up the fragile former Central Asain Republics), and we may also need another source of crude oil. Our European allies are also dependent upon Russian gas and oil.
On the other hand, we keep trying to enlarge NATO-and promising to put defensive missiles in Eastern Europe.
The Russians have been very clear about this-they don’t want this, and they have told us so, many times.
It seems (to me) that we have a lot to lose, and very little to gain, by pissing off Russia.
True, the Russians have sold missiles to Iran, and are helping the Iranians with reactor construction-but isn’t this better than having China do it? At least the Russians have security concerns of their own (with Iran), and can be expected to keep some level of control (over the high tech they sell Iran).
Why descend into another cold war? It seems that we are doing everything possible to extend Chinese influence in the ME, both to our (and Russia’s) detriment. :smack:
I really don’t see where you’re coming from when you say we’re “descending into another cold war”. We could have easily kept the missile “defense” program in Poland on track but we scrapped that to Russia’s relief. It appears that in return we at least got lip-service to the American position for stronger sanctions against Iran. To me this seems like business-as-usual, in fact a tad bit friendlier than usual.