Give & Take

The prolific John Bolton is back in the Globe & Mail decrying the Obama administration's Russian diplomacy:

But the deterioration in relations came almost entirely from more belligerent and provocative Russian behaviour, not from a desire in Washington for confrontation. Thus, all the “new” directions emanating from the Moscow summit are all essentially reversals of recent U.S. policy. The Russians should be happy; most people are when they get their way.

To phrase this another way, Russia was belligerent when it wasn't getting its way on any issue but now they're happier that the U.S. has begun to accommodate them.

And this is the essential problem with U.S.- Russian relations. On the U.S. side, there is a basic unwillingness to acknowledge the legitimacy of Russian interests. We can proclaim from the rooftops that the Middle East - quite far afield from the territory of the United States - is of such vital strategic importance that we will project and sustain American military power in the region for as long as we see fit. Yet Russian interests in territory directly adjacent to their own borders is somehow beyond the pale and signs of renewed imperialism.

On the Russian side there appears to be no genuine interest in helping the U.S. with either Iran or North Korea because they enjoy having us distracted and tied down. And there's every reason to believe that Putin & co. will drum up nationalistic resentments at the West simply to divert attention from Russia's internal failings.

President Obama's gambit of trying to pick off some low-hanging fruit on the issues where there is agreement in the hopes of laying the groundwork for larger breakthroughs might fail. But declaring - as Bolton does - that any accommodation to Russia is ipso-facto unacceptable strikes me as intrinsically incapable of succeeding.