It’s Time to Confront Russia

In Medium this week, I explain why I have had a change of heart on Russia — Putin’s behavior in particular has become so egregious, that it is time for a more vigorous, more public confrontation by President Obama.

Given the last ten months, it is undeniable that Russia, under Putin’s leadership, has become more hostile not only to western values but to western interests as well.Russia has stonewalled any realistic prospect for settling the conflict in Syria at the UN Security Council (the U.S. isn’t perfect on this front, considering its casual disregard of a UN Security Council Resolution that Russia tacitly supported in Libya, but that does not justify Russia’s behavior).

It is easy to single out any one of these issues at random and think it is driving the antagonism between Washington and Moscow, but to do so ignores almost a year of the Kremlin continuously escalating tensions with the White House on a range of issues — nuclear proliferation, Syria, human rights, democratic development, even press freedoms. In fact, one would be hard pressed to find an area of foreign policy where cooperation is improving — even on clearly shared interests likecounternarcotics or fighting terrorism. Across the board, Russia is rejecting America.

Read the whole thing over at Medium.