President Reagan's famous dictum, which he often quoted to Mikhail Gorbachev in Russian, was Trust but Verify. (In Russian, it rhymes:
Doverai, no proverai.) President Obama has recognized that Reagan was a "transformational" president. He says he gave the old man credit, though he
never gave him his vote.
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Now, Barack Obama is determined also to be a transformational president. And he is succeeding in this. More's the pity. His Russian policy is one of
"Trust, Don't Verify."
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First, he cancelled missile defense for our new allies -- Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic. This was done with the hope and expectation that it
would make the Russians more cooperative on Iran.
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Russia has responded by pulling the teeth of any sanctions resolutions at the UN that threatened to really bite the Iranian mullahs.
The Washington Post tells us -- in a front page story,
no less -- the absorbing tale of Vyascheslav Danilenko, Russian nuclear scientist, who is said to be aiding Iran in development of a nuclear weapon.
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The UN's own International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) says that Danilenko is at the heart of "Iran 's efforts to gain expertise in disciplines essential
to building a nuclear warhead."
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So much for trusting the Russians. In the popular movie, Red October, the gruff U.S. admiral played by the redoubtable Fred Thompson says:
"The Russians don't take a c__p without order from Moscow." Fred got that part right. To think that Danilenko could travel to and from Tehran on
"business" without the Kremlin knowing and approving is ludicrous.
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But we trust the Russians, don't we? Before President Obama's famous "hamburger summit" with puppet president Medvedev, the FBI collared ten Russian
spies. Surely, we would never subject these Kremlin agents to enhanced interrogation. In fact, they were quickly issued exit visas and put on a direct
flight to Moscow. They did not pass GO, they didn't even get a TSA pat down.
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Nothing could stand in the way of the Obama administration's fast track for the START Treaty with Russia, ratified by the lame ducks of the 111
th Congress. Vice PresidentÂ
Joe Biden was
their point man in hurrying this treaty through last December. Biden has a long history of trusting the Russians. He went to Moscow in 1979, when
Barack Obama was just old enough to vote.
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Biden told the KGB in 1979
 that we were most interested in arms control. Human rights was a matter of lesser interest. As a result, we got no arms control agreement that could
be ratified -- even by a Democratic Senate. And thousands more Russians were thrown into the GuLAG.
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Biden's Russian expertise: Trust, don't verify.
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TheÂ
Wall Street Journal reports, in a front page story, that American astronaut Dan Burbank is "
hitching a ride to the
International Space Station." Thanks to Mr. Obama's re-ordering of priorities for NASA, we no longer have the capacity to send up astronauts ourselves.
Instead, we can trust the Russians to take us for a ride.
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President Obama recently met with outgoing President Medvedev in Honolulu . They conferred on ways to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.
Forget for the moment that Dmitri Medvedev faithfully plays the monkey to Vladimir Putin's organ grinder, what possible common interest could we have
with Russia in framing a policy on Iran ?
Â
ReutersÂ
reports the
two men discussed Syria during their meeting. Does our president know that Russia has been a backer of Syria for decades? And that Syria is a virtual
client state of Iran ?
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Can we trust the Russians? Should "Trust, Don't Verify" be our new policy toward Moscow ? I can agree with this much of Astronaut Dan
Burbank's merriment: You can always trust the Russians to take Americans for a ride.
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Ken Blackwell is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and former U.S. ambassador to the UN Human Rights Commission.
At the end of the day, the civilised West, Russia and China have more in common with each other than separates us. What we have in common is fighting jihadists, Russians in Chechnya, China in Uighurland, Europe and America domestically and from the Middle East. Please remember that.
On this occasion I would like to remind that the 1979 Afghanistan invasion by the Soviet Union was less about spreading communism (Afghanistan was not then and is not now an attractive country to be associated with) but more about jihadists stirring in the neighbouring Soviet republics which had a majority muslim population but were ruled secularly through the Soviets. Had the US supported the Soviet Union then and not the Mujaheddin, the dictatorship from Islam in Afghanistan might not exist now. Not recognising where your real enemies are, caused the Afghanistan mess. It would be tragic if the US failed to recognise the real enemy now. Remember: Weaken Russia and the Chechnyans will be on your doorstep. Weaken China and the Uighurs will cause so many problems that China must spend her money fighting them instead of buying US Treasury bonds. Bad Karma!
If you trust the Russians, they may start to trust you. US history, after all, is full of examples of treachery and opportunism.
1983: The Brink of Apocalypse 1/8:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kTnXqfT1Mk
I would also reccomend the book by Soviet ambassador to the US during 1962-1986 Anatoly Dobrynin with title "In confidence".
But NATO is still not being honest. The missile shield has little to do with Iran, which is obvious to everyone. So why continue the lies? If it goes through, Russia will be forced to take that decision away from its leaders on whether or not to launch simply because there will be no time left to discern between a real and a false threat.
1. Missile defence shield is a white elephant. It is not operational and Russians know that. Once the silos are installed there is no verification what exactly is in them (like medium range balistic missiles with flight time too short for the Russia to react) and since Russia has good reasons to mistrust US they wanted verification option and since that was out of the question they openly said they will train their nuclear cruise missiles on the system (BTW Poles and Czehs were by large majoritiy oposed to the system being located in their coutries). In addition the system would upset/cancel all previous agreaments on control of balistic/nuclear weapons.
2. Danilenko is NOT Russian but Ukranian scientist. Yes he worked in what was scientific city primarily concerned with nuclear research but such cities were not exclusively doing single research filed and he was never involved in nuclear program (nobody can confirm he was). BTW it is not IAEA claim but unverified claim by some unnamed western inteligence agency. Report was sexed up to such a degree with unverified roumors nobody in right mind even belives it. As far as bias of IAEA is concerned it's head is just a puppet who will do anything his US masters tell him:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/julian-borger-global-security-blog/2010/nov/30/iaea-wikileaks
Your quote for Red October, ""The Russians don't take a c__p without order from Moscow."" is inaccurate. It is in fact, "Russians don't take a dump without a plan son".
That missed quote is an excellent example of how off the rest of your assessment is. Replacing this that exist with things that don't to suit what you'd like reality to be.
Enjoy the rest of your day...
This is just the imbecilic thinking that goes through Washington that is stuck in the Cold War. When the average age of Senators is over 70 years, it is not surprising that the United States is no country for young people.
It wasn't done because it would have negating existing arms control treaties and would have resulted in a new arms race.
Never before have I seen such a shameless shill for the arms industry filled with half-truths, childish conjecture and cliches used out of context. I'm sure this travesty was cobbled together in some "think-tank".
Sir, everybody knows there is no "missile defense", there never was. Only liars like Reagan and his supporters pushed this fiction for decades. The proof is rather obvious - if we had missile defense, we'd not care about any "threat from Iran".
It's all BS. There has never been a successful missile defense test that was not rigged.
You lose!