How Did The U.S. - Russian Relationship Get So Bad?

National flags of Russia and the U.S. fly at Vnukovo International Airport in Moscow, Russia April 11, 2017. REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov Reuters

William J. Burns, the Atlantic: How the U.S.-Russian Relationship Went Bad

An American diplomat tells the inside story of Yeltsin, Putin, and opportunities lost.

The old Caucasus spa town of Kislovodsk was in terminal decline, much like the Soviet Union itself. It was late April 1991, and Secretary of State James Baker and those of us in his bone-tired delegation had just arrived from Damascus. We stumbled around in the evening gloom to find our rooms in the official guesthouse, long past its glory days as a haven for the Communist Party elite. My room was lit by a single overhead bulb. The handle on the toilet came off when I tried to flush it, and what trickled out of the faucet had the same sulfurous smell and reddish tint as the mineral waters for which the town was famous.

I walked down to Baker’s suite to deliver a briefing memo for his meeting the next day with the Soviet foreign minister. The suite was bigger and better lit, with similarly understated decor. Baker smiled wearily and glanced at the paper I handed him. It was covered with notes on all the issues before us: Germany’s peaceful reunification in the fall of 1990, the military triumph over Saddam Hussein little more than a month earlier, the increasingly precarious future of the Soviet Union.

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WNU Editor: A good summary on how things went south between the U.S. and Russia from a U.S. diplomat who was there at the time. But there are some points that I disagree with. The first one is the author's remarks on what he sees is a naive Trump trying to forge a cozy relationship with Putin. I do not know he how he came to that conclusion. President Trump has imposed sanctions that one needs to go back to the Reagan era to match in terms of harsh impact. Ditto to starting a massive military buildup, as well as ending the INF Treaty. Bottom line .... President Trump is no friend of Russian President Putin. As for Putin's relationship with Hillary Clinton. William Burns omits a few important points, the two big ones being Hillary Clinton's interference in the 2011 Russian Parliamentary elections and (the real big one) comparing Putin to Hitler .... Are The DNC Email Leaks Russian President Putin's Revenge Against Hillary Clinton For Comparing Him To Hitler 2 Years Ago? (July 26, 2016). As I had mentioned in that post, comparing a Russian to Hitler is for Russians an unforgivable act, and in this case she became in Putin's eyes an enemy for life. As for Hillary Clinton's interference in the post 2011 Russian parliamentary election, as I had commented at the time in this blog, it only helped Putin. When foreigners criticize a Russian leader, Russians will always circle their wagons, which they did by electing Putin as President in 2012. So why did Hillary Clinton decide to wade into a Russian election politics .... your guess is as good as mine. The author's analysis on Ukraine and its impact on U.S. - Russian relations was also disappointing. No mention on the billions that were spent by the U.S. on influencing the politics in that country .... Senior U.S. Diplomat Admits That The U.S. Has Spent $5 Billion To Influence The Ukrainian Government (February 27, 2014), nor the sectarian tensions that were ignited in that country when Ukrainian nationalists implemented policies that targeted the country's Russian minority resulting in a war that is still ongoing.