The Clintons created Putin, Trump will make him an asset

When Republican Donald Trump refused to insult Russian President Vladimir Putin during NBC’s “Commander in Chief Forum” on Wednesday, Democrat Hillary Clinton and displaced neoconservatives pounced.

“It suggests he will let Putin do whatever Putin wants to do and then make excuses for him,” Hillary explained. To the woman who once claimed to “reset” relations with Moscow, the only acceptable U.S. diplomacy towards Russia was to call its president a thug. 

{mosads}The latest faux firestorm erupted when Trump refused to take Matt Lauer’s bait to reject Putin’s compliment that Trump would be a “brilliant” leader. What Lauer forgot to mention is that Putin had denied using the word.

“If he says great things about me, I’m going to say great things about him,” Trump said. While Trump voiced opposition to the Russian system of government, he noted that, on the global stage, Putin has “been a leader, far more than our president has been a leader.”

Hillary, though, was not the only person to attack Trump for showing a willingness to work with Russia. Paul Ryan, the Republican Speaker of the House, sided with Hillary in saying “Vladimir Putin is an aggressor who does not share our interests.”

But is that true? Are Washington and Moscow so far apart that there are no shared global interests?

Trump had the answer.

“Russia wants to defeat ISIS as badly as we do,” Trump told Lauer. “If we had a relationship with Russia, wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could work on it together and knock the hell out of ISIS? Wouldn’t that be a wonderful thing?”

This comment, which is largely ignored in the criticism of Trump, exposes one of the greatest foreign policy blunders of modern history. It points out that somewhere along the line U.S. foreign policy created an enemy of a Russian state that would have been a grand ally on the global stage.

Where did we go wrong? Who lost Russia? Look no further than Bill & Hillary Clinton.

President Bill Clinton lost Russia when he pushed NATO to her doorstep. It was a signal that the United States was going to exploit Russian weakness, not lift the nation up, as it transitioned from communism.

“NATO must also take in new members, including those from among its former adversaries. It must reach out to all the new democracies in Central Europe, the Baltics and the New Independent States of the former Soviet Union,” President Clinton said in 1996.

Though the Berlin Wall had been down just two decades, President Clinton made it clear that Russian complaints of NATO expansion would not deter the new era of American hegemony. Recognizing that the Russian bear was neutered, dazed, and thanks to Boris Yeltsin, drunk, President Clinton was starting up where Patton left off.

By expanding NATO to its doorstep, Clinton and friends were playing into Russian insecurities and squandering any attempts at a real alliance with the down, but not out, nation. This, of course, would eventually give rise to Vladimir Putin – the man who uses photo ops to remind the world of the bear Russia was and is striving to be.

What would have happened if President Clinton opposed NATO expansion and treated the new Moscow has a potential friend in lieu of a defeated enemy?

Along with a shared interest in defeating ISIS, Washington & Moscow would have also had a shared interest in containing Beijing. Moscow and Beijing always viewed each other with a skeptical eye. Russia could have played a pivotal part in keeping China in check, but now the two nations are conducting joint naval drills.

And if America & Russia remained close, imagine how different the Iran nuclear talks would have been. Maybe President Obama would not have had to pay ransom money to the now belligerent Tehran.

The retort is that Putin is a bad man and America must condemn him. But who cares? Stalin was far worse than Putin and FDR & Churchill partnered with him to defeat Hitler. Why is it wrong for Trump to partner with Putin to defeat ISIS? Contain China?

Foreign policy is not about an altar boy litmus tests; it is about advancing U.S. interests. Sometimes that means we have to partner with the bad and the ugly to achieve the good.

The fact is that Putin is a leader who has outmaneuvered President Obama and, by extension, the United States on the global stage. He is here to stay because President Clinton created the conditions for Putin to thrive. It is up to a President Trump to clean up Clinton’s mess and make an asset out of Putin.

Hillary is best left to playing with reset buttons.

Joseph R. Murray II is administrator for LGBTrump, former campaign official for Pat Buchanan, and author of “Odd Man Out.” He can be reached at jrm@joemurrayenterprises.com.

The views expressed by Contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill.