But it’s all water under the bridge now.
Yes, a tremendous opportunity was lost in the 1990s regarding Russia.
Remember how laughable it was when Clinton put Al Gore in charge of our Russia relationship?
I can imagine Al Gore probably got his chakra released often by expensive hot Russian masseuses, but if so that was pretty much his only accomplishments in that position.
But today we are where we are now. The Eastern European countries who were once controlled by Moscow but now have self-government from Estonia to Latvia to Lithuania to Poland to Hungary and all the others have a well-justified fear that Moscow may once again work to deny them their right to self-government.
No one who heard Putin’s crude paranoid Hitler-like speech in which he suggested that Ukraine and Belarus have no legitimate right to even exist as countries could say it is unreasonable for these countries to be worried.
Maybe before the speech some could argue that Putin just wanted to help find a peaceful solution to the hostilities between the LPR/DPR separatists and the Ukrainian government, but not after that speech.
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