The one sided reset button with Russia

Ralph Peters:

STILL determined to "push the reset button with Russia," President Obama hit the delete key on our allies in Eastern Europe.

Obama's decision to abandon missile defense as we know it, cutting the throats of Poland and the Czech Republic, handed Moscow's hard-liners their biggest win since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Russian strongman Vladimir Putin insisted all along that we'd never be permitted to deploy an anti-ballistic missile system in the former Soviet empire. He was right.

And Obama got nothing in return. No Russian commitments on Iran's nuclear program. No sovereignty guarantees for Georgia. No restrictions on arms sales to Venezuela. Not even a bearhug.

Yesterday, when Defense Secretary Robert Gates explained the rationale for ending our plan to deploy a high-tech radar system and anti-missile interceptors to Eastern Europe, every military argument he advanced was absolutely correct. But, in strategic terms, the decision's a disaster.

The move to kill this program was a White House attempt to toss a bone to the extreme left, which has always hated missile defense. (Why defend ourselves, when we're the enemy?) For that, Obama betrayed the trust of allies who'd done all they could to please us.

The Poles spent enormous political capital to convince their citizens to risk this deployment. They've backed us consistently in NATO and the UN. They sent combat troops to support us in Iraq.

The Czechs also fought our political battles for us, supporting our foreign wars and siding with us in international forums -- angering West European powers.

Now add Poland and the Czech Republic to the list of allies, such as Israel and Honduras, that we've thrown to the wolves. Obama's foreign policy embodies a line from "Animal House": "You [screwed] up -- you trusted us!"

But the worst thing is how this decision's read in Moscow. Putin, Russia's new czar, sees this as a triumph of his will over Obama's weak, retreating US. And he's right.

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If you're a citizen of Ukraine, Georgia or even the NATO-member Baltic states, you must be shuddering. You thought NATO and the US were serious about your right to live in freedom?

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The last thing we needed to do was to further encourage Putin to believe he's all-knowing and invincible. But that's just what we've done.

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Peters has nailed the strategic significance of the retreat. It is something Obama blithely throws away and it will come back to haunt him. He seems to think it is smart to disrepect our weaker allies and prop up their enemies. That is a recipe for disaster and it is also dishonorable. It is the opposite of "smart" diplomacy.