President Barack Obama's rollback of the European-based ballistic missile defense system is a strategic blunder that will incentivize Russian intransigence at the negotiating table, erode relations with loyal U.S. allies in Central and Eastern Europe, and ultimately place the American homeland at greater risk.
The about-face stands in a long line of similar American miscalculations on Russia and its leaders. Famously misreading his Soviet counterpart, Joseph Stalin, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt once mused, "If I give him everything I possibly can and ask nothing from him in return, [he] won't try to annex anything and will work with me for a world of democracy and peace." Clearly, Vladimir Putin -- let alone Dmitri Medvedev -- is no Stalin. However, the current administration has committed a miscalculation similar to FDR's in its attempt to "reset" relations with Moscow. ...
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