krebscycle

The vociferous hawkish critics of US foreign policy in Ukraine and Syria often like to “explain” that the Obama admin & EU have profoundly misunderstood Vladimir Putin’s character and world-view. The critics argument is that  Western governments have assumed Putin is just like them, law abiding, mild mannered, nice. But, in reality, they tell us – Putin is a cold eyed pirate who looks out and sees Obama and the EU as weak, cowardly, naive, and easily bullied, and he responds to that by aggressively grabbing what he wants, when he wants it.  In other words, they believe Putin’s view of the  Obama administration is, why –  exactly the same as their own view.

Isn’t that incredible? We begin by believing something is true, apply our much advertised deep skills and knowledge to the problem, and then conclude we were right all along. We don’t have to do any heavy lifting, think about NATO, about the Russian power structure and opposition, about economics or history (e.g. how this is similar or different to the little incident in Georgia that happened during the Bush administration), or anything else. All we have to is take Lindsey Graham or Dick Cheney’s view of Mr. Obama, ascribe it to Mr. Putin, and QED!  Our premise and conclusion are the same. We are smart.

Just for the record, there is zero evidence that anyone in the White House or US State Department has ever had any faith in Mr. Putin’s character – during this administration.

He said it was time to move beyond Cold War attitudes, away from mutually assured destruction towards mutually earned respect.

“I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straight forward and trustworthy and we had a very good dialogue.

"I was able to get a sense of his soul.

"He’s a man deeply committed to his country and the best interests of his country and I appreciate very much the frank dialogue and that’s the beginning of a very constructive relationship,” Mr Bush said. BBC. 

A cynical person might conclude that these hawkish critics are seeing what they want to see and failing to subject their prejudices to sufficient scrutiny. And since most of these same people had credulously assumed that Don Rumsfeld would successfully prosecute the War in Iraq, perhaps the real locus of naive analysis is not in the current administration.