The Russians are complaining about their spies being arrested. But, they are not apologizing for spying on the U.S. No, they are upset because:
they presumed that hawkish elements within the U.S. government had engineered and timed the arrests to embarrass President Obama and undermine the “reset.” Mr. Putin echoed that concern during a meeting at his residence outside Moscow with former U.S. President Bill Clinton.
Why would this embarrass Obama? Shouldn’t Obama have been on TV bragging about capturing this spy ring and demonstrating to the world that we will stand up for America. Shouldn’t he have been outraged that while Medvedec was meeting with him, pretending to be our friend, they were actually running a major spy ring to conduct espionage against the United States. Prior Presidents, even limp wristed liberals like Carter and Clinton would have at least pretended to be upset. Most Presidents would have immediately expelled Russian diplomats in retaliation. Instead we are told that Obama was informed, but he wasn’t paying much attention. This simply was not important to him.
I have tried to evaluate the significance of this. The stated goal of the spies was to influence American policy making. Putin said that the Russian’s primary concern is that the arrest of these spies will embarrass President Obama. Obviously the Russians believe that President Obama is their greatest asset in their strategy to achieve their stated goals. It sure seems like the Russians really like Obama policy making decisions. Of course it not like Obama cancelled our missile defense system. It’s not like he caved with regard to the Republic of Georgia. It’s not like he is planning on a unilateral nuclear disarmament by the United States. And it’s certainly not like we have a President who is traveling around the world apologizing for the United States. Now if something like that happened, then we should be concerned!
TDM