I present you with two videos — the first was seven years ago last month, and it’s one of the more cringe-worthy moments in recent diplomatic history:
The second is from the Baltic Sea this week, featuring the USS Donald Cook and Russian SU-24 attack aircraft:
CBS has the details:
Yet again Russian jets made provocatively close passes to an American warship, as tensions continue between Moscow and Washington over the conflicts in Ukraine and Syria.
A senior defense official told CBS News that two recent incidents were “more aggressive than anything we’ve seen in some time.”
The first, on April 11, involved two Russian SU24s, when the USS Donald Cook left the Polish port of Gdynia and was about 70 nautical miles from Kaliningrad in the Baltic Sea. The official said the Russian jets made 20 passes of the American ship and flew within 1,000 yards at an altitude of just 100 feet. In the second incident on April 12, two Russian KA27 Helix helicopters flew several circles around the Donald Cook, apparently taking photos, after which two jets again made numerous close passes of the ship in what the official described as “Simulated Attack Profile.” (Emphasis added.)
These simulated attacks come days after the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee said the “inability to predict the leadership plans and intentions of the Putin regime in Russia” constituted the “biggest intelligence failure” since 9/11. While I’m not sure that I agree, the “reset” has inarguably been a miserable failure, and Russia is re-introducing the possibility of great power conflict to Europe.
Moreover, it seems as if the Russian military is feeling its oats. After miserable outcomes in Afghanistan and the First Chechen War, the Russian military has rallied, winning a messy victory in the Second Chechen War, winning its short conflict with Georgia in 2008, invading the Ukraine and rapidly annexing the Crimea, and most recently stabilizing the Assad regime and winning back hundreds of square miles of lost Syrian territory.
As the president prepares to hand over the reins to his successor, it’s tough to think of a single meaningful area of operations where America’s strategic challenges aren’t growing. China is aggressive in the Pacific (and North Korea is testing long-range missiles), Russia invaded the Ukraine and is flexing its military muscles in Europe and the Middle East, Iran is gaining new economic strength and access to international arms markets, and of course ISIS is extending its reach well beyond the Middle East.
Heckuva job, Obama. And to think, the front-runner for the Democratic nomination is one of the architects of this mess. Our nation is in the very best of hands.
Video: Russia Celebrates Seven Years of 'Reset' With Simulated Attacks on a U.S. Warship