Putin Gives Lip-Service To Democracy ~ Elizabeth Sulzby

~ By Elizabeth Sulzby, Professor at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

“President Obama has been talking with Putin about Syria for over a year and just talked with him again at the G20. His administration has been having diplomatic talks with Putin and his administration all during this time. There is so much that we do not know because it is secret--in order to do hard diplomacy. The President got Putin and Syria to admit that Syria has chemical weapons, has been producing more chemical weapons, and "will" (i.e., should) sign the international agreement banning chemical weapons. I expect there will be ups and downs in these negotiations, of course. And I take Putin's statement as part of this diplomacy. He "gave" again to President Obama in the Op-Ed and kept up his "save my face at home in Russia" rhetoric which all US and Russian leaders do and have done. I hope everyone will read the op-ed: Putin gives lip-service to democracy. That's not a small thing. He is a horrible leader in so many ways but we negotiate with all kinds of leaders. Our President is plenty strong and much smarter than Putin but Putin isn't a dummy. Don't fall for the right's rhetoric about the President's so-called "weakness," etc. They just make it up--playing their eternally obstructive and uninformed games.”

“The point of the talks going on for over a year is information to use to defuse the right’s claims that Putin “gave” something to President Obama and that Obama “should have been doing diplomacy”—he was, strong diplomacy and gamesmanship. They claim that all this just happened after Secretary Kerry had a “slip of the lip.” No, it was based on information of what was going on “behind closed doors.”

[Stay tuned for more entries from Elizabeth Sulzby in the near future]