Former security officials insist that the United States made every effort to integrate Russia, rejecting claims that America “tried to humiliate” the former Soviet Union.
“I will go out on a limb here and say that I think everybody from the Clinton administration to the Bush administration, to the Obama administration, to the Trump administration did everything possible to try to integrate Russia into the international system,” Former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice said Friday at the Aspen Security Forum.
“The idea that somehow we tried to humiliate Russia, we tried to impose the kind of Versailles-like — it just isn’t true.”
Former President Bill Clinton in April insisted he couldn’t have done anything to prevent Russian President Vladimir Putin from invading Ukraine and denied his administration went out of its way to “isolate, humiliate or ignore” the Russian leader.
“That’s the biggest load of bull you’ll ever hear,” he said.
And Rice reiterated Clinton’s sentiment, even as she acknowledged that America had a duty to pay attention more to the international community, which may have come at the cost of Russian cooperation on the world stage.
“Are you really going to say to the newly democratic Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, ultimately later on Romania, the Baltic states – Oh, sorry, you’ve gone through this democratic revolution, you’ve broken away from a Soviet Union … but you’re still part of the Soviet empire, so just get used to it?” she asked.
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