Smart Diplomacy: For 1st Time, Putin Officially Names the U.S. as a Threat

A new appraisal names the United States as one of the threats to Russia's national security for the first time

writes Vladimir Soldatkin at Thomson Reuters,

a sign of how relations with the west have deteriorated in recent years

in addition to being a piece of news which must surely be an homage to the apologizer-in-chief's brilliant forward-looking policy of smart diplomacy (Update: spasiba to Instapundit).

The document, "About the Strategy of National Security of Russian Federation", was signed by President Vladimir Putin on New Year's Eve. It replaces a 2009 version, endorsed by then-President Dmitry Medvedev, the current prime minister, which mentioned neither the United States not NATO.

 … Relations between Russia and the West reached a low after Russian forces annexed the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine in March 2014, after protests in Ukraine forced its pro-Moscow president to flee to Russia.

Reminder: Back during the 2008 election campaign, Sarah Palin was vilified for saying another incredibly dimwitted thing, that the election of a pacifist like Barack Obama to the White House

would only encourage Russia’s Putin to invade Ukraine next.

(Gratefully, intelligent people like those writing for Foreign Policy were around to remind everybody that in fact, such an invasion was, and is, "an extremely far-fetched scenario.")

A "sign of how relations with the west have deteriorated in recent years" is the Thomson Reuters journalist's wording of choice.

"In recent years," Vladimir Soldatkin?! "Recent"?!

You might read some blogs once in a while, Vlad. Over there, in your MSM office. And their posts.

Such as:
• Four years of NP posts on Obama caving in to the Kremlin (2011)
• Moscow's tone is "reminiscent of Soviet days";
If anyone is stuck in the Cold War mentality, it is the Russians (2012)
• Smart Diplomacy: "Surging anti-American sentiment" in Moscow
and its legislators' "unanimous pseudo-patriotic frenzy” (2013)
• Smart Diplomacy: what is happening in Eastern Europe
now is as much Obama’s fault as it is Putin’s (2014)
• Have U.S. Relations with Russia Reverted to The Same Type as Those
During the Cold War That Obama Once Mocked Romney For? (2015)
• The Fruits of Smart Diplomacy: For the First Time Since the
Cold War, the U.S. Stations Heavy Weapons in Eastern Europe (2015)
• Advice to the Republican Hopefuls and to Other Leaders and Members of the GOP (2015)