“Ending forever wars” was the foreign policy of the Obama/Biden administration, and many Putin Republicans today repeat the same arguments

When the Obama administration took over in 2009, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton mocked the previous tough response to the August 2008 invasion of Georgia by presenting Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov with a “reset button”. 16 years later Russia continues to occupy 20% of Georgia and they are trying to destabilize the rest of the nation.
From the very outset the Obama/Biden team demonstrated weakness and naivety. Their focus was ending “forever wars,” and they claimed Russia, China and Iran were not significant threats.
They foolishly cancelled Bush’s plan to deploy missile defense components in the Czech Republic and Poland, while Russia gave up nothing in return. In 2012, President Obama said he would be more flexible with Russia after the election. That same year in the foreign policy debate he said Mitt Romney was needlessly concerned about Russia because “The Cold War has been over for 20 years.”
The Obama/Biden “reset” stopped all punishment of the Kremlin and they went further by making Russia central to their foreign policy in both Iran and Syria.
When Russia illegally annexed Crimea and invaded eastern Ukraine in 2014, the Obama/Biden team responded with weak sanctions which had no impact on Putin’s aggression.
Obama policies resulted in an extreme military readiness crisis and many efforts to rebuild the military came to a halt. Biden later cut the defense budget in real terms. Obama “lead from behind” foreign policy strategy often meant America was left behind and the military was severely restricted.
In addition, the Iran nuclear deal was fatally flawed but Biden wanted to return to it despite numerous violations such as breaching the limitations, and stockpiling more enriched uranium than was permitted. Fortunately Iran wasn’t interested.
Obama served for 8 years and attended only 41% of his national security briefings. This explains why Obama claimed to be completely surprised by the rapid rise of the Islamic State.
We wish Barack Obama had been correct in June 2013 when claiming “The tide of war is receding.”
It was popular at the time, but Barack Obama’s December 2011 decision to withdraw all U.S. forces from Iraq was a mistake. It was done entirely to benefit his 2012 re-election campaign and in 2014 the American military had to return to Iraq.
The Obama/Biden administration ignored the Islamic State for 3.5 years and they soon captured 30% of Syria and 40% of Iraq. The result was over 600,000 dead and 12 million refugees and displaced person in Syria and Iraq.
Obama often noted Americans were war weary, but the Islamic State, Iran, Hamas, al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, the Taliban and their allies were not.
We were disappointed by Obama’s retreat foreign policy, his hostility to Israel and when he recognized Cuba without any reciprocity. President Obama thought climate change was the top national security threat and now we know he routinely rejected the wise advice and recommendations of Defense Secretaries Robert Gates, Leon Panetta and Chuck Hagel as well as the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Gates and Panetta have written outstanding memoirs and Hagel has given excellent in-depth interviews. They all emphasize the many mistakes and are amazed Obama delegated major foreign policy and national security decisions to Susan Rice.