Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton needled Russian President Vladimir Putin about Nato enlargement on Tuesday, saying: “Too bad, Vladimir. You brought it on yourself.”
By Arshad Mohammed and Humeyra Pamuk
WASHINGTON – Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton needled Russian President Vladimir Putin about Nato enlargement on Tuesday, saying: “Too bad, Vladimir. You brought it on yourself.”
Returning to the State Department for the unveiling of her official portrait, Clinton also used the occasion to display distaste for the policies of Republican former president Donald Trump, who defeated her in the 2016 US presidential election.
Clinton suggested that there may have been questions about the US ability to muster support for Ukraine to resist Russia’s 2022 invasion because of Trump’s legacy of alienating allies.
“People might have doubted that because we had burned so many bridges with our allies and our friends,” she told current and former officials in the agency’s ornate Benjamin Franklin State Dining Room.
“Reinstating a foreign policy … that actually brings people to us, not pushes them away, would have been thought to be extremely difficult. And indeed it was, but it was accomplished,” she added, thanking Secretary of State Antony Blinken for “helping to restore America’s standing.”
Clinton said fellow Democrat US President Joe Biden pursued many of the priorities of the Obama administration, in which she was the top US diplomat and he served as vice president to Barack Obama.
“Defending democracy in Ukraine, expanding Nato – just as an aside, too bad Vladimir, you brought it on yourself,” she said, prompting laughter and applause.
“We always said, ‘people are not forced to join Nato. People choose and want to join Nato’,” she added.
Clinton described what she saw as common Biden and Obama priorities of “expanding Nato, facing down Russian aggression and managing the challenges from China.”
She joked that it had been a long time since she had seen the portrait, which depicted her gazing into the distance against the backdrop of an enlarged American flag.
“Between Covid, between not wanting to finish it during the prior administration,” she said with a meaningful glance at the audience, drawing laughter, “it’s been a while. And I am going to be probably as surprised as all of you.”
KREMLIN HITS BACK
The Kremlin on Wednesday hit back by reminding her of her gaffe when she sought to “reset” relations with Russia with a button mislabelled as “overload”.
Asked about her remarks, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Clinton was known in Russia for her attempts to turn everything upside down, but most of all for her 2009 gaffe when a symbolic button designed to mark a “reset” of US-Russia ties, was instead labelled “overload” in Russian.
“It is clear that this was probably not a deliberate mistake, but very telling,” Peskov said.
At the time of Clinton’s gaffe, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told her the Russian verb the United States had used was incorrect but said the button would be put on his desk.
“It is probably necessary to remind Mrs Clinton of the numerous waves of Nato expansion and the approach of the alliance’s military infrastructure to our borders,” Peskov said.
Nato, created in 1949 to provide collective security against the Soviet Union, enlarged after the 1991 collapse of the Union with the inclusion of former Soviet and Warsaw Pact countries.
Launching the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Putin listed his key aims as halting Nato’s eastward enlargement and ending what he called the “genocide” of Russian-speaking people by “nationalists and neo-Nazis” in Ukraine since Moscow’s 2014 annexation of Crimea.
Putin’s actions spurred Finland, which shares a long border with Russia, to join Nato. Sweden also aims to join.
– REUTERS
