Another Horrible Non-Argument on Russia

Noam Scheiber, The Stump:

Obama’s strongest response to the Russia situtation may be the same one he’s used in other foreign policy contexts: By focusing on Iraq, we took our eyes off the real long-term threats to U.S. security. Global terrorism was one of them. Afghanistan and Pakistan were two others. The rise of Russia still another. Worse, Iraq has deprived us of all sorts of leverage we would have had with Russia. With our troops bogged down, we don’t have much of a deterrent capability. (Not that we’d want to threaten force, but you’d like all options on the table so the Russians know there’s a practical limit to their actions.) [my emph – JP] And we now desperately need Russia’s help in dealing with Iran’s nuclear ambitions, which we might not need as much if we weren’t in Iraq and vulenrable to Iranian adventurism there. (Which is to say, Iran has leverage over us thanks to Iraq, which we need the Russians to counterbalance.)

I don’t even know where to begin. Fortunately for Scheiber, we still have a few spare nukes to target on Moscow, just, y’know, to give Putin and Medvedev a sense of the practical limit to their actions. If for some insane reason Obama adopts and runs with this argument, he should be whipped out of Washington like a dweeb. But really above all this sounds like the kind of argument Hillary Clinton would make. Now that’s tough!