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OCTOBER 29, 2015 | The Jewish Home
Feature The Week In News
JANUARY 12, 2017 | The Jewish Home
Are We Seeing the Beginning of the Cold War 2.0? How U.S.-Russia Relations have Deteriorated under Obama’s Watch BY NACHUM SOROKA
P
resident Obama’s expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats and the U.S. government’s closure of two Russian compounds in New York and Maryland may be the beginnings of the Cold War 2.0 if not for the fact that in less than two weeks the new U.S. president will have much warmer feelings towards the former Soviet Union than the current administration. Throughout the Obama presidency, and even during the Bush administration, Russia under Vladimir
Putin has been the United States’ foreign policy wildcard, the country that keeps policymakers looking over their shoulders, never certain of its intentions. Over the course of the second half of the twentieth century, even in the last twenty years after the Cold War, the U.S. has learned to deal with the Russians in the cautious, Reaganesque fashion of doveryai, no proveryai: trust, but verify. Indeed, while Obama imposed sanctions on Russian intelligence agencies
and technology companies thought to be behind the hacking of the Democratic National Committee over the summer, namely the powerful foreign intelligence agency, the GRU, the U.S. has imposed sanctions on Russian interests four times since 2014. And although the most recent hacks on U.S. government officials stole the most headlines, the Pentagon tagged hackers from Russia as early as 1996, a mere five years after the fall of the Soviet Union, including one breach
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