How did our relations with Russia go so far wrong so quickly? The Obama administration hoped to have a “reset” of our bilateral ties by wiping the slate clean. In giving the Russians a reset, we were showing a willingness to let bygones be bygones. Or, in their case, let Putin’s 2008 invasion of neighboring Republic of Georgia be forgotten. It was exactly the wrong thing to do. But the trouble with our Russian relations goes further back. After the collapse of Communism and the largely peaceful dissolution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in 1991, it seemed we were headed for a new era of liberal democracy in Russia. Boris Yeltsin was the brave, bluff, buoyant president of the Russian Federation who had boldly stood atop a tank in Moscow when the Communist Party made its last-ditch effort to seize power and depose the feckless Mikhail Gorbachev. Yeltsin was courageous, to be sure. He might easily have been killed. Still, he represented the...(Read Full Article)