Hillary Clinton Defends the Russian ‘Reset’: It Worked

The infamous Russian “reset” Hillary Clinton established during her State Department tenure has been looked back on by many on the right with derision, given all the big news this year about Russia and Ukraine. But in an interview with New York Times reporter John Harwood, Clinton defended the reset and said it did work.

Harwood highlighted a “line of criticism” that the reset just didn’t work. Clinton said, “I would take issue with the way you characterize that, because what I think I demonstrate in the book is that the reset worked. It was an effort to try to obtain Russian cooperation on some key objectives while Medvedev was president.”

Clinton argued that the reset was “a device to try to refocus attention” in Russia to deal with foreign matters, like Iran building an underground facility, that required their cooperation.

However, she continued on to say she knew the reset was over with when Vladimir Putin decided to return to the presidency.

“We’d gotten all we could get from the reset. The reset succeeded, but we had to make adjustments, given the fact that Putin was going to resume both the real position of presidency and begin, I thought and argued, to be more aggressive in his foreign policy.”

Listen to the audio here, via NPR:

[h/t NYT]
[image via Chatham House]

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Follow Josh Feldman on Twitter: @feldmaniac

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