How to Negotiate with a Bully

On Oct. 7, RT reported that four Russian missile ships in the Caspian Sea attacked 11 targets inside Syria with 26 cruise missiles. “According to objective control data, all the targets were destroyed. No civilian objects sustained damage,” said Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu. The missile barrage — and, one might argue, the whole Russian adventure in Syria — illustrates Russian bullying. When a former University of Chicago professor encounters a former KGB agent, one plays a “win-win” game where both stand to benefit while the other plays, “I win, you lose.”

It’s time President Obama learned how to negotiate with a bully.

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Reuel Gerecht, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, provided the backstory for that protest of the supposedly moderate President Rouhani. On July 31, Gerecht lambasted the search for a moderate in Iran because it ignored Iranian street protests, the assassination of expatriates, and the mass executions of political prisoners. On July 27, Gerecht decried absence of human source intelligence on the ground in Iran that indicated a coming failure of intelligence. By dancing to the tune of “Putin Rules,” Obama loses Iranian Street intelligence as a new Cold War heats up.

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