Foreign Policy Scholar: Obama Gets 'Played at the Diplomatic Table'

A scholar at the American Enterprise Institute said that President Barack Obama and the State Department get “played” at the diplomatic table by their adversaries because the Obama administration does not understand that foreign policy is a zero-sum game.

Appearing on Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot channel 125 with Breitbart News Executive Chairman and host Stephen K. Bannon to speak about the crisis in Ukraine, Michael Rubin said that though there is “nothing wrong” with talking to rogue regimes and adversaries, the Obama administration does not understand “that talking has a cost.”

Michael Rubin, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a senior lecturer at the Naval Postgraduate School’s Center for Civil-Military Relations, said that Ronald Reagan understood that talking should be “at the end of a process rather than the beginning of a process.” He referenced Reagan’s multi-year military build up before he spoke to Mikhail Gorbachev.

Rubin, who previously edited the Middle East Quarterly and is the author of Dancing with the Devil: The Perils of Engaging Rogue Regimes, said that “leverage seems to be a dirty word” in Obama’s State Department.

“That’s why we get played at the diplomatic table,” Rubin said.

He also said that what happens in Kiev “doesn’t stay in Kiev” and warned the Obama administration against issuing “red lines” that it is not willing to enforce. He said the ultimate question would be whether Europe has any red lines of its own as things escalate between Russia and its neighbors.