I agree with your point here. With Trump, he was at least supplying Ukraine to maintain the territory it actually legitimately holds. Obama/Biden were bitching about Crimea purely for optics and it mostly picked up in the 2016 election cycle because Trump was viewed as somewhat friendly to Russia.
That's not to say Russia hasn't done stuff to us. They've hit us with a few cyber attacks. We also generally have some competing interests with Russia that could have us stepping on each others toes in the future. But ever since Trump, the demand to be anti-Russia has been far over-inflated. I remember when Romney got dinged by Obama in 2012 for having "outdated cold-war thinking" for saying Russia is a threat to the US. I remember when Clinton sold out uranium to Russia. I remember when Obama promised Russia "more flexibility" after the 2012 election. Russia, is frankly the geopolitical step-child issue of US foreign policy debate. Up until 2016, we were dating to look at Russia in terms of increasingly normalized ties. Frankly, the political left was willing to sacrifice all that to smear Trump, and the Neocon right went along with it because they hate Trump. And Trump acquiesced somewhat to it, so as to not upset some of his necessary political allyships.
I agree with your point here. With Trump, he was at least supplying Ukraine to maintain the territory it actually legitimately holds. Obama/Biden were bitching about Crimea purely for optics and it mostly picked up in the 2016 election cycle because Trump was viewed as somewhat friendly to Russia.
That's not to say Russia hasn't done stuff to us. They've hit us with a few cyber attacks. We also generally have some competing interests with Russia that could have us stepping on each others toes in the future. But ever since Trump, the demand to be anti-Russia has been far over-inflated. I remember when Romney got dinged by Obama in 2012 for having "outdated cold-war thinking" for saying Russia is a threat to the US. I remember when Clinton sold out uranium to Russia. I remember when Obama promised Russia "more flexibility" after the 2012 election. Russia, is frankly the geopolitical step-child issue of US foreign policy debate. Up until 2016, we were dating to look at Russia in terms of increasingly normalized ties. Frankly, the political left was willing to sacrifice all that to smear Trump, and the Neocon right went along with it because they hate Trump. And Trump acquiesced somewhat to it, so as to not upset some of his necessary political allyships.