Democratic presidential candidate former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton touted “exercising my judgment to advise the president on what to do…on Russia” but admitted that Russia “is trying to move the boundaries of the post-World War II Europe” and their aggression has “to be responded to” and the US needs to do more to support its partners during Thursday’s Democratic candidates debate on MSNBC.
Hilary stated President Obama, “turned to me to be secretary of state. And when it comes to the biggest counterterrorism issues that we faced, in this administration, namely whether or not to go after Bin Laden, I was at that table, I was exercising my judgment to advise the president on what to do, on that, on Iran, on Russia, on China, on a whole raft of issues, because i know from my own experience, that you’ve got to be ready on day one.”
Later she said, in response to a question on Secretary of Defense Ash Carter arguing that Russia is more of a national security challenge than Iran and North Korea, “[W]hat Secretary Carter is looking at, is the constant pressure that Russia’s putting on our European allies, the way that Russia is trying to move the boundaries of the post-World War II Europe, the way that he is trying to set European countries against one another, seizing territory, holding it in Crimea, beginning to explore whether they could make some inroads in the Baltics. We know that they are deeply engaged in supporting Assad, because they want to have a place in the Middle East. They have a naval base. They have an air base in Syria. They want to hang on to that. And I think what Secretary Carter is seeing, and I’m glad he is, is that we’ve got to get NATO back working for the common defense. We’ve got to do more to support our partners in NATO and we have to send a very clear message to Putin that this kind of belligerence, this kind of testing of boundaries, will have to be responded to, and the best way to do that is put more armor in, put more money from the Europeans in, so they’re actually contributing more to their own defense.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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