In an effort to capitalize on his country's achievement in averting a U.S. strike on Syria, Russian President Vladimir Putin penned an article in The New York Times on Wednesday, chiding America about its history of military intervention, and that a strike would not be wise, CNN reported.
"It's alarming that military intervention in internal conflicts in foreign countries has become commonplace for the United States," Putin wrote in the piece. "Is it America's long-term interest? I doubt it. Millions around the world increasingly see America not as a model of democracy but as relying solely on brute force, cobbling coalitions together under the slogan 'you're either with us or against us."
The Russian leader seemed to particularly criticize President Barack Obama's line in his address from the White House on Tuesday in which the U.S. President said that while America can not be a global cop, it ought to act when certain atrocities occur.
"That's what makes us exceptional," Obama said. "With humility, but with resolve, let us never lose sight of that essential truth."
Putin, in response, wrote, "it is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation," he wrote in the newspaper.
American pundits weighed in on Putin's scathing critique of U.S. policy and his direct rebuke of President Obama. An underlying issue raised was how some people were annoyed that Putin warned Obama about military action without U.N. Security Council approval.
"Man who launched military action in Georgia and Chechnya without UN say-so says wars without it are illegal?", New York Post journalist John Podhoretz tweeted.
Russia had blamed Georgia for starting the war between the two countries in 2008 during which Russian troops occupied two breakaway territories under Georgian control, as well as large parts of Georgia, CNN reported.
Others referred to another op-ed Putin wrote for The New York Times in 1999, in which he wrote about the need to employ military action to thwart terrorism.
At the time, Putin wrote, "No government can stand idly by when terrorism strikes," he wrote. "It is the solemn duty of all governments to protect their citizens from danger."
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is meeting with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in Geneva, Switzerland to discuss potential diplomatic means between the two sides to get Assad to dismantle his stockpiles of chemical weapons.
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