Transatlantic Politics

Hillary’s charm tour in Europe ended in a big mockery, as she found herself lost in translation. When in Geneva, Hillary gave Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov a plastic button, after Joe Biden’s announcement last month that the Obama administration has to hit the ‘reset button’ in US-Russian relations.

"You got it wrong" - Lavrov said. Instead of "reset", the button read "overload" or "overcharge" in Russian. Whooops… Sorry, wrong button.

No problem, DeeDee, thank God you’re not the POTUS and don’t have a real button to play with.

And hopefully this embarrassment will put an end to such gimmick-diplomacy. What exactly was that button supposed to mean? A fresh start with Russia, based on what? Down at the NATO headquarters in Brussels, Hillary did not sound so much different than Condi. Hell, she even called Poland and the Czech Republic "visionary" for signing up for missile defense, a plan that really pisses off Russia.

Of course, her hawkish talk may have been just a way to soothe fears in Europe after that Obama letter offering to scrap missile defence in return for real Russian help against Iran. But one can hardly say what’s more naive: to think that such trade-off would really work or to believe that the Kremlin would buy this "fresh start" thing based on a gimmick which wasn’t even spelled correctly.

But the reset-button episode was not the only gaffe. While in Brussels, Hillary also managed to misspell two of her counterparts names during a press conference - she called the EU top diplomat Javier Solana a cream candy - ‘Solano’ - and the EU commissioner for external relations ‘Benina’ - when her real name is Benita. Both were standing right next to her and rolled their eyes thinking "oh boy, why can’t the Americans learn the names of the people they talk to?"

Maybe all of this is just a warm-up for gaffe-master Biden, who is in Brussels this week to convince Europeans to commit more troops to Pakistan. Sorry, Afghanistan. Or just call it AfPak, like most of the Obamites now do. Is much easier. Also solves the eternal question of how it’s spelled correctly - Iran or Iraq?

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