Mediaboss Marketing

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Washington (CNN) -- Hillary Clinton is talking tough about Russia these days, for reasons both pragmatic and political.

The overwhelming favorite for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016, if she decides to run, Clinton already faces GOP criticism for allegedly being soft on Moscow as President Barack Obama's secretary of state until last year.

A recent Republican National Committee statement mocked the "reset" button she offered to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in 2009 in what was a symbolic effort by the Obama administration to move past Russia's military backing for two breakaway regions in Georgia.

Now Russia's attempted annexation of the Crimean Peninsula from neighboring Ukraine, another former Soviet territory, has again put Washington-Moscow relations in the spotlight.

Using generally stronger and more provocative language than the administration she once represented, Clinton seeks to buff her own foreign policy credentials and those of her party without straying too far from the official government messaging and tactics.

"She has to walk a very fine line"

"She has to walk a very fine line," Brown University political scientist Wendy Schiller said of the former first lady and U.S. senator.

The goal is to maintain her credibility as a former secretary of state, and the Democratic Party's credibility on security and defense issues, as the nation heads toward congressional elections in November and the presidential vote two years later, Schiller told CNN.

"She sees it as important not just for her but for the Democratic Party as a whole," Schiller said. Otherwise, "you go from the party that killed Osama bin Laden to the party that can't stop Vladimir Putin."

Read the original post:

Clinton's fine line on Putin