Still, as the runaway favorite for her party’s nomination, Clinton will have to provide further answers if she runs.

“I think Russia is the single most substantive issue that she failed at from conception to implementation,” argued political-risk expert Ian Bremmer, of the Eurasia Group.

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reset

“The view of the United States [toward] Russia is that the Russians just don’t matter that much,” Bremmer said. “There was a real belief in the White House that you could work with Medvedev, Putin was the problem, but Medvedev was in charge …. that was a real misread.”

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), one of his party’s most hawkish voices, singled out Clinton for criticism on a policy that stemmed from Obama.

“Of course, she got it wrong,” McCain told the Daily Beast. “She believed that somehow there would be a reset with a guy who was a KGB colonel who always had ambitions to restore the Russian empire. That’s what this is all about.”

P.J. Crowley, the assistant secretary for public affairs during Clinton’s tenure, argued that the reset not only worked but also helped lay the groundwork for improving negotiations on Mideast issues while Medvedev was in power.

“The reset died when Putin returned to the presidency, and obviously it’s been a prickly and now deteriorating relationship in light of recent events,” said Crowley, adding that Obama’s reset perspective was the result of an inherited situation when Russia invaded Georgia in 2008.

For Clinton, the notion of the “reset” is fraught with the troublesome memory of an early faux pas. During an early meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, she presented him with a red button inscribed with what she hoped was the correct Russian word.

“You got it wrong,” Lavrov told her as the cameras whirred. Lavrov and Clinton laughed at the time, but the moment presents Republicans with a visual aid for television ads for the policy, should she become a candidate.

“She’s crazy to run on Obama’s foreign and defense policy even one iota more than she already has to by virtue of being a first-term accomplice,” said former McCain adviser Michael Goldfarb, currently a strategist who also works with the Washington Free Beacon. “She was embarrassingly compliant on the reset; she can’t run from that. But cutting the Army by 20 percent? Leaving Syria to the slaughter? Letting Iran go nuclear? … I think Hillary will want to show she’s made of sterner stuff.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment on Goldfarb’s remarks.

Korb argued that, even with specific points that Republicans will attack her over, Clinton’s overall foreign policy experience could be a plus against a potential field of GOP contenders without that type of background.

“I don’t see any of the Republican candidates [for 2016] that can offset that,” Korb said.