Though the egg on Debbie Wasserman Shultz’s face is still dripping from the DNC WikiLeaks email scandal, Hillary Clinton’s campaign is addressing the recent WikiLeaks email crisis the only way it knows how – shifting blame. But rather than the butler, this time Hillary is pointing her finger at the Bolsheviks.

“What’s disturbing to us is that experts are telling us Russian state actors broke into the DNC, stole these emails, and other experts are now saying that the Russians are releasing these emails for the purpose of actually of helping Donald Trump,” Hillary’s campaign manager Robby Mook said Sunday. Mook was desperately trying to deflect attention from some lecherous emails that treated the LGBT and Hispanic communities, to name a few, less than honorably.

The Kremlin denied any involvement but Republican nominee Donald Trump saw an opening. In a fiery Florida press conference Tuesday, Trump asked the Russians to help locate Clinton’s 30,000 missing emails. The tongue-in-cheek comment served as a reminder that Russia – thanks to Hillary’s careless emailing – probably has the goods on the former Secretary of State.

And though the Democrat response to Trump was to yell treason, the DNC email leak and Hillary’s response highlights the fact that the Clinton camp would rather alienate a growing global power than address the hypocrisy of the DNC emails. It serves as a reminder that Bill lost Russia in the 90s and Hillary would all but eviscerate whatever diplomacy we have left.

“[F]or NATO to fulfill its real promise of peace and democracy in Europe it will not be enough simply to take on new missions as the need arises,” President Bill Clinton proclaimed during his 1996 reelection campaign.

“NATO must also take in new members, including those from among its former adversaries. It must reach out to all the new democracies in Central Europe, the Baltics and the New Independent States of the former Soviet Union.”

After being elected to a second term, President Clinton made good on his promise to rapidly expand NATO to Russia’s doorstep and “put aside the Cold War prism.”

With bi-partisan support the NATO Enlargement Facilitation Act was passed and by 1999 the old Soviet satellites of Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic were welcomed into NATO.

Encouraged by an American mentality to increase (rather than decrease) global commitments in the post-Cold War world, Albania, Bulgaria, Estonia, Croatia, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia formed the Vilnius group and were granted NATO membership in 2002.

Though the Berlin Wall had been down just two decades, Clinton made it clear Russian complaints of NATO expansion would not deter the new era of American hegemony. Recognizing that the Russian bear was neutered, dazed, and thanks to Boris Yeltsin, drunk, Clinton was starting up where Patton left off.

Where Eisenhower, the man who led the Allied Forces during WWII, avoided a war with Moscow over Hungry in 1956, Clinton, the man who dodged his military duties, handed the Hungarian government the type of war guarantee that ignited the very war in which Eisenhower fought.

But why?

In an era in which Russia was emasculated and communism was on the run, why the need to kick her while she was down? Why rub salt in the wounds of a Russian people who were struggling with the transition to freedom?

What benefits did the United States receive by handing out NATO membership to nations that would clearly assume the roles of dependents and were more likely to start, rather than assist, in a confrontation?

And was there ever any doubt that Moscow would see NATO expansion as an act of Western encroachment?

There was a reason Russia preferred a buffer zone between her and the West. Historically, it was the West that had invaded Russia, not vice versa. Napoleon and Hitler are Exhibits A & B.

By expanding NATO to its doorstep, Clinton and friends were playing into Russian fears and insecurities and squandering any attempts at a real alliance with the down, but not out, nation. This, of course, would eventually give rise to Vladamir Putin – the man who the Clinton camp blames for hacking DNC emails.

What would have happened if the United States, instead of being tempted by the siren song of American hegemony, declared that the Cold War was won and, with that, NATO’s utility expired? What would have happened if President Clinton would have done yesterday what President Trump would do tomorrow – seriously alter NATO?

In the 90’s, the groundwork was there for a strong U.S./Russian alliance. East of the Urals, Russia’s population was dying and Beijing, busting at the seams, was eying the land she lost centuries ago. And even during the height of the Cold War, the Soviets and the Chinese viewed each other with suspicion.

But instead of working with Russia, Clinton and friends pushed her into the arms of Beijing. Now the two nations routinely hold joint naval drills. The Russian bear and the Asian tiger have found common ground in resisting an American hegemony that the American people never wanted.

And the diplomatic loss is not just with China. If the U.S. had worked with Russia (instead of against her), odds are Moscow would have put pressure on Tehran to denuclearize instead of selling her weapons and meeting with her generals.

“I know that some in Russia still look at NATO through a Cold War prism and, therefore, look at our proposals to expand it in a negative light. But I ask them to look again,” Clinton said about a decade ago.

Maybe it was Clinton who should have taken the second look.

Joseph R. Murray II, is administrator for LGBTrump, former campaign official for Pat Buchanan, and author of “Odd Man Out.” He can be reached at jrm@joemurrayenterprises.com.