From Victor Hanson:
Putin, however, has a logic of his own. American intervention or non-intervention in particular crises is not just the issue for Putin. Instead he sees fickleness and confusion in American foreign policy. He has manipulated and translated this into American impotence and thus reigns freely on his borders.
Red lines in Syria proved pink. Putin’s easily peddled his pseudo-WMD removal plan for Syria. America is flipping and flopping and flipping in Egypt. Missile defense begat no missile defense with the Poles and Czechs. Lead from behind led to Benghazi and chaos. Deadlines and sanctions spawned no deadlines and no sanctions with Iran. Then there was the reset with Russia. Obama’s predecessors, not his enemies were blamed. Iraq was cut loose. We surged only with deadlines to stop surging in Afghanistan. Loud civilian trials were announced for terrorists and as quietly dropped. Silly new rubrics appeared like overseas contingency operations, workplace violence, man-caused disasters, a secular Muslim Brotherhood, jihad as a personal journey, and a chief NASA mission being outreach to Muslims.
Putin added all that up. He saw a pattern of words without consequences, of actions that are ephemeral and not sustained, and so he concluded that a weaker power like Russia most certainly can bully a neighbor with access to stronger powers like the United States. For Putin and his ilk, willpower and his mythologies about Russian moral superiority are worth more than the hardware and data points of the West.
Yep, pretty much. Being the most powerful military in the world is of questionable utility if the Commander in Chief of those forces does not believe in the intrinsic value of military power or American power in general. Since day one of his presidency everything Obama has done on the foreign policy side has been guided by a clear intention to dramatically reduce America's strategic posture, shrink it, reorient it towards liberal notions of humility and internationalism and hollow out, gut, compromise, undermine, water down, hamper, constrict [one can argue degree] the adjunct military power attending and enabling that posture. Every single thing he's done on or related to the world stage has been tainted by that desire, that ethos. In short he has essentially intimated, and sometimes none too subtly, to all those who under appreciate, malign, dislike, resent, hate or outright despise American power that he shares their concerns. Possibly the most disturbing thing revealed in Gates' book was revelation that nothing, nothing having to do with the US military roused Obama's interest or distemper more than the problems associated with allowing gays to serve openly - think about what that says about the guy, his world view, his sympathies - and realise that Putin, the mullahs in Iran, Islamic radicals everywhere and the savvy mandarins of the Middle Kingdom are all watching this and adjusting their calculations accordingly.
