I think many miss the point in trying to blame Putin's 'aggression' on Obama's evidenced weakness, his demonstrated lack of enthusiasm for the uses and value of American power - yes, the malaise of left wing ideology that is Obama's foreign policy certainly sent a message to Putin and contributed to a perception of permissiveness that invited aggression both strategic and actual - and not just from Russia, we see this dynamic manifested in Iran's and China's thinking and actions too - but regardless of that I'd guess Putin probably goes into Crimea even with a president in the White House not by nature at best ambivalent, at worst antagonistic towards American power - and that's because the root cause of Putin's move was a relentless EU/NATO push eastward without anyone it seems in the West stopping to consider the ramifications of that and coming up with a plan of what to do should Russia push back - and also because apparently there are no leaders in the West with much skill at judging character, in this case Putin's, a problem which I largely ascribe to the naive arrogance of the liberal world view [although, to be fair, Bush also fucked up big time in this regard - but that had much less to do with ideology and much more to do with him not being the savviest bastard in the room when it came to calculations of that nature - in a democracy, flaws of ideology tend to be much more dangerous things than those of character I think - although the two do often feed off each other].
No, the real problem with the manifest weakness of Obama's foreign policy is that, post facto, it takes away options since any attempt to show strength now will not be taken seriously by Putin [and the world for that matter] and might indeed prove escalatory precisely because Putin would likely see it as more of a provocation to be tempted by than a threat to be worried about - worse than that, it has the destabilizing effect of playing right into Putin's long term strategy of scoring points off of perceptions of Western weakness, which consequently amplifies message to our allies that we cannot be relied upon and to our enemies that we can be manipulated [weakness always opens that door] and out maneuvered.
In short, Obama's evinced weakness did not explicitly cause Putin's aggression - it does however make the negative consequences and troubling dynamics that spill from that aggression prohibitively worse. With the embarrassment of Kerry's utterly predictable failures in negotiating 'peace' between Syria and its belligerents and Israel and theirs - and with the nuke 'negotiations' with Iran about to go nowhere fast as far as I'm concerned [although fully expect the rhetoric coming out of the 'negotiations' to say otherwise], America's standing in the world and overall strategic posture are decidedly in decline and about to get worse - which means the entire West in this regard is in decline - and since Obama gives every impression of being a guy who is ideologically predisposed to see this decline as not necessarily being a bad thing and maybe even well deserved, expect things to get rather interesting over the next few years or even months - as Victor Hanson says in nice little recap of the awfulness that is Obama's foreign policy, if you dislike, resent or feel threatened by a world order defined by American power now may be the time to strike while a president sits in the White House who seems to scorn that power as much as you do:
No, the real problem with the manifest weakness of Obama's foreign policy is that, post facto, it takes away options since any attempt to show strength now will not be taken seriously by Putin [and the world for that matter] and might indeed prove escalatory precisely because Putin would likely see it as more of a provocation to be tempted by than a threat to be worried about - worse than that, it has the destabilizing effect of playing right into Putin's long term strategy of scoring points off of perceptions of Western weakness, which consequently amplifies message to our allies that we cannot be relied upon and to our enemies that we can be manipulated [weakness always opens that door] and out maneuvered.
In short, Obama's evinced weakness did not explicitly cause Putin's aggression - it does however make the negative consequences and troubling dynamics that spill from that aggression prohibitively worse. With the embarrassment of Kerry's utterly predictable failures in negotiating 'peace' between Syria and its belligerents and Israel and theirs - and with the nuke 'negotiations' with Iran about to go nowhere fast as far as I'm concerned [although fully expect the rhetoric coming out of the 'negotiations' to say otherwise], America's standing in the world and overall strategic posture are decidedly in decline and about to get worse - which means the entire West in this regard is in decline - and since Obama gives every impression of being a guy who is ideologically predisposed to see this decline as not necessarily being a bad thing and maybe even well deserved, expect things to get rather interesting over the next few years or even months - as Victor Hanson says in nice little recap of the awfulness that is Obama's foreign policy, if you dislike, resent or feel threatened by a world order defined by American power now may be the time to strike while a president sits in the White House who seems to scorn that power as much as you do:
The world is confused. Is the U.S. just inept, and therefore our friends and enemies for a while longer are putting decisions on hold, assuming that wiser heads in the Democratic party, or the voters in 2014 and 2016, will correct the aberration? Or is the new anti-strategy a deliberate effort to diminish U.S. influence and outsource regional problems to local hegemonies, on the theory that Iran, Russia, and China have more legitimate influences in their own neighborhoods?
Who knows? But most people abroad fear that we have entered a very dangerous period. It is becoming clear that the United States cannot continue on its present course and still be the United States, and without the United States in the lead, the world cannot remain the world as we have known it since 1945. But, unless a return to sanity arrives before then, the next two and a half years are a window of opportunity for lots of bad people to cash in their chips and take their winnings to the bank.
