The Olympics had barely wrapped up and the wild dogs released back into Sochi when the Ukraine began a fracturing internal crisis that lead to Vladimir Putin seizing the Crimea back from Ukrainian control, in a de facto, if not de jure annexation.
English: Vladimir Putin and Gerhard Schroeder (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The American response? Obama and Putin spoke on the phone and Obama expressed “grave concern.” Take that Putin!
It’s pretty clear that Putin has taken the measure of Obama, found him wanting as a serious leader, and has decided he can ignore him in most matters. After the Putin checkmate in Syria, I’m sure he feels he has free range to act in what he perceives are his interests worldwide. But let’s not give Putin too much credit here, the US foreign policy juggernaut he faces are Obama and that blowhard John Kerry; a pair that would find themselves outfoxed at a high school model UN.
The US does have alternatives in dealing with Putin; it’s not a choice between craven surrender or total war. Putin does want things, and has gotten things already that he hasn’t deserved. Maybe some of those things should be taken from him.
One is membership in the G-8. The G-7 was a group of the largest economies on that planet. And Russia wanted in to showcase that it too, was a big power. Maybe Russia should be kicked out. It’s something that would make Putin furious and take from him something he really wanted.
Another is to withdraw from the New START treaty. That’s the current treaty governing the reduction of US and Russian nuclear forces. Of course the problem with this is that START is something that Obama probably wanted more than Putin does. But because Obama wants it so much, it would send a message on how serious Obama is on Russia’s intervention. Of course, for that very reason, START would never be on the table. Obama just isn’t that serious.
Wow, I just wrote something profound! But that’s the problem, and one of the reasons among many that Putin feels free to walk over the international community and particularly President Obama.
Because Obama just isn’t that serious.
Mike Street Station 
Pingback: The winds blow cold | Grumpy Opinions
I think the mainstream media owes Mitt Romney an “I Told You So” tour.
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/116840/mitt-romney-and-russia-putin-and-ukraine
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Good old New Republic. A liberal magazine that always has the courage to admit it was wrong after it’s absolutely too late. Just for fun I did a quick search at the New Republic site and found several articles from 2012 mocking Romney’s comment about Russia being our number one geo-political foe.
Well…at least they admitted they were wrong. No other magazine or website is going to say that. But it reinforces my belief that Romney, as much as I disagreed with him on many issues, would have been a far better President and would have been far more capable of navigating a dangerous and threatening world than the current leadership.
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So, now that Putin is backing down, I guess that means that Obama looks strong, right? That would seem to be how your logic works.
Or maybe (now, bear with me for a second here, because there’s a complicated logical chain here), maybe your simplistic viewpoint of the world is almost entirely wrong, and diplomacy is the best way to bring things to a peaceful end.
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I don’t see Putin backing down at all. In fact, I suspect his de facto annexation of Crimea is more or less permanent, So as a clue to how my logic works, until Putin actually “backs down,” than he has not backed down.
As far as my worldview goes, my predictions are running better than Jean Dixon’s so I think I must be on to something.
And the suggestions I made in my post were all diplomatic. What else?
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