Barack Obama during a meeting in the Oval Office on March 3, 2024 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Andrew Harrer-Pool/Getty Images)
Moscow’s quasi-invasion of the Crimean peninsula last week, carried out either by its own military personnel or some kind of ethnically Russian mercenary force with the Kremlin’s oversight and assistance, naturally sparked a fresh wave of condemnations of President Barack Obama’s foreign policy. Critics say the White House has rested too often on the assumption of rational behavior by global adversaries, the evidence notwithstanding. As the Washington Post editorial board, perhaps the purest distillation of elite Beltway sentiment as there is, put it in a Sunday column, “President Obama has led a foreign policy based more on how he thinks the world should operate than on reality.” Now the failures of the president’s Syria approach — which has allowed the Assad regime to reassert control of much of the country and brutalize the remaining rebels in the meantime — combined with still-fresh memories of Russia’s war with Georgia in 2008 (George W. Bush was president at the time, but the echoes are haunting his successor) are being offered as evidence that America’s sustained focus on combating terrorism after 2001 has sapped it of the ability to recognize (and respond to) traditional, 20th-century military aggression.
In other words, the Cold War may be over, but the days of the United States and Russia going toe-to-toe almost certainly are not. Now the White House needs to accept this reality, and quickly, less a former Soviet republic is allowed to be divided by Vladimir Putin just weeks after the PR triumph that was the Sochi Olympic Games (no terrorist attacks, no domestic protest explosions, just lots of free media). Of course, we already have plenty of evidence that this narrative is a bit too convenient for the president’s antagonists — after all, Russian financial markets have promptly begun to tank in response to the conflict, the Kremlin’s own polling shows some 70 percent of the domestic Russian population opposed to Moscow’s intervention, and Putin’s sustained effort to improve his nation’s standing diplomatically (what with the G8 summit coming up, also in Sochi) is on the line. But the point remains: President Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry, and U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power are under pressure, and may have already waited too long to act. Russian forces appeared Monday to threaten further intervention in both Crimea and pro-Kremlin cities in eastern Ukraine, with talk of a deadline at 10PM EST for Ukrainian forces still on the peninsula (and loyal to the government in Kiev) to stand down.
VISUAL CONTEXT: Russian assessment of economic performance and President Putin’s job approval.
Which brings us to the most potent criticism of the president thus far: his continued insistence on laying down markers — red lines, so to speak — and then allowing them to be breached without significant costs. That’s what we saw with the Assad regime, and what we may be seeing now with Ukraine, Kerry and company warning Putin but failing to elaborate just what he has coming beyond financial discomfort. The difference from the Georgia situation in 2008 (and the ongoing Syrian quagmire) is that this represents direct provocation from a Cold War frenemy, with pro-E.U., pro-Western citizens in the mix. Rhetoric and sanctions won’t be enough, nor will suggesting it would be dangerous to risk putting boots on the ground. Even among the president’s critics, few are calling for the United States to respond militarily, but that Obama’s brain trust must find a way to make this latest adventure rather unpleasant for Vladimir — or else suffer the loss of even more credibility on the world stage — is now beyond dispute.
