The Patriot Post® · Weekend Review: Obama (Again) Goes Wobbly on Ukraine


https://patriotpost.us/articles/24242-weekend-review-obama-again-goes-wobbly-on-ukraine-2014-03-22

By: Jeff Jacoby

This is no time to go wobbly, but when it comes to foreign policy, wobbly is what Team Obama does best. … To be sure, “wobbly” isn’t the word the administration would use. It prefers terms like “flexibility” or “reset.” Yet from the Kremlin’s perspective, the bottom line is crystal-clear: American leadership in the world is weaker than it has been in decades. Whether that is the result of war-weariness, ideology, or naiveté, the effect is the same. Garry Kasparov, the former world chess champion who now campaigns for democracy and human rights, wrote the other day that the West “has become so risk-averse that it would rather fold than call any bluff, no matter how good its cards are.” And Putin is a cold-blooded poker player.

No one expects or wants the United States to go to war over Crimea. But when will it dawn on the president that a US foreign policy based on retrenchment and accommodation makes the world more dangerous, not less? With the best will in the world, the United States cannot retreat from confronting the planet’s bad actors and expect them to reciprocate in kind. Timidity is provocative and invites aggression. The way to discourage hostile regimes is through strength and resistance, not sotto voce promises to be more flexible, or lectures about “19th-century behavior.” …

All we know for sure is that Russia paid no price for its illegal aggression against Georgia, and so far it has paid no price – other than Obama’s paltry sanctions – for its raid on Ukraine. Like bullies and thugs from time immemorial, Putin will keep finding new victims to target. The more he is allowed to get away with, the more he will demand. You don’t have to go back to the 19th century to know that it’s folly to try to appease the unappeasable. (Read the rest.)