At today’s meeting in Mexico between President Obama and his Russian counterpart, the U.S. leader sought to persuade Vladimir Putin that America had no desire to come between Moscow and its loyal client state Syria. Counting on his personal charm and instinctive belief that a demonstration of his good will toward those who are hostile to the United States will solve most problems, Obama thought he could convince Putin to back off on his support for the murderous Assad regime and join the West in pushing for an end to the slaughter in Syria. But the grim look on the faces of both Obama and Putin after they endured two hours of each other’s company indicates just how badly the American failed.
Obama’s attempt to sweet talk the former KGB agent went about as well as some of his previous efforts to apologize his way into foreign popularity. It’s not just that Putin doesn’t trust Obama — though he obviously doesn’t — but that after three and a half years in power and one failed “reset” later, the U.S. president still doesn’t understand the basic dynamic of Russian attitudes toward the United States. The meeting, the first between the two men, was clearly a dialogue of the deaf. The net result is another humiliation for Obama who not only has failed to do anything about the massacres in Syria but also will now be seen to have tried and failed to get Assad’s patron to abandon him. For his part, Putin has looked Obama in the eye and saw a man determined to kowtow to Moscow, a sign of weakness that Putin could not mistake and will not fail to exploit in the future.
The cold shoulder given to Obama by Putin only underlines the downward spiral of U.S.-Russia relations. With the Russians sending missiles to Syria and now reports from Iran discussing the possibility of joint military exercises with Russia, Obama, whose camp mocked Mitt Romney’s description of Russia as America’s number one geopolitical foe, is seeing Putin restore his country’s Soviet-era influence over parts of the Middle East.
Obama cannot be blamed for Putin’s bad behavior or the Russian’s determination to cut America off at the knees any chance he gets. But the president’s characteristic try at romancing Putin may set the stage for even worse to come. Just as his past appeasement of Russia by dumping missile defense for the Poles and the Czechs failed to win the Putin regime’s failure, by starting the talks by conceding that after the theoretical fall of Bashar al-Assad Syria would remain under Moscow’s influence, Obama increased the likelihood that the Russians will continue to push the envelope in their ongoing effort to undermine U.S. influence. Rather than making it clear to the Russians that the United States would not tolerate such misbehavior or the continuation in power of a murderous tyrant, Obama has worsened an already fraught relationship and virtually guaranteed that Assad has nothing to worry about no matter how many people he kills.
The fault here is not just the bad intentions of the Russians but also the hopeless romanticism of the U.S. administration about winning the hearts and minds of foreign leaders and their nations. Though it has long been obvious his belief that his charm and demonstration of good will would be enough to overcome stark policy differences with other countries is a self-serving myth, President Obama continues to blunder along, trusting in the power of his personality. That will cost the Syrian people dearly. If he continues along these lines and lets the Russians, Chinese and the Europeans drive the effort to pressure Iran to give up its nuclear program in the ditch, the cost for the Middle East and the world will be even higher.
It's obvious why Obama failed. n nPutin must be a racist. n n
So long as President Obama clings to the Chamberlainesque belief that by the force of his personality he can persuade the unpersuadable, then we can expect more of these types of humiliations. Probably the only way left open to begin to repair the damage is the clear and unequivocal rejection of Mr. Obama come November.
What the president is incapable of grasping is that Vladimir Putin does not care a fig about the American media and its enthusiastic backing of Obama. It does not sway the Russian in the least. What we have here is yet another way in which the down-on-all-fours catamite behavior of the media with respect to Barack Obama does the man no favors. He still does not appreciate the extent to which his election in 2008 depended on the wholesale corruption of journalism we witnessed that year, still imagines HE did it all by his lonesome. His stolid witlessness on that heading was nowhere better illustrated than in his remarks during the battle over passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in 2010-11. Many Democrats, especially in the House, were aghast at what they were about to do to their careers — they could read the polls too, after all — and were busily and copiously soiling themselves. Obama, apparently in all seriousness, attempted to buck up their spirits by assuring them that the secret weapon in the fight for the ACA that none of them had apparently factored in was . . . well . . . him! "You've got me," he remarked insouciantly. At the time, that reminded me of nothing so much as Mad Magazine's Alfred E. Newman proclaiming on the cover of every issue: "What? Me worry?" Amazingly, that also seems to have been the ENTIRETY of Obama's plan to persuade the American people not to evict the Democrats en bloc from the House and Senate in 2010. n nThe poor sap is possibly still wondering how that election got away from him, an election in which even slavish media cheer-leading was useless in the teeth of the public's understandable hostility to such a God-awful piece of legislation, such a wreck of human ingenuity, so deformed in aspect that one must ransack volumes of mythology to find its equal in monstrousness. It must keep the president up nights to this day, I suspect, puzzling over how someone as charming and eloquent as himself could not single-handedly save the thing. What oh what went wrong? Well, I'll tell you. The awful truth, which dawned far too late on all those ex-Democratic Congressmen, is that all along the president prodding them to walk that particular plank HAD NO OTHER PLAN THAN HIS OWN FAT TRAP to salvage public opinion in support of the bill. What a shock that must''ve been post-passage! But then, why would he behave differently when the media had been telling him for going on two years that he could walk on water when he felt like it? n nI am reminded of an old cartoon of a mouse staring down a tiger while (unbeknown to the mouse) an enormous elephant stands behind him. The mouse of course concludes that he has frightened off the tiger. As a result, one imagines, that witless mouse will get into serious trouble some day. n nPutin has realized for some time now that all he has to contend with vis-a-vis the USA is Barack Obama's hyper-inflated opinion of his own persuasiveness. How that must warm his heart.
Not only is Putin a racist, but so is Ayatollah Khamenei, Achmadinejad, Merkel, Harry Reid, and all the others who don't take his advice or do what he says.
If the Bamster isn’t already the Kremlin’s stooge it’s a measure of his incompetence as president that he would even try to reason with someone like Putin.
"The fault here is not just the bad intentions of the Russians but also the hopeless romanticism of the U.S. administration about winning the hearts and minds of foreign leaders and their nations." Putin can at the least be said to be doing things in his own interests. (Meh, I guess Putin acts in Russia's interest on the geopolitical scene, as far as establishing alliances with anti-American regimes and countries goes–that can be credited to him, oppressor that he is in Russia.) Pooh-pooh intentions! It is Obama's intentions to cater to the Russians that has left him immobile in a time of strategic opportunity and possible development in Syria, and that has caused him to renege on several important developments (such as missile defense systems) in America's interests in former Soviet countries and elsewhere. n nRight now, I can't disparage anyone who sees anything in terms of proper objectives and interests. (That said, is Putin a legitimate agent or sound a guy? NO!–Obama is doubling down on fruitless policy built on airy and morally unsound sentiment. When he kowtows to Russia at the clear expense of other countries and allies, who are usually if not always more legitimate entities–I'm not even inclined to say he has GOOD intentions.)