Russia yet again shows its contempt for U.S. President Barack Obama, while building plans on how to best exploit his weaknesses and softness in the next 17 months, according to an American political expert.
Russian President Vladimir Putin showed how much he despises Obama by sending his agents into Estonia and kidnapping an Estonian security official last fall, just two days after Obama’s visit to the Baltic country, wrote Charles Krauthammer, an American political writer and Pulitzer Prize-winning syndicated columnist.
And just last week, after a long closed trial, Russia sentenced the kidnapped official to 15 years in jail. When ordering his agents to kidnap the Estonians official, Putin was certain that Obama would not even move his finger about it, Krauthammer wrote in his opinion piece for The Washington Post.
And when ordering Russian court to sentence the official to 15 years, Putin doesn’t expect any critical response from the Obama administration either. Putin has already developed a list of what he can do and what we can’t do. And frankly, the list of what he can do is much longer, and Putin keeps on adding new plans to it.
And why wouldn’t he? Putin has got another 17 months of Obama’s term to exploit his weaknesses and wreak havoc in the geopolitical order.
This is why Putin loves working with Obama
There are at least three indications why Putin feels so brazen about violating international rules and agreements, according to Krauthammer.
Firstly, Putin got extremely motivated after Obama had given thumbs up to Russia’s decree to lift the ban to deliver its S-300 anti-missile systems to Iran. Obama then explained his lack of concern by saying that it wasn’t ‘technically’ illegal and that he was “frankly surprised” by Putin’s patience with this decision.
Secondly, Obama’s concession in dropping the conventional-weapons and ballistic-missile embargoes, after Russian delegation backed Iran’s demands at the nuclear program negotiations.
And lastly, Putin’s annexation of Crimea and the subsequent invasion of Ukraine. And while Russia signed the Minsk ceasefire agreement in February this year, Russian troops still swarm eastern Ukraine.
Obama, in his turn, vowed to supply the Ukrainian government with lethal weapons to counter the Russian threat in case Russia doesn’t comply with the agreement. Clearly seeing that Putin continues to send his troops and heavy weaponry into the region, Obama still refuses to consider supplying Kyiv with lethal aid.
And while most military experts agree that such hesitation and inactivity from the Obama administration is illogical and poses a great threat to European security as well as the world’s security as a whole, some experts argue that supplying lethal weapons to the Ukrainian government would only provoke Putin to unleash an all-out war.
Krauthammer notes that since the Russian aggression in Eastern Europe began, regional states have been asking NATO to station its permanent bases in the region in order to guarantee a rapid response to any Russian aggression.
U.S.-led NATO has refused to do it. Instead, Obama offered to carry out military drills in the Baltics and Poland, while deploying 250 tanks and armored vehicles that would be distributed among seven NATO members.
US cannot guarantee Western security anymore – thanks to Obama
Since the World War II ended, Russia has learned that the United States was the sole guarantor of Western security, according to the expert. However, Obama’s ‘naivete’ and ‘ambivalence’ have put those guarantees in question.
The expert reminds that Obama’s presidency began with the ‘reset’ policy toward Russia. After 4 years of ‘reset’ relations between Moscow and Washington, “a still clueless” Obama laughed at his 2012 presidential election opponent Mitt Romney for saying that Russia is “without question our No. 1 geopolitical foe,” Krauthammer recalls.
Obama then tried to be funny and told Romney: “The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back.” He added that “the Cold War’s been over for 20 years.”
“Turned out it was 2015 calling,” Krauthammer noted. Obama has himself appointed top defense officials that have been repeatedly repeating Mitt Romney’s words over and over again about Russia being the “greatest” threat to U.S. national security. Obama’s own secretary of defense went as far as saying that “Russia poses an existential threat to the United States.”
Had only Obama known in 2012 that the only thing that was funny in Romney’s words is that Russia is not just a ‘number one geopolitical foe’ of the U.S., it is rather an ‘existential’ threat to the U.S.
Russia’s plan to resume Cold War
The expert also notes that Putin plans to revive Cold War. And Obama’s miscalculation and his wrong interpretation of Russia’s actions and statements have led to the shift of the balance of power.
With great plans to take over the Middle East with its weapons, Russia has engaged in talks with the president of Egypt, a country of whom didn’t want to deal with Russia for 40 years. The president of the former major ally of the U.S. in the Middle East has visited Moscow two times in the last four months, Krauthammer notes.
Saudi Arabia, in its turn, is planning to purchase Russian weapons as a replacement of U.S. weapons. Meanwhile, Iran, an enemy of the Saudis, is awaiting the delivery of the S-300 anti-missile systems by the end of 2015.
Even Pakistan, a historical adversary of Russia, is buying Putin’s Mi-35 helicopters. But that’s the least of U.S. concerns, as there are clear indications of the emergence of the world’s new superpower axis between Russia, Pakistan and China.
Russia has also turned to China after Western sanctions started crippling the country’s economy. And China was more than happy to obtain such an ally in order to strip U.S. of its ‘global dominant’ status.
