Ukrainians “are a people who are world famous for their warmth, for their strength, for their courage,” Nixon said. He talked about the sacrifices of Ukrainians during World War II and the rebuilding of a destroyed Kyiv. He toasted “the heroes of the Ukraine in war and in peace.”
Presidents George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush followed Nixon, visiting Kyiv in 1991, 1995 and 2008, respectively.
But U.S. President Barack Obama, his domestic agenda paralyzed by Republicans and the Nov. 8 presidential election, still has no plans to visit Ukraine. Obama will do a lot of international traveling in his last year, as many presidents do. He’s going to Cuba this week and maybe the United Kingdom yet this spring. He will be in Japan for a G7 meeting in June, in Poland for the NATO summit in July, in China for the G20 meeting in September and also possibly South America, the Middle East and Africa.
But not to Ukraine. He will be the first president since Ronald Reagan not to make the trip while in office. Reagan had a good excuse: The Soviet Union was still in existence, but not for long. Reagan helped break up the “evil empire,” leaving it on the “ash heap of history” in 1991.
We have editorialized for Obama to come to Ukraine. But maybe it’s better that he just stays away, given his dismissal of Ukraine as a “client state” of Russia and not one of America’s core interests.
In an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic magazine, Obama also said he thinks that not much can be done to help Ukraine militarily. “The fact is that Ukraine, which is a non-NATO country, is going to be vulnerable to military domination by Russia no matter what we do,” Obama said.
Obama, by showing Russian President Vladimir Putin his weakness and indifference, has reduced the chances for peace. The Kremlin knows it can relentlessly keep attacking Ukraine without serious consequences from the abdicating leader of the free world. The president went on to create a straw-man argument, demanding to know who supports America going to war with Russia over Ukraine. No one does — in Ukraine or in the U.S. What Ukrainians and their supporters want is more help so that Ukraine can better defend itself militarily, including defensive weapons, help that the Obama administration is unwilling provide. It is regrettable, since more support for Ukraine has bipartisan support in Congress.
Niall Ferguson, the British historian and Harvard University professor, wrote that Obama’s ignorance and blunders stem from his arrogance that he is smarter than anyone. “There is no ‘Obama doctrine’; rather, we see here a full-blown revolution in American foreign policy. And this revolution can be summed up as follows: The foes shall become friends, and the friends, foes,” Ferguson wrote.
Smart leaders stand up for their friends, not their foes. In The Atlantic interview, Obama describes Putin as polite and punctual. Considering all the blood that the Kremlin dictator is soaked in, who cares? U.S. Sen. John McCain rightly says that Obama’s refusal to supply Ukraine with defensive weapons is a shameful chapter in American foreign policy.
Obama’s misguided retrenchment will leave a damning legacy. His failure to lead the West in forcefully standing up to the Kremlin’s annexation of the Crimean peninsula and its war in the Donbas has already had damaging consequences, as democracy retreats globally and dictators become emboldened, knowing they have little to fear from the West.
