The president is trying to make a case that patience is needed to handle challenges facing the United States overseas. One such challenge is the never-ending Middle East “instability,” and the other is the “crisis” in Ukraine. Note that considerable patience is already evident in the Western lingo when the Moscow-made war in Ukraine is referred to as a crisis rather than war, although Obama called it Russian aggression at least twice.
Obama deserves credit for attempting, with some success, to extricate the US from dismal engagements in Afghanistan and Iraq, into which it was recklessly plunged by previous administration. On the other hand, such earlier mistakes should not be offered as rationale for super-caution in doing what makes sense at this time.
Actually, patience has not stopped Obama from organizing a Mideast coalition to contain and try to disable the ISIS threat, with bombing enemy positions in Syria and Iraq in support of Iraqi and Kurdish ground troops.
Also, some US Special Forces are in Iraq to help coordinate Iraqi army tactics and provide air targeting direction. And, of course, the US is continuing to supply armaments for its Mideast allies. Doing anything less than that would make very a difficult sailing for the president on Capitol Hill.
On the other hand, has anyone heard of instability in Europe? The kind that would quickly draw attention of the White House occupied by any president other than Obama? Writes Philip Stephens in the Financial Times (“Ukraine is only part of Putin’s game plan”, Feb. 7):
“Europe thinks it has a Ukraine problem. In truth, it has a Russia, or more precisely, a Vladimir Putin problem. Moscow’s war against Kyiv is a fragment of a bigger picture. The Russian president’s revanchism reaches well beyond Ukraine. The bigger goal is to tear up the continent’s post-communist settlement.”
This observation is not news, but Europe’s leaders mostly don’t take it seriously. Europe appears to be more and more fragmented in its views of Moscow’s intentions, and it seems prepared to appease the Kremlin in many ways so as to continue the good life and prosperity. NATO as a shield against Russia has been weakened in the post- Cold War period to a point of becoming not much more than a shadow of what it was.
If this is not a kind of instability that invites Moscow’s push into Europe — unless stopped in Ukraine — what additional warning is needed in Western capitals?
This instability in Europe is not on the list of President Obama’s danger signs. And neither is the Mideast instability, for that matter. They are not included in the strategic security document, issued by the White House, on the list of “top strategic risks” that focuses on nuclear proliferation, terrorism, climate change and infectious diseases (per the Financial Times, by Geoff Dyer, February 7).
Thomas Wright, of the Brookings Institution, is quoted in the same article: “The president does not want his foreign policy to be defined by the return of geopolitics”.
Some would say that if the president disdains geopolitics he may have chosen the wrong career. Foreign policy without geopolitics sounds like an oxymoron. If it has become a basis of American foreign policy decisions, more trouble ahead can be expected. It can also be a copout for avoiding difficult decisions.
The case in point is the need for arming Ukraine with American weapons. It has been explained many times that economic sanctions alone will not stop Putin’s war on Ukraine. Without better armaments, Ukraine will lose the war and will be de facto broken up. Chancellor Angela Merkel’s talk of a diplomatic solution will not prevent it. The West can let it happen at its own peril.
Asserting that there is no military solution is the same as refusing to face the truth. If Russia wins, it is a military solution. If Ukraine is better armed and there is a draw (Ukraine is showing it can fight), it doesn’t matter how it is labeled.
Boris Danik is a retired Ukrainian-American living in North Caldwell, New Jersey.
