The president is trying to walk a tightrope — thin as a thread and dangling over danger — on the Russian invasion and annexation of Crimea.
He must silence critics at home and buck up allies abroad. Neither is easy and nothing is a given.
The howls on the home front have been deafening as Republicans and also-rans — I’m looking at you, Mitt Romney — have suggested that the president misjudged Vladimir V. Putin’s and Russia’s ambition and aptitude for aggression, created an international impression of the president and the United States as timid, feckless, indecisive and without resolve, and failed, over and over, to stand strongly enough with other countries’ dissidents in their quest for freedom and democracy.
On “Face the Nation,” Romney said: “The president’s naïveté with regards to Russia and his faulty judgment about Russia’s intentions and objectives has led to a number of foreign policy challenges that we face.”
He continued, “Unfortunately, not having anticipated Russia’s intentions, the president wasn’t able to shape the kinds of events that may have been able to prevent the kinds of circumstances that you’re seeing in the Ukraine.”
The refused-to-be-vanquished insist on being vindicated.
But as is the case in many of these circumstances, the dance between diplomacy and force, between aggressive responses and appropriate ones, is more complicated than sound bites can convey.
The truth is that the West — the United States and its European allies — doesn’t have much leverage against Russia. And the Europeans are addicted to and reliant upon Russian gas, which adds to their trepidation about antagonizing Moscow.
Recognizing this, President Obama said Wednesday during a speech in Brussels that the European Union needed to reduce its dependency on Russian energy. He has also urged European Union leaders to move forward with the pending trans-Atlantic trade pact, which would allow Europe to receive more gas from the United States.
But that is a long-term strategic goal. That won’t alter the geopolitical landscape of the immediate future.
The president, while chastising Russian aggression, made clear:
“Understand as well this is not another Cold War that we’re entering into. After all, unlike the Soviet Union, Russia leads no bloc of nations, no global ideology. The United States and NATO do not seek any conflict with Russia. In fact, for more than 60 years we have come together in NATO not to claim other lands but to keep nations free. What we will do always is uphold our solemn obligation, our Article 5 duty, to defend the sovereignty and territorial integrity of our allies. And in that promise we will never waver. NATO nations never stand alone.”
While there has been a working partnership between NATO and Ukraine, unfortunately Ukraine is not a NATO member country.
So, what to do other than apply economic sanctions and isolate Russia, and diminish a bit of its prestige, by doing things like kicking the country out of the Group of 8? Does any hit to the Russian economy move Putin’s spirit or dull his ambitions? The answers to these questions are not at all clear.
And the American people are conflicted about the country’s current standing in the world and our role in conflicts like Crimea.
A CBS News poll released this week found that while a majority said that the United States was less powerful as a world leader than it was 10 years ago (while waist-deep in two wars), roughly the same percentage said that the United States should not take the lead in solving international conflicts.
And, most approve of the sanctions the president has initiated against Russia, but most also don’t believe they’ll be effective. We can’t call both sides of the coin, people. I attribute much of this internal conflict that many Americans feel to battle fatigue, or should I say war fatigue, since “just one-half of 1 percent of Americans served in uniform at any given time during the past decade,”according to the Department of Defense. There are too many of our soldiers still in distant lands, wading through the blood of the fallen or being shipped home broken or maimed or dead. The American ideal of being the world’s lone super power, with infinite influence and strong-arm leverage, is colliding with the reality that we are unable to police the world and that our influence has limits, as well as with our utter distaste for the morass of battle without clear objectives, time limits or exit strategies. The drums of war have been beating on and off in this country for decades; Americans ache for a moment of silence.
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