"His secretary of defense says, “The world is exploding all over”... Yet Obama’s reaction to, shall we say, turmoil abroad has been one of alarming lassitude and passivity... Indeed, insists the president, the real source of our metastasizing anxiety is . . . the news media... This passivity — strategic, syntactical, ideological — is more than just a reaction to the perceived overreach of the Bush years. Or a fear of failure. Or bowing to the domestic left. It is, above all, rooted in Obama’s deep belief that we — America, Christians, the West — lack the moral authority to engage, to project, i.e., to lead... All that’s left is to call it strategic patience." - Crusaders and appeasers - The Washington Post
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US President Barack Obama speaks before signing the Clay Hunt Suicide Prevention for American Veterans Act, H.R. 203, in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC, February 12, 2015. (Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images)
His secretary of defense says, “The world is exploding all over.” His attorney general says that the threat of terror “keeps me up at night.” The world bears them out. On Tuesday, American hostage Kayla Mueller is confirmed dead. On Wednesday, the U.S. evacuates its embassy in Yemen, a country cited by President Obama last September as an American success in fighting terrorism.
Yet Obama’s reaction to, shall we say, turmoil abroad has been one of alarming lassitude and passivity.
Charles Krauthammer writes a weekly political column that runs on Fridays.
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Not to worry, says his national security adviser: This is not World War II. As if one should be reassured because the current chaos has yet to achieve the level of the most devastating conflict in human history. Indeed, insists the president, the real source of our metastasizing anxiety is . . . the news media.
Russia pushes deep into eastern Ukraine. The Islamic State burns to death a Jordanian pilot. Iran extends its hegemony over four Arab capitals — Beirut, Damascus, Baghdad and now Sanaa.
And America watches. Obama calls the policy “strategic patience.” That’s a synonym for “inaction,” made to sound profoundly “strategic.”
Take Russia. The only news out of Obama’s one-hour news conference with Angela Merkel this week was that he still can’t make up his mind whether to supply Ukraine with defensive weapons. The Russians have sent in T-80 tanks and Grad rocket launchers. We’ve sent in humanitarian aid that includes blankets, MREs and psychological counselors.
How complementary: The counselors do grief therapy for those on the receiving end of the T-80 tank fire. “I think the Ukrainian people can feel confident that we have stood by them,” said Obama at the news conference.
Indeed. And don’t forget the blankets. America was once the arsenal of democracy, notes Elliott Abrams. We are now its linen closet.
Why no antitank and other defensive weapons? Because we are afraid that arming the victim of aggression will anger the aggressor.
Such on-the-ground appeasement goes well with the linguistic appeasement whereby Obama dares not call radical Islam by name. And whereby both the White House and State Department spend much of a day insisting that the attack on the kosher grocery in Paris had nothing to do with Jews. It was just, as the president said, someone “randomly shoot[ing] a bunch of folks in a deli.” (By the end of the day, the administration backed off this idiocy. By tweet.)
This passivity — strategic, syntactical, ideological — is more than just a reaction to the perceived overreach of the Bush years. Or a fear of failure. Or bowing to the domestic left. It is, above all, rooted in Obama’s deep belief that we — America, Christians, the West — lack the moral authority to engage, to project, i.e., to lead.
Before we condemn the atrocities of others, intoned Obama at the National Prayer Breakfast, we shouldn’t “get on our high horse.” We should acknowledge having authored the Crusades, the Inquisition, slavery, etc. “in the name of Christ.”
In a rare rhetorical feat, Obama managed to combine the banal and the repulsive. After all, is it really a revelation that all religions have transgressed, that man is fallen? To the adolescent Columbia undergrad, that’s a profundity. To a roomful of faith leaders, that’s an insult to one’s intelligence.
And in deeply bad taste. A coalition POW is burned alive and the reaction of the alliance leader barely 48 hours later is essentially: “Hey, but what about Joan of Arc?”
The conclusion to this patronizing little riff — a gratuitous and bizarre attack on India as an example of religious intolerance — received less attention than it merited. India? Our largest and most strategically promising democratic ally — and the most successful multiethnic, multilingual, multiconfessional country on the planet? (Compare India to, oh, its colonial twin, Pakistan.)
There is, however, nothing really new in Obama’s selective condemnation of America and its democratic allies. It is just a reprise of the theme of his post-inauguration 2009 confessional world tour. From Strasbourg to Cairo and the U.N. General Assembly, he indicted his own country, as I chronicled at the time, “for arrogance, for dismissiveness and derisiveness (toward Europe), for maltreatment of natives, for torture, for Hiroshima, for Guantánamo, for unilateralism, and for insufficient respect for the Muslim world.”
The purpose and the effect of such an indictment is to undermine any moral claim to American world leadership. The line between the Washington prayer breakfast and the Ukrainian grief counselors is direct and causal. Once you’ve discounted your own moral authority, once you’ve undermined your own country’s moral self-confidence, you cannot lead.
If, during the very week Islamic supremacists achieve “peak barbarism” with the immolation of a helpless prisoner, you cannot take them on without apologizing for sins committed a thousand years ago, you have prepared the ground for strategic paralysis.
All that’s left is to call it strategic patience.
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A local man looks at the craters from the shells at the central street of Debaltsevo, Donetsk area, Ukraine, 20 January 2015. (Anastasia Vlasova/EPA)
By Editorial Board January 21
EUROPEAN FOREIGN ministers met Monday to consider proposals for resuming diplomatic contactsand cooperation with Russia in a range of areas — a strategy pressed by several governments that wish to paper over the breach opened by Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. Unfortunately for the doves, the discussion came just as Russian forces, after several weeks of relative calm, launched a new offensive in eastern Ukraine.
By Tuesday, the Ukrainian government and the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine were reporting that fresh Russian army units were crossing the border and attacking Ukrainian positions north of the city of Luhansk and at the Donetsk airport. “The situation,” European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini told us shortly after arriving in Washington, “is not going in the right direction.” Appropriately, the European ministers concluded there were no grounds for altering the existing sanctions on Russia, some of which will come up for renewal at a summit meeting in March — and the plan for detente came under heavy criticism.
The episode illustrates a pervasive disconnect in Western thinking about the regime of Vladimir Putin. As Kadri Liik of the European Council on Foreign Relations pointed out recently , many Western leaders persist in seeing the Ukraine invasion as a hiccup in relations with Russia that can be smoothed over, rather than as a demonstration that Mr. Putin’s agenda is fundamentally at odds with Europe’s security interests and its values. Because of their attachment to the hiccup theory, governments — including the Obama administration — have refused to take steps, such as providing the Ukrainian government with defensive weapons, that could help stop Mr. Putin’s aggression. Instead, they concoct futile schemes for “reengaging” the Russian ruler.
Ms. Mogherini, a former Italian foreign minister often described as a leading advocate of this soft line, told us that she did not foresee “a return to business as usual” with Moscow. She stressed that European ministers were committed to the principle that any alteration of sanctions must be linked to Russia’s full implementation of the Minsk agreement, an accord signed in September that requires the removal of Russian forces from Ukraine and international monitoring of the border. Meeting those terms would require an unprecedented reversal from Mr. Putin, who has never allowed a Russian retreat from occupied territories in Eurasia.
Nevertheless, the renewed fighting in eastern Ukraine underlines the reality that the European Union and the Obama administration need a more coherent strategy for answering Mr. Putin’s actual — as opposed to wished-for — behavior. While sanctions have had an impact on the Russian economy, they clearly have not deterred Mr. Putin from continuing the war. As a start, there must be a stronger commitment to the government in Kiev, which is in worse shape than the Russian regime. Struggling to hold the military line, it may soon be forced to default on its foreign debts because of a lack of Western support. So far, U.S. and E.U. pledges for this year amount to $4 billion against a $15 billion funding gap.
Rather than debating when they can resume trade discussions with Moscow, Western leaders should be deciding whether they are willing to do what will be necessary to preserve Ukraine’s independence.
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A tank crew displays the "Republic of Donetsk" flag as they drive along the road near the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk on Febuary 2, 2015. (Dominique Faget/AFP/Getty Images)
By Editorial Board February 2
WESTERN NATIONS are creeping in the direction of additional sanctions on Russia in reaction to thelatest offensive it has launched in eastern Ukraine. But the steps being considered are modest, and Russian ruler Vladimir Putin is showing himself to be unresponsive to economic pressure. He initiated his latest escalation — including the dispatch of hundreds of modern tanks, artillery and antiaircraft systems in a campaign to expand rebel-held enclaves — well after the recent crash of the ruble and predictions by his ministers of a sharp and painful recession.
Economic measures are still worth adopting, as they may influence Russian behavior or weaken the Putin regime in the longer term. For now, however, the United States and its European Union allies must consider how to stop the ongoing military aggression in Ukraine and deter Mr. Putin from further adventures. The clear answer is direct military support to the Ukrainian army.
A new report by eight senior former U.S. officials, including two who served in the Obama administration, spells out what aid is needed and why. Facing Russian T-80 tanks, Ukrainian forces lack anti-armor systems; 70 percent of those they have do not work. About 70 percent of their casualties come from Russian rocket and artillery fire, but Ukraine does not have counter-battery radars that can locate the source of that shelling or drones that can spot them from the air.
The report, whose authors include former undersecretary of defense Michèle Flournoy, former ambassador to NATO Ivo Daalder and Brookings Institution President Strobe Talbott, recommends that the United States immediately supply Ukraine with $1 billion in military assistance for 2015 and $2 billion more in the next two years. U.S. contributions, it notes, might open the door for military aid from European NATO members such as Britain and Poland.
No one, including Ukraine’s democratic government, believes Ukraine can win a war against Russia. But defensive weapons could blunt Mr. Putin’s offensive and raise its cost in a way that might deter him. Though Russians supported his seizure and annexation of the Ukrainian province of Crimea last year, polls show they oppose military intervention in eastern Ukraine and are not accepting of Russian casualties.
White House officials, like some in Europe, have worried that weapons supplies might provoke Mr. Putin to escalate his assault. But the Russian ruler has steadily stepped up his aggression in the absence of a military response. “If the United States and NATO do not adequately support Ukraine,” the report argues, “Moscow may well conclude that the kinds of tactics it has employed over the past year can be applied elsewhere,” including to NATO members such as Estonia or Latvia.
President Obama had made a priority throughout the Ukraine crisis of offering Mr. Putin “off-ramps” on the assumption that the Kremlin seeks a face-saving way to restore comity with the West. By now it should be obvious that this is not Mr. Putin’s goal. He is attempting to win what he regards as a war against NATO and upend the post-Cold War order in Europe. He will stop only if the cost to his regime is sharply raised — and quickly.
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German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Russia's President Vladimir Putin (C) listen to French President Francois Hollande during a meeting on resolving the Ukraine crisis at the Kremlin in Moscow February 6, 2015. (Maxim Zmeyev/Reuters)
By Editorial Board February 6
THOUGH PRESIDENT Obama has yet to agree, proposals that the United States supply Ukraine with defensive weapons have already had a tangible impact. On Friday, they prompted German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President François Hollande to rush to Moscow in what looked like a long-shot attempt to broker a peace deal with Vladimir Putin. Ms. Merkel canceled a proposed summit in Kazakhstan with Mr. Putin weeks ago because of the dim prospect that the Russian ruler would agree to respect the cease-fire his government agreed to in September. That she suddenly decided to pay court at the Kremlin seemed to reflect not any softening of the Russian position but rather a spiking of European anxiety.
The results of the Moscow meeting appeared to be inconclusive. But Mr. Putin certainly seemed to receive his visitors from a position of strength. Unlike the Europeans, he is clearly not concerned about “escalation,” having just dispatched hundreds of tanks and other weapons systems, as well as fresh troops, to lead a new offensive in eastern Ukraine. Nor does he appear motivated to settle with the West: An undisclosed Russian proposal delivered to Ukraine this week was described as “cynical” and “absurd” by Western diplomats, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Other than the talk in Washington about arms supplies, the West has given Mr. Putin no incentive to drop his new offensive, which appears aimed at expanding the territory held by Russian proxies to the point where it can become a de facto statelet, like those Moscow has set up in occupied areas of Georgia and Moldova. European Union leaders and the Obama administration have discussed new sanctions, but so far those have been limited to individuals. Steps that might inflict significant further damage to the battered Russian economy, such as the exclusion of its banks from an international payment system, remain off the table.
Ms. Merkel is, meanwhile, arguing against any arms supplies for the besieged Ukrainian military, which, as a report released this week documented, lacks working antitank weapons or anti-artillery radar that could blunt the new offensive. Like some in Washington, Germany argues that U.S. arms supplies would simply lead to another escalation by Russia and more intense fighting — and that anyway, there is “no military solution” to the Ukrainian crisis. The logic seems to be that only Russia is allowed to pursue its aims by force — or that a military response to military aggression should be avoided as it would provoke the aggressor.
Ms. Merkel protests that she wouldn’t dream of going “behind the back of another country . . . and start questioning its territorial integrity.” German diplomats say they hope that her diplomacy will prompt Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and Mr. Putin to agree on a settlement. Yet to push Mr. Poroshenko toward such an accord while denying him the means to resist an invasion gives him few alternatives other than to capitulate to the Kremlin.
There’s nothing wrong in talking with Mr. Putin, provided that the West’s message is clear. Russia should be required to withdraw all its forces and equipment from Ukraine, reestablish the border under international monitoring and cease its support for a separatist statelet — or face a significant escalation of economic sanctions and a Ukrainian army with better weapons.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday announced a new cease-fire deal with Ukraine following peace talks, but questions remained whether Ukraine and the pro-Russian rebels have agreed on the deal’s terms. (AP)
By Editorial Board February 12 at 4:01 PM
IT WAS far from clear Thursday if a new accord on Ukraine would last long enough for the implementation of its first and most tangible provision, a cease-fire set to begin Sunday. If it does, Ukrainians may be spared, at least temporarily, the deaths of more soldiers and civilians and the loss of more territory to Russian aggression. However, the deal brokered by German and French leaders with Russia’s Vladimir Putin does little to restrain his ambition to create a puppet state in eastern Ukraine that could be used to sabotage the rest of the country. In fact, in the unlikely event that its terms are fully carried out, the pact would enable his project.
The result of the all-night negotiations in Minsk , Belarus, among Mr. Putin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President François Hollande and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko reflected the imbalance between a Kremlin ruler in the midst of using military force and European leaders who not only are unready to respond but who are also trying to prevent Ukraine from obtaining the means to defend itself. In exchange for the promise of a “deescalation” that was their overriding goal, the European leaders induced Mr. Poroshenko to accept terms that give Mr. Putin a veto over any final political settlement in eastern Ukraine — and permission to continue violating the country’s sovereignty in the meantime.
Most significantly, control over the border between Russia and Ukraine would not be returned to Kiev until the end of the year — and then only after a “constitutional reform” acceptable to Moscow and its surrogates grants powers to Russian-controlled regions. Without border control, Ukraine cannot prevent Russian forces, supplies and agents from flowing across. While the deal promises a withdrawal of “foreign armed formations” from Ukraine, there is no deadline — and Mr. Putin’s contention is that NATO has “legions” in the country but Russia does not.
No wonder that Mr. Poroshenko emerged from the talks saying that “the main thing that has been achieved” is the promised Sunday cease-fire, along with a pullback of heavy weapons by both sides over the following two weeks. Even that prospective respite was clouded by Mr. Putin’s assertion that thousands of Ukrainian troops defending the strategic crossroads of Debaltseve must “lay down their arms.” That would reward the latest Russian offensive by transferring de facto control over the town to the separatist statelet Moscow is constructing.
Nor is that Mr. Putin’s only gain. By going along with the Europeans’ desperate diplomatic gambit, he ensured that not even minor sanctions would be adopted at a European Union summit Thursday. He also provided President Obama with reason to overrule those in his administration seeking to supply arms to Ukraine. Mr. Putin can resume military aggression at will, while the push for new sanctions or weapons could take weeks or months to regain momentum.
Mr. Obama was content to stand back while Germany and France struck the deal, and the State Department quickly endorsed it. The administration rightly said that it would consider easing existing sanctions on Russia only when the agreement is “fully implemented,” including “the withdrawal of all foreign troops and equipment from Ukraine [and] the full restoration of Ukrainian control of the international border.” But without additional economic and military pressure, Mr. Putin will never meet those terms.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin talks to journalists after the Ukrainian peace negotiations at the Palace of Independence in Minsk, Belarus, 12 February 2015. (Alexey Druginyn / Ria Novosti / Kremlin Pool/EPA)
The deal announced Thursday to end the fighting in Ukraine will face the same obstacle the previous such agreement has faced: how to ensure that Russia will abide by it. Frustrated by Russia’s continued support for Ukrainian separatists, Western statesmen have begun discussing military assistance for the Ukrainian government. But in trying to determine what would actually deter Moscow, it might be worth listening to what seems to scare Russians themselves — and it’s not military aid to Kiev.
When asked recently about the possibility of “SWIFT” sanctions, which would bar Russia from the international payment system, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev warned that Moscow’s response would be “without limits.” Andrei Kostin, the head of Russia’s second-largest bank, said last month at the World Economic Forum that such a move would instantly lead to the expulsion of the U.S. ambassador from Moscow and the recall of Russia’s ambassador to Washington. It would mean that “the countries are on the verge of war, or they are definitely in a cold war,” Kostin added. By contrast, Russia seems to be relishing its contra war in eastern Ukraine, which at very low cost can keep Ukraine unstable and on the defensive almost indefinitely.
Fareed Zakaria writes a foreign affairs column for The Post. He is also the host of CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS and a contributing editor for The Atlantic.
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It’s understandable why Putin’s closest associates are so rattled by the prospect of additional economic sanctions. The Russian economy is in free fall. In a report this week, the International Energy Agency said that Russia is “facing a perfect storm of collapsing prices, international sanctions and currency depreciation.” As former U.S. deputy treasury secretary Roger Altman has said, “In this age, if the currency of a major nation collapses or its access to borrowing ends, it just can’t function.”
The International Monetary Fund projects that Russia’s economy will contract 3 percent this year. And Putin needs strong oil revenue to maintain his power in the country. From 2008 to 2009, when oil revenue collapsed during the global financial crisis, the Russian government increased its spending by a staggering 40 percent to try to preserve social stability, according to the Economist. In recent years, defense spending has risen by 30 percent, and food and housing subsidies have also grown. These props cannot be held up indefinitely. Over time, the money will run out.
On the other hand, Russia could easily continue its military skirmishes in eastern Ukraine. Although its economic cards are weak, its military ones remain strong, especially compared with Ukraine’s. Moscow’s defense budget last year was roughly 20 times Kiev’s, according to figures published this week by the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Russia has 771,000 active-duty forces and 2 million soldiers in reserve, plus 8,000 nuclear weapons , of course . Adding to that, Ukraine is next door and its eastern regions are dominated by ethnic Russians, providing Moscow with manpower and a rationale for its mischief.
Leaders reach cease-fire deal in Ukraine(1:37)
Germany, France, Russia and Ukraine agreed on a deal that offers a "glimmer of hope" for an end to fighting in eastern Ukraine after marathon overnight talks. (Reuters)
The argument against sanctions is that, although they might raise the costs for Russia, Putin has shown that he does not respond to higher costs in a rational, calculating manner. But if that’s the case, then military aid for Ukraine wouldn’t work, either. No one believes that Kiev can prevail in a military contest with Moscow. A recent think-tank report by former U.S. government officials urging military aid acknowledges that the package would merely raise the costs for the Kremlin in order to force it to negotiate. In other words, the consensus among experts is that the only possible strategy is to raise the costs for Russia. The disagreement is really about what kinds of costs Putin finds onerous.
Military aid to Ukraine would stoke the fires of Russian nationalism, let Putin wrap himself in military colors and defend his “fellow Russians” in an arena in which he will be able to ensure that Moscow prevails. For a regime that waged two bitter and costly wars in Chechnya, a region far less central to the Russian imagination than Ukraine, the loss of some men and money in a military operation is not likely to be much of a deterrent.
Why would the West want to move from its area of strength — economic pressure — to an area where it will be outgunned in every sense? If Russia breaks this fragile peace deal, then more sanctions should be considered.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) recently offered the most honest reason why some in Washington advocate military assistance. Although it doesn’t seem likely to work, it’s a way of doing something in the face of Russian aggression. “I don’t know how this ends if you give [Ukraine] defensive capability,” Graham said at the recent Munich Security Conference, “but I know this: I will feel better because when my nation was needed to stand up to the garbage and stand by freedom, I stood by freedom.”
But the purpose of American foreign policy is not to make Lindsey Graham feel better. It is to achieve objectives on the ground. That means picking your battles and weapons carefully.
Read more from Fareed Zakaria’s archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.
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