Ukraine and our useless outrage

The U.S. has now shot so many rhetorical arrows that its quiver of indignation is empty — and the world’s troublemakers may know it. An administration that ignores almost all of its own Obamacare deadlines surely cannot expect others to abide by any timetables it sets abroad.

There may be no viable solutions to the violence in Syria or Ukraine. The messes in Egypt and Libya, the Chinese provocations to their neighbors, the North Korean lunacy, and the spiraling violence in Venezuela certainly have no easy answers. But not knowing quite what to do is not the same as knowing certainly what not to do.

Although the U.S. alone seems to honor its promised deadlines of withdrawal from Afghanistan and Iraq, the world’s aggressors sense that the Obama administration’s bluster will be followed by more bluster. Therefore, they have decided to risk aggrandizements while they can. In the mind of Vladimir Putin, today Ukraine, tomorrow the Baltic States or Eastern Europe. In the minds of the Iranian theocrats, if chemical WMD are okay in Syria, why not nuclear WMD in Iran? In China’s view, when Japan backs off, why shouldn’t Taiwan, South Korea, or the Philippines?