Why at critical times has Obama conducted diplomacy in this way? Final answers will have to await the release of his papers decades hence, but a few factors come to mind. First, in these cases, Obama publicly articulated ends but ignored or slighted the development of the means to achieve them. That’s been characteristic of his governing style. Think of the failed rollout of the Affordable Care Act last fall. In domestic policy, a failure to match means to ends can lead to falling approval numbers. In foreign policy, it can lead to the perception of fecklessness, which can severely limit a country’s effectiveness.

Secondly, in these cases, domestic political considerations may have impinged on Obama’s foreign policy decisions. He issued his “red line” warning to Syria in the wake of Republican attacks that he was displaying weakness toward Assad. His Republican challenger Mitt Romney had accused him of a “lack of leadership” and a “policy of paralysis.” During the last month, Obama may have been responding to John McCain, Lindsay Graham and other Republicans who attacked him for showing weakness toward Putin and in the Ukraine. These critics advocated even louder speech, but they usually did not offer substantive alternatives to what Obama was doing.

Third, Obama, particularly in the case of Putin, may have fallen into the trap of personalizing his international adversaries. There is no question that some of Putin’s policies—including his support for Assad and his apparent to desire to restore the old Soviet Union—run counter to what the United States and any proponent of democracy and human rights would like to see happen. But Obama—again prodded, perhaps, by Republican critics—has inserted Putin into that pantheon of demonic foes that includes Fidel Castro, Mao Zedong, Saddam Hussein, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. That has obscured past areas of cooperation, and made future cooperation much less likely. Kaiser Wilhelm was no bargain either, and Theodore Roosevelt knew it. But he also knew that he had to be handled carefully, and if handled carefully, could even occasionally prove useful to the United States. Obama, and much of the rest of official Washington, forgot that lesson in dealing with Putin.