Can NATO restrain Russia?

On Sept. 26, 1938, Hitler said “10 million Germans” lived “in two large contiguous regions” outside the Reich, and that “if I were simply to renounce 10 million . . . I would then have no moral right to be fuehrer of the German people.” Putin, whose Russia had about 142 million people before he added the 2 million in Crimea, must envelop many more if he is to match the 200 million the last czar, Nicholas II, ruled 100 years ago.

Can NATO help restrain Putin? After NATO was created in 1949, its first secretary general, Lord Ismay, said its purpose was to protect Europe by keeping “the Russians out, the Americans in and the Germans down.” The task of keeping Russia out of its neighbors is being complicated by something that would have improved the last century — German passivity. Angela Merkel may think that bringing Barack Obama to a confrontation with Putin is like bringing a knife — a butter knife — to a gun fight.

In a recent New Yorker interview, Obama praised himself for being “comfortable with complexity” and unraveled the Middle East’s complications: “It would be profoundly in the interest of citizens throughout the region if Sunnis and Shias weren’t intent on killing each other.” This is the president as poseur — detached, laconic, arch, almost droll: If only — apologies to Kipling — the lesser breeds without the law would behave.