This week Putin reached an impasse. Changes in the global economy—a strengthening America, plunging commodity prices, spooked foreign investors–have provoked the worst crisis in Russia since the late 1990s. The sanctions Obama has already agreed to will worsen the pain.
This is a point of maximum leverage. A public and generous commitment of financial and military aid to Ukraine, an assertion of U.S. military and ideological might, could expel the Russians from the east and inspire the democratic opposition in Moscow. What will Obama do?
Two words: Blow it. The president has agreed to sign a tough sanctions bill passed unanimously by Congress only because it contains loopholes that will allow him to shirk its harshest and most effective provisions. I do not hear him calling for increased hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling, including on federal lands, I have missed his pledge to restore America’s military and rebuild a force to deter the bear, I am betting he won’t expand natural gas exports, or increase the number of military advisers in Kiev, or expel Russia from the G8. Opportunity missed.
Like the Castros, Assad, and the mullahs, Putin is in danger, his grip tenuous, his options narrowing. Lucky for him, lucky for the other bad guys, Putin can count on the American president to bail him out. Forget about standing up for a U.S.-led international order: Obama won’t even respond to North Korea’s act of war against the United States, its cyber-attack on a U.S. film studio that succeeded in limiting free speech from thousands of miles away. And Obama says he’s against bullying!
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