Posted on 04/22/2014 5:05:01 AM PDT by moneyrunner
People who see the world through the lens of domestic politics label ObamaCare as Barack Obama’s signature achievement. They are wrong. Obama has had a much greater, and more ominous achievement in the geopolitical arena. What did Obama really have in mind when he told Medvedev that after his re-election he would have greater flexibility?
As he assumed office, the world was uni-polar and the US was the sole superpower. Five years into his Presidency, Iraq is reverting to sectarian warfare and becoming an Iranian client state. Afghanistan is slipping away as fast as American troops are leaving. Egypt was taken over by the Muslim Brotherhood and is now a military dictatorship making eyes at Moscow. Libya is a movie set in which it’s dictator is overthrown, Americans are murdered, armed al Qaida bands rule the streets and there is no a functioning government. Iran is developing nuclear weapons and delivery systems. Al Qaida has a mass meeting in Yemen and has to release a video to let the CIA know. Israel, having decided that American guarantees under Obama are worse than worthless, has decided to go its own way, exhibiting a healthy example of clear-sightedness.
Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin is as busy as a boy with Legos, reassembling the Soviet Union to the cheers of his fellow countrymen who felt humiliated by the dissolution of the Evil Empire under Reagan and Bush.
From the Financial Times:
But Moscow’s annexation of Crimea has set off rapid and drastic changes that threaten to submerge such outposts of dissent. In a speech marking the consummation of Russia’s union with the Black Sea peninsula on March 18, Mr Putin lashed out against a “fifth column” of “national traitors” enlisted by the west to subvert Russia. He vowed to respond forcefully.
His warning – especially his choice of phrases widely used by nationalist dictatorships as well as Russia’s own former Communist regime – has resonated strongly with Russians. They have been taken as a rallying cry among those aggrieved by Russia’s diminished power to build a prouder, stronger and more authoritarian state. For Mr Putin’s liberal critics, it is a worrying sign that the rest of the country’s imperfect democratic institutions are under severe threat.
In a column that set the tone for both commentaries and blogposts, the conservative journalist Ulyana Skoibeda raved two weeks ago that after the return of Crimea “I no longer live in a conquered country”. In a long lament that reflects the feelings frequently expressed by ordinary Russians, she described the past 23 years as humiliating. Ms Skoibeda said her life had been dominated by western norms, and she had had to suffer through the chaos and deprivation unleashed by the democratic and economic experiments of the 1990s. Standing proudly against the entire world had revived the essence of the Soviet Union, she wrote. “It is not Crimea that has returned. We have returned. Home. To the USSR.”
Since the Crimea annexation, there have been frequent moves that symbolise a Soviet revival.
The American health care system can be fixed and improved as soon as the ideologues who demand that the government run everything are removed from office. The real problem, one that may have mass death and war as one of its possible outcomes, is the deliberate destruction of the Pax Americana that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union. Whether that is by accident or design is uncertain, but the fact is indisputable.
That is Obama’s real legacy.
He’s definitely turned out to be the Anti-Reagan.
Everything Barry touches turns to ****. He’s the reverse King Midas. His presidency has been one disaster after another.
If he were really an American, and had a molecule of regard for America, he would resign and let us muddle through with Slow Joe for the remainder of his snake-bitten term.
In a word, obama’s legacy is. CORRUPTION.
And he made our health care system move closer to a Soviet style system. Good job Barack; you are meeting your goals!!
Stupid article by an idiot who has paid no attention to the political activities of the European Union and their predictable fallout.
Just saying.
China’s military budget, is now much larger than Russia’s.
And rapidly growing.
Putin, on the other hand, appears to be driven more by his own grandiosity and narcissism than by ideology. It appears to me that he would like to expand the footprint and greatly increase the power of Russia - but not necessarily put back together the same political/ideological structure. Doesn't matter entirely, because it would still be a dangerous top-down somewhat totalitarian nation. Worse, they've learned their lesson about how economic success drives military strength, while at the same time we are destroying our own economic strength.
Putin’s move in Ukraine is the classic response mandated by Russian military doctrine.
Every military man who studied Soviet doctrines during the cold war could have told you that when the European Union made moves to start moving Ukraine towards membership there would be a military response. We can also tell you that there is not a political solution that gets Ukraine into the European Union. Only military solutions.
Since the European Union doesn’t have a military worth mentioning, it behooves them to back out. This can not possibly go well for them.
Putin does have a big ego, but that is not what is driving this.
I do, however, think that grandiosity, narcissism, and essentially an element of sociopathy is at the root of pretty much every totalitarian dictatorship the world has seen. It's more than ego. It's a pathology that includes the inability to be empathic. It's not a normal person who sits up at night signing death orders, as did Stalin. I'm not saying Putin is at that level, but the fact that several of his enemies have ‘turned up dead’ raises some flags.
As a military strategist, what would your long-term plan have been to destabilize the US if you were on the other ideological side during the time the USSR was collapsing?
I miss those Cold War days sometimes.
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