Posted on 04/19/2014 4:36:59 PM PDT by kristinn
Even as the crisis in Ukraine continues to defy easy resolution, President Obama and his national security team are looking beyond the immediate conflict to forge a new long-term approach to Russia that applies an updated version of the Cold War strategy of containment.
Just as the United States resolved in the aftermath of World War II to counter the Soviet Union and its global ambitions, Mr. Obama is focused on isolating President Vladimir V. Putins Russia by cutting off its economic and political ties to the outside world, limiting its expansionist ambitions in its own neighborhood and effectively making it a pariah state.
Mr. Obama has concluded that even if there is a resolution to the current standoff over Crimea and eastern Ukraine, he will never have a constructive relationship with Mr. Putin, aides said. As a result, Mr. Obama will spend his final two and a half years in office trying to minimize the disruption Mr. Putin can cause, preserve whatever marginal cooperation can be saved and otherwise ignore the master of the Kremlin in favor of other foreign policy areas where progress remains possible.
SNIP
The more hawkish faction in the State and Defense Departments has grown increasingly frustrated, privately worrying that Mr. Obama has come across as weak and unintentionally sent the message that he has written off Crimea after Russias annexation. They have pressed for faster and more expansive sanctions, only to wait while memos sit in the White House without action. Mr. Obama has not even imposed sanctions on a list of Russian human rights violators waiting for approval since last winter.
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(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I am pretty sure Obama is selling out to Russia so he will get Russia’s vote when Obama becomes UN President in 3 years.
Uh yeah...right-o.
Interesting how a penniless beggar is going to tell others what to do.
Believe something else is taking place besides what is being reported. obama and his crowd want to take credit for containing and ignoring putin but ... I’ll place my money on our Military which has probably cut obama and his crowd out of the loop of intelligence sharing. Neither obama or putin can be trusted, as all here know, and again would place my money on our Military as having the information necessary and has put into play the best plan to keep America safe. obama and his crowd have failed the People and those facts are clear.
This could backfire by causing the administration to start behaving in a rude and arrogant way that will alienate other countries. Basically, they lost the fight, now they are going to get catty.
Given their track record, I think this will just come across as classless and pathetic rather than making Obama look like a strong leader.
I’m sure Putin will be crushed not to get anymore phone calls from his former BFF.
"What a silly negro."
Yep, the military’s plan to keep us safe is to do everything they can to prevent US military involvement, which is what happened in Syria last summer.
and what a wise decision our Military made.
Strategy? STRATEGY?
Oh, I get it. Pretend to be an administration of childish amateurs led by a petulant, inept narcissist while simultaneously gutting your own military, shunning your allies and destroying your own economy.
Brilliant. It obviously has Putin confused and on the run.
The NYT is ascribing much more intelligence and planning to this regime than is extant. They just want this to go away: “If we can say 8 million signups in the ACA why can’t we just say we have reached agreement with Russia”?
VJ relays the instructions from the elites to the puppet.
The rest is just complete fiction.
SecDef, SecState, etc., all are financiers’ minions and get their orders directly from their handlers.
Obama is puppet.
Not a good actor. Doesn’t have to be.
Insiders are saying that Slow Joe and Kerry-Heinz have run the new suggested crushing sanctions past his Arrogance and gained his approval ... feminine hygiene products, adult diapers and tidy-wipes are set to be barred in the next round of sanctions.
Obama will get around to Putin after he finishes his War On Americans.
~Mr. Obama is focused on isolating President Vladimir V. Putins Russia by cutting off its economic and political ties to the outside world~
Tell me how is it might be true? Economic and political ties to the outside world is that makes some powers inside the country interested in making pressure on their government to act somehow responsible to keep these ties.
Sever this ties and you are choking these powers.
It is like another iron curtain, build from the outside this time.
Has it ever worked before?
If not for the sanctions neither Cuban, nor Iranian not the Nork regimes would hold that long.
All of the above are free to blame the sanctions for their own economic incompetence and have their people united behind the authorities against the West.
Those satirists at the Times crack me up.
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