One aspect of this I haven’t seen mentioned anywhere is the impact of Snowden on all of this.
The reports were that he made out with the “crown jewels”. A lot of the the stuff he had about domestic ops was released but I’d suggest he also made out with quite a bit about foreign ops and military related information as well.
Putin likely has the entire gamut of NSA sources and methods at his disposal and that could be putting Obama in a severe bind here.
It would be very easy for Putin to blackmail us over that information. “If you do anything...”
Of course he’s not going to admit it because he’ll look even weaker but I’d think that may be affecting his calculus here.
Drop the word "likely" and you're spot on.