Within the first year of Obama’s presidency, he capitulated to Russia by scrapping plans to build a missile defense shield in Eastern Europe. The shield was to be built in Poland and the Czech Republic and act as a deterrent to a nuclear-ambitious Iran. While Iran was the public scapegoat, cables revealed by WikiLeaks from Polish diplomats later showed that Russia was actually seen as the bigger threat.
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Fast-forward to today, it is Poland who called for an emergency NATO consultation this week. Poland shares a border with Ukraine and invoked a rule “allowing any ally to consult with the others if it feels its security, territorial integrity or independence are under threat.” Why is that? It wasn’t long ago when parts of Ukraine were part of Poland. Russia has already seized control of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula. Who is to say its occupation won’t expand?
Territorial occupation is so-19th century, according to Secretary of State John Kerry. But dictators like Putin don’t have time for lectures about which century they are fighting in. They view the world in terms of opportunities to seize power in the vacuum of weakness.
Putin smelled that weakness the moment Obama backed off the Eastern Europe missile defense shield. What followed was an embarrassing international one-sided courtship. When America was tested, Putin watched. Over 100,000 Syrians were killed by chemical weapons – a violation of President Obama’s “red line” – and nothing was done.
The countless foreign policy decisions made daily cannot be viewed in an isolated vacuum of domestic partisan victory.
In a press conference Tuesday, Putin gave us a peak into his view of the United States: “I think they sit there across the pond in the U.S., sometimes it seems … they feel like they’re in a lab and they’re running all sorts of experiments on the rats without understanding consequences of what they’re doing. Why would they do that? Nobody can explain it.”
In one sentence, Putin managed to nail Obama’s biggest foreign policy problem: the lack of a consistent, clear strategy. The United States’ security and credibility remains at stake each and every day. Running experimental tests becomes a problem because you run the risk of a test failing.
We failed the test on Russia. But this failure extends beyond just Russia.
For example, one of the promises made in the agreement to scrap the missile defense shield was Russia’s help in preventing Iran from achieving nuclear weapons capability. We scrapped the shield and guess what happened? Reports show that Russia is actively helping Iran build a new nuclear reactor and supplying the regime with an anti-aircraft system.
As for Russia’s promise of helping the United States mitigate Iran’s nuclear ambitions, take a look at this headline from last Friday, “Iran advancing its nuclear program despite pact with West.” As our eyes are turned toward Ukraine and Russia, Iran is getting what it wants with little push-back from the word. From USA Today:
Iran is moving ahead with a nuclear program that U.S. officials said would be frozen, and it is now clear the USA and other world powers are willing to accept an Iranian enrichment program that Iran refuses to abandon, say analysts.
Iran has continued research and development on new, far more efficient machines for producing uranium fuel that could power reactors or bombs, and its stockpile of low enriched uranium has actually grown, according to a report by Institute for Science and International Security.
So here we are.
It’s been almost five years since Obama capitulated to Russia by scrapping the nuclear defense shield in Eastern Europe in exchange for help stopping Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
Iran is not only growing its nuclear program, but it is receiving help from Russia to do so.
Russia is occupying a sovereign nation, as the world looks on playing tiddly-winks over which economic summit we can exclude Putin from.
NATO nations such as Poland remain threatened by Russia and — no thanks to the United States — have fewer defense options from the worst possible scenario.
Meanwhile the United States is being lectured by Putin, of all people, about the importance of Constitutional sovereignty. Did you miss that one? Amid all this, Putin is using the importance of adherence to the Constitution as the reason why his actions are justified. He says, “Of course people wanted change. But [people] cannot impose illegal change …you need to use only constitutional means.”
Putin, if you will recall, has done this before. After the Syrian embarrassment, he penned an op-ed in the New York Times blasting the concept of American exceptionalism and emphasizing the importance of preserving laws.
We’re being played. The hard thing to swallow is that this administration didn’t know it and as a result, they are left with only the hard choices.