There they go again, I thought to myself. The New York Post, the slightly more expensive alternative to toilet paper, whipping its falling far-right readership into a supposed frenzy of indignation over Barack Obama's response (more correctly, his response thus far) to Vladimir Putin's imperial invasion of Ukraine. Not masculine and muscular enough, to paraphrase Brit Hume on the subject of Chris "I'll cross that bridge when I come to it" Christie. Why, Obama's reaction is so feckless and limp-wristed that it invites a comparison to the Post's favorite Democratic demon, Jimmy Carter! Da-da-da-da-doooooom! Oh, no! Jimmy Carter!
And never mind the fact that Jimmy Carter's current approval rating is significantly higher that that of the current House of Representatives, with which the Post surely finds no fault for doing nothing. That hasn't stopped other dim bulbs of the right from going beyond trashing Obama to praising Putin. Yes, Rudy Giuliani and Sarah Palin, I'm talking about you. Of course, I would expect nothing less, especially from Giuliani, who knows a first-rate bully when he sees one. For Rudy, it's like looking in the mirror.
Which should make all of us wonder, as it does me: Is Carter really the President who offers the most relevant point of comparison here?
Look at this this way: Putin, surrounded at home by every sort of domestic problem and further hobbled by the financial and public relations fiasco of the Winter Olympics, desperately needed to change the subject. The collapse of his puppet regime in Ukraine both enlarged that need and gave him an opportunity to change it in a big way.
On the other hand, it's a change that carries with it major risks of its own. Putin's campaign is already leading to disaster in the Russian financial markets--much as the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (not, repeat not Ronald Reagan) was the beginning of the end of the Soviet economic system and, ultimately, the Soviet empire.
And much as George W. Bush's unfunded war on terror on two fronts helped to trigger the near-collapse of the American economy.
It's not surprising that professional bullies like Palin and Giuliani admire Putin as much as they do. Of course, none of them criticized Bush for his alleged eye-to-eye favorable appraisal of Putin's "soul," nor did they criticize Bush when Putin gave Georgia the same treatment he's now giving Ukraine. That's because Bush was giving them the bully wars they wanted--and from which they personally profited.
The problem, however, with conventional warfare in a multipolar global economy is that the losers, potential and actual, outnumber the winners. This is why conventional warfare is disdained more than ever now, in favor of the application of "soft power"--for example, Obama's current threat of sanctions against Putin. Soft power, properly applied, takes longer to get results, but ultimately does so at less cost than conventional warfare. The successful end of the Cold War is, after all, an example of this, as is the fall of apartheid in South Africa. In the world we live in, "muscular" solutions are beside the point; in fact, they are no solutions at all.
Obama understands this, and has made it work for him time and again during his Presidency. Even better, he is a student of history, and understands the similarities between the trap the Soviets built for themselves in Afghanistan, and the one that Putin is building for himself now in Ukraine. Which is why he is content to rely on soft power, and not resort to force unless there is no alternative and only after he is ready to do so.
Which is why, when all is said and done, we're going to be spending less time talking about "Jimmy Obama," and more time talking about "George W. Putin."
One more thing: for a similar, and highly informative take on Putin and Ukraine, take a look.
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