Leslie Gelb as Putin´s useful idiot

Vladimir Putin can still count on a number of useful idiots in the US. Leslie Gelb (former correspondent and columnist, former senior Defense and State Department official) is one of them. In his view the US and Europe are solely to blame for Putin´s aggression in Ukraine. And, indeed, the Baltic states should never have been allowed to join NATO!

Here are a couple of excerpts from Gelb´s latest "research":

Over the course of the 1990s and early 2000s, NATO conferred membership upon much of Eastern Europe. In many cases, this was a sound strategy for the West, Russian resentment notwithstanding. The alliance, however, pushed its advantage provocatively far. It extended its protective wing up to Russia’s borders in the Baltic states.
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When some neighbors rejected Russia in favor of the West, Moscow chose force. In Georgia, Russia solidified control over the provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. A democratic uprising in Ukraine triggered Russian support for revolts in Ukraine’s eastern provinces and the annexation of Crimea.
At some point over the last quarter century, Washington might have realized that the Kremlin was not going to sit around and wait for the West to determine Russia’s fate. Russia’s leaders countered with what came naturally to them—military power—to ensure they would shape their own future.

"Wait for the West to determine Russia´s fate"?!!

Hillary Clinton is right when she distances herself from Obama´s foreign policy

Hillary Clinton is of course right:

Distancing herself from President Barack Obama's foreign policy, potential 2016 U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said in an interview published on Sunday that the U.S. decision not to intervene early in the Syrian civil war was a "failure."

Republican critics and others have faulted Obama for doing too little to support Syrians who rose up against President Bashar al-Assad. Syria has been torn apart by a civil war for three years, with Assad staying in power and Islamic militants among the opposition gaining strength.

"The failure to help build up a credible fighting force of the people who were the originators of the protests against Assad - there were Islamists, there were secularists, there was everything in the middle - the failure to do that left a big vacuum, which the jihadists have now filled," Clinton said in an interview with The Atlantic.

Norman Podhorez on Obama: ¨his behavior fits his strategy to weaken America abroad"

The astute foreign policy observer Norman Podhoretz sums up Barack Obama's "Successful Foreign Failure":

The president may look incompetent on Syria. But his behavior fits his strategy to weaken America abroad. --

The consequent erosion of American power was going very nicely when the unfortunately named Arab Spring presented the president with several juicy opportunities to speed up the process. First in Egypt, his incoherent moves resulted in a complete loss of American influence, and now, thanks to his handling of the Syrian crisis, he is bringing about a greater diminution of American power than he probably envisaged even in his wildest radical dreams.

For this fulfillment of his dearest political wishes, Mr. Obama is evidently willing to pay the price of a sullied reputation. In that sense, he is by his own lights sacrificing himself for what he imagines is the good of the nation of which he is the president, and also to the benefit of the world, of which he loves proclaiming himself a citizen.

The problem for Mr. Obama is that at least since the end of World War II, Americans have taken pride in being No. 1. Unless the American people have been as fundamentally transformed as their country is quickly becoming, America's decline will not sit well. With more than three years in office to go, will Mr. Obama be willing and able to endure the continuing erosion of his popularity that will almost certainly come with the erosion of the country's power and influence?

No doubt he will either deny that anything has gone wrong, or failing that, he will resort to his favorite tactic of blaming others—Congress or the Republicans or Rush Limbaugh. But what is also almost certain is that he will refuse to change course and do the things that will be necessary to restore U.S. power and influence.

And so we can only pray that the hole he will go on digging will not be too deep for his successor to pull us out, as Ronald Reagan managed to do when he followed a president into the White House whom Mr. Obama so uncannily resembles.

Obama as a foreign policy leader - more and more like Jimmy Carter

US President Barack Obama's decision to cancel a meeting ewith Russian dictator Vladimir Putin was the right one. However, that does not solve the problem of Obama's weakness as a foreign policy leader.

Finally, people have begun to realize that Obama is more and more looking like Jimmy Carter. This is how the German Daily Die Welt puts it:

"Putin believes that Obama -- who gave up plans for a missile defense program in Poland and the Czech Republic when he didn't need to -- is weak. This is one of the reasons why he offered Snowden asylum. Obama had no choice but to express disappointment and to cancel his visit to Moscow. A gesture of Carter-esque helplessness on the heels of a humiliation of Carter-esque proportions. It will be seen in Tehran the same way is it is seen in Moscow, which does not bode well for the looming conflict over Iran's nuclear policy."
"One thing is clear: Criticism of Barack Obama's Carter-esque foreign policy is growing, and rightly so."