Obamas Daydreaming Might Lead Zero Credibilty to Zero Capability. Zero credibility is a phrase, which Jennifer Rubin has used in her most recent Op-Ed column for the Washington Post with regard to President Obama political reputation after he surprisingly reversed on his no boots on the ground position Sunday. Only a handful of commentators could now disagree with a scary quagmire evaluation of the White House foreign policy. But there is a deeper concern belying American diplomacy in particular and Western attitude to the on-going war in Eastern Europe in general. Its about the instinct of self-preservation of the entire Western world. Could you imagine Roosevelt and Hitler wearing funny shirts to make an optimistic photo for newspapers when the world around was falling apart in 1941? But this is exactly what Obama and Putin have just done at the APEC summit in China this week (washingtonpost/politics/apecs-shirt-tradition/2011/11/14/gIQA7EaKLN_gallery.html?hpid=z9). Undoubtedly, the above is just another argument for Moscow successors of Joseph Goebbels(a talented guy in Putins own words) and Alfred Rosenberg to mock Western leaders, portraying them as infantile sybarites, scared by Russian tanks and special agents. Definitely, sanctions do inflict noticeable damage on Russian economy, due to its own corrupt, monopolist and twisted nature. Nonetheless, such a limited strategy provokes Kremlin to grow military expenditure and behave more aggressively on the ground, in East Ukraine, partially destroyed by Russian army, and amassing troops on the border with Baltic nations, Moldova and Romania. Because, completely rephrasing Bill Clinton -- its not the economy, stupid!. At any given time in Russias history, it never demonstrated even negligible respect for business interests, trade or capitalism, per se. Its high time to revisit good old Sovietology to understand, what Putins domestic and foreign policy is about -- Nazi-styled geopolitics, Chauvinist imperialism, and Anti-Semitic sentiment. The only possible medicine for Russian ressentiment is the same prescribed for Germany and Japan in 1940s, and it has never been the other way around. Look at model Western societies those two countries have become after their militarism got its neck broken by the Allies and social reform has been quickly introduced by the victorious coalition. Unfortunately, nowadays Western leaders seem to have chosen comfortable fantasies as blankets to roll into -- like little kids, who believe in closing their eyes to make the bogeyman disappear… Alas, but nothing like that is going to happen -- in Moscow, they snicker on President Obama Red Lines Game, erasing one line after another since Syria. Like in Syria, thousands of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians have heroically perished in full-scale warfare Russia is waging against Ukraine for many months by now – every week dozens of Ukrainians sacrifice their lives for values of democracy, independence and human rights. Which, in the near past, were believed to be Western values, too. Unlike in Syria, its the democratically legitimate government in Kyiv, withstanding foreign tyranny intervention, and not an insurgency, so sluggishly aided by the US, that now the West has to combat ISIS instead of welcoming democratic Syria to the free world. This is where zero credibility actually stems from for almost two years by now. The slower the US effective reaction to Russian hordes slamming into Europe will be, the larger Ukrainian military cemeteries and the closer the prospect of a new Berlin Wall construction will get. A nightmare of concentration camps has always been a price paid for shortsightedness, illusions and cowardice in the 20th century. Russias reluctance to modernize and its mutual pawky flirt with the West under Putin is one key reason for Eastern Europe quickly going back in time, to pre-Modern discourse President Putin is apt at, and which President Obama rejects so fruitlessly and frustratingly. Evidently though, that the language of war is the only one Moscow does understand, and not the Postmodernist language -- the way Radoslaw Sikorski has recently put it. This is now up to Washington to decide, how much more destruction and deaths it is going to take, before a peoples republic of Alaska will dispel the White House daydreams. Otherwise, the zero credibility might level to zero capability and to a quick showdown of Western herbivorous alliances at which dictators all around the globe scream with laughter these days. Max Mykhaylenko
Posted on: Mon, 10 Nov 2014 19:02:11 +0000
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