Washington – President Vladimir Putin believes in facts on the ground. He opened his Crimea blitzkrieg in late February, signed the final document incorporating the sovereign Ukrainian territory into Russia March 21. He is ostentatiously grabbing for more as you read and there is no telling how far he will go.
The Russian leader acts with great speed and we with too little too late. When President Barack Obama warned of “consequences” if the Russian leader pushed into Crimea, Mr. Putin ordered Russian troops the next day to do just that.
In public discussions at august Washington think tanks and, we are told, in national security agencies there is much talk of Russia’s declining population and swelling alcoholism devastating families. Surely, the narrative goes, Mr. Putin will become a cropper.
Well, yes – all the above is true but will Mr. Putin’s machinegun- rapid drive to rebuild the former Soviet Empire not run over the Atlantic Alliance first.
This question appears not to be asked, let alone answered. Mr. Obama has been telling Americans that they are tired of foreign commitments and opinion research show that Americans agree regardless of party.
Looking closer at what is happening, the outlook is grim. Here’s why: When Mr. Obama protested the Russian-sponsored referendum in Crimea Mr. Putin had Spetsnaz, Special Operations Forces, long in place -- wearing unmarked uniforms. The ballot carried by 97.3 percent. This hilarious fraud had some districts returning yes-votes nearly double the number of voters.
Using his own words, Mr. Putin has shown himself as more reckless than hardly anyone would have believed. The upshot is that sober voices in the United States and Europe speak of Ukraine and Sarajevo in one breath. The meaning is unmistakable: A single shot fired in Sarajevo triggered World War one hundred years ago come August.
None of this is surprising. Mr. Obama gave the former KGB colonel running Russia from the prime minister’s office the encouragement to press on with his ambition to restore what used to be the Soviet Empire. He reset the button on U.S. – Russia 43 days after his first inauguration and triggered arguably lethal geopolitical consequences from Flashpoint Ukraine.
Obama's “imaginative” foreign policy”
A month before Mr. Obama was first sworn in, a superbly informed Washington academic told me to watch for what’s coming. The president-elect, he said, would introduce an “imaginative” foreign policy.”
President Obama delivered on his imagination and what could be more eloquent than Russian soldiers storming a remaning Ukrainian air force base lagging in leaving Crimea – as ordered by the Ukrainian government in Kiev.
This is serious. Shots were fired. What happens if soldiers die – Ukrainian or Russian? A perfect storm is waiting to blow but Mr. Putin shows not a hint he is willing to stop, look and listen.
The direction in Washington has long been of the opposite kind. Mr. Obama speaks loud and carries a wee stick. He draws Red Lines he soon after forgets -- as in Syria. He plays cool and expects Tsar Vlad to do likewise.
There is more. Mr. Obama is both, oblivious to the signals he sends and tone –deaf to sound of his uncertain trumpet.
It is alarming, to put it gently. The day Tsar Vlad barged into Ukraine and the crisis deepened by the hour, Mr. Obama took his family to Key West for a short Florida vacation. As if to underscore his detachment, he broke his leisure with a fundraiser in California.
There is more. The same critical day in Kiev, Secretary of Defiance Chuck Hagel informed the world the United States will slash the armed forces to pre-World War II levels.
Mr. Obama’s latest big moment came on Monday, March 17. He, and leaders of majors European Union countries, announced initial sanctions on Russia that were immediately dismissed as a joke.
Small wonder. To show the significant West meant business, they sort of put a wet mitten on assets of a couple dozen of Tsar Vlad’s cronies and cancelled their U.S. and European visas.
Mr. Putin is not ever in ‘sort of’ mode. He answered the next day: Get stuffed and reserved time for his serious message.
He delivered it in the Kremlin’s white and gold St. George Hall last Tuesday in a bone-chilling address to an audience picked to reflect Moscow’s high and mighty, civic society and bursting with national sentiment for Russia.
Mr. Putin doesn’t harangue in the style of Hitler. He was monotone as always yet coiled was passion and soaked with resentment never seen before in the West. He sounded and looked the angry neo-Stalinist he is and wanted the world to know it.
Think of it clearly, this is no time for uncertain trumpets in the West.
Bogdan Kipling is veteran Canadian journalist in Washington.
Originally posted to the U.S. capital in the early 1970s by Financial Times of Canada, he is now commenting on his eighth presidency of the United States and on international affairs.
Bogdan Kipling is a member of the House and Senate Press Galleries.
