Whom would you prefer as U.S. president: Vladimir Putin or Barack Obama? That’s the topic of the week, and I want you to have fun with it. And lest you judge Mr. Putin too harshly in the light of current events, consider how President Obama might react if half the population of California were threatening to jettison ties with Washington and unite with Mexico. That’s roughly the problem that Mr. Putin faces in Ukraine, which is verging on civil war over the question of whether the country should scorn Moscow and turn toward Europe.
Regardless of whether you believe Putin’s pretext for ordering in the troops (which have yet to fire a shot), there should be little doubt that Obama would do the same thing if pro-Mexico riots were threatening to break out in Los Angeles. Violence aside, the economic consequence of Russia “losing” Ukraine are huge. The country’s hopes of becoming economically significant in the world will be dead without the potential contribution of a rejuvenated Ukraine, just as America’s odds of escaping the fatal drag of The Great Recession would sink to zero without California aboard. (Nor would the loss of California’s tax revenues be a small matter for Washington, whose ponderous bloat would not survive such a radical amputation.)
Channeling Jonah Hill
In the meantime, we have the pathetic spectacle of Mr. Obama and his equally lame Secretary of State telling Putin, in effect, “Hey, that’s a no-no!” If this saga were given a Hollywood treatment, it would feature Obama’s Jonah Hill stepping into a UFC cage with Putin’s Junior Dos Santos. Although the script would contrive a way for the comically inept Hill to triumph, victory unfortunately is not in the cards for the equally inept Obama. For in fact, there is nothing the U.S. or Europe can do about Russian troops in the Crimea, and Putin knows it.
His methods may be blunt and sometimes brutal, but unlike Obama, he means what he says. Obama could undoubtedly teach Putin a thing or two about communism, but little else. Where character is concerned, Putin is the better man. And where bluff and bluster are required to sustain the illusion of strength, Putin’s tactics would better suit America than Obama’s. Putin’s brand of geopolitical chess has allowed Russia to project an image of strength even as Mother Russia implodes economically and demographically. Obama, on the other hand, is just playing marbles, as one observer has noted. His spineless, ideologically vindictive style of “leading from behind” has caused the U.S., with far greater assets than Russia, to recede from its former greatness with appalling speed.
In suggesting that Putin, or someone like him, would make a better leader, I am not advocating an outbreak of U.S. nationalism or empire-building; rather, I am simply expressing my hope that the U.S. not become even more of a laughing stock in a world that desperately needs it leadership.
