Barack Braveheart Strikes Again

Recently we were treated to an “open mic” moment during which President Obama whispered to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that if Russia could just be patient, after his reelection, the American president would have more maneuvering room to “reach accommodations” with the former Soviet Union. Obama had already agreed to a nuclear arms reduction (likely to be unilateral) and cancellation of plans for a defensive missile shield in Eastern Europe (final agreement pending).

Obama has now been confronted with a fact that anyone with the least sense of history knows—but which he apparently does not. When dealing with autrocratic rulers like Medvedev (and soon his predecessor and successor Vladimir Putin), gestures of good will and offers of compromise are treated as weaknesses to be exploited. At an international conference in Moscow, attended by American State Department officials, General Staff Chief Nikolai Makarov responded to Obama’s overtures with a serious threat that indicated what the Russkies would do if Obama reneged on his cancellation of the missile defense shield.

Said the general of the potential missile defense shield: “A decision to use destructive force pre-emptively will be taken if the situation worsens.” Translation: “If you do anything to protect yourselves and your European allies via missile defense, we will commit an act of war by destroying your sites.” In just a few decades we have gone from Ronald Reagan standing up to the Soviets in Berlin and saying “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall” to an American State Department spokesman saying: “We will rebouble our efforts to seek common ground and to seek understanding.” If you can’t get your enemies to love you, at least you can make them fear you. They feared Ronald Reagan. They laugh at Barack Obama.

In an effort to tamp down the shock and anger felt by a large number of Americans at the Obama administration’s constant capitulation to a resurgent [Soviet] Russian empire, the same State Department spokesman, Mark Toner, attempted to make light of the Russian comment: “I’m aware of this kind of rhetoric being thrown around. [But] I would also just point you to the fact that outgoing President Medvedev also addressed the meeting that was taking place in Moscow, and he expressed confidence that despite differences, we’re going to be able to resolve those differences on missile defense.” Check out your history, Mr. Toner: “There are no offensive missiles in Cuba.”

“This is my last election,” Mr. Obama whispered to Mr. Medvedev. “After my election I have more flexibility.” This development alone points out that America must make this his last election and his first big electoral defeat. In fact, I’m hoping we give him enough flexibility to perform a physically-impossible act on himself. It’s bad enough we have a huge modern Caliphate to face in the years to come, but now we have a president who thinks that Neville Chamberlain did a dandy job of bringing peace for our time at Munich and wishes to accomplish the same kind of peace in Eastern Europe.

Any American general who states loudly and publicly a policy which is not consistent with that of his president will be fired. Any Russian general who states loudly and publicly a policy which is not consistent with that of his president will be fired on (as in “firing squad”). If Obama’s amateur diplomats genuinely think this is “just rhetoric” they have no idea of what incoming President Putin has engineered in the past, most particularly as head of the KGB. One has to wonder if the equally naïve and vastly more dangerous weak-spined President of the United States is acting out of foolish trust or merely simple fear.