Obama's Hands Are Tied

While Russia is about to incorporate the southernmost tip of Ukraine, U.S. President Barack Obama’s first reaction was to fly to Miami. After a visit to a high school, he traveled to the Florida Keys with his wife Michelle. Meanwhile, a thunderstorm of criticism is raining down in Washington. “We have a weak and indecisive president that invites aggression,” grumbled Republican Lindsey Graham. “President Obama needs to do something.” His party colleague, Mike Rogers, agrees and issues a warning about Vladimir Putin who is, in his opinion, unpredictable. “I think Putin is playing chess, and I think we’re playing marbles,” rants Rogers.

It is indeed a risky course that Obama has pursued in regard to the crisis in the Crimean peninsula. He wants to force Putin, the cunning tactician, to his knees with unloaded weapons. The U.S. announced sharper sanctions against those responsible for the conflict; for the moment, however, no names or companies have been placed on its black list. The main man in the Kremlin will have quickly realized that Washington was only firing blanks. But there’s more to Obama’s strategy. He wants to isolate Moscow diplomatically and economically, step by step, and thereby refuse Russia the approval of the international community, which Putin had longed for with his Olympic Games in Sochi. At present, the Pentagon is still describing the threatening military gestures as routine exercises and obligations vis-à-vis its NATO partners. Russia’s neighboring countries, however, are already aligning themselves more strongly with the West — which Putin wants to avoid if at all possible.

But is that enough to pave the way for an end to Moscow’s muscle-flexing? On the other hand, what should Obama do? The country is war-weary; nobody wants to hear of a new, genuine conflict — not Congress, not the Republicans. He could quite possibly contain Russian influence somewhat with gas exports to Europe, but otherwise Obama’s hands are tied.

The Americans gave the name “reset” to the red button with which they intended to launch a new beginning to relations with Russia. When Obama took over office from his predecessor, George W. Bush, in 2009, he wanted to clear the air with this symbolic gesture. Obama performed a tabula rasa, without asking for anything in return. Over the following years he reached out further to Moscow, in an attempt to overcome the “Cold War mentality,” as he put it. He repeated agreements on anti-missile defense systems with Poland and the Czech Republic and assured the Russians of even more flexibility during the period after his re-election in 2012. Eventually, he made Kremlin chief Putin the arbitrator in the debacle surrounding Syria’s chemical weapons, after his own “red line” had turned out to be an empty threat.