One shudders to think how Vladimir Putin might become any more openly contemptuous of Barack Obama. The Russian president hasn’t yet publicly called his American counterpart “boy,” but that seems likely to occur any moment.
Putin’s latest expression of contempt is his decision to dispatch a flotilla of seven Russian warships and an unknown number of marines to the Syrian port of Tartus, part of a long effort to thwart western attempts to remove the dictatorial regime of Bashar Assad or at least stop his ongoing slaughter of his countrymen. Russia’s efforts on behalf of its longtime ally have also included vetoing a series of resolutions in the United Nations’ Security Council, supplying arms to Assad’s forces, undermining economic sanctions with continued trade and direct assistance, and providing a fig leaf of international legitimacy.
The Syrian issue hasn’t been Putin’s only opportunity to demonstrate his disregard for America and its allies. Putin has also obstructed American and western efforts to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, threatened to withhold crucial natural gas supplies from Europe, bullied former Soviet client states such as Georgia, and provided diplomatic and economic support to such international troublemakers as Raul Castro and Hugo Chavez. In order to leave no doubt about his disdain for America and its allies, Putin also skipped the recent G-8 economic summit, and during his last direct meeting with Obama he was ostentatiously scornful that even the CBS reporters noticed.
Many commentators have noted that Putin’s anti-American shenanigans have occurred despite Obama’s extraordinary efforts to accommodate the Russian. One of Obama’s first foreign policy efforts was to have Secretary of State Hillary Clinton present the Kremlin’s diplomats with a “reset button” representing his belief that any disagreement between the United States and Russia was surely the result of the hated George W. Bush, and even though the button had an incorrect translation on it the administration’s subsequent decisions have all reflected the same view. Obama broke past promises to Poland and the Czech Republic regarding missile defense, brokered a nuclear arms limitation treaty that was very much to Putin’s liking, and even gave a phone call to congratulate Putin on his widely disputed election. In a particularly embarrassing moment, Obama was even overheard assuring the Russians that he’d be even more “flexible” should he win re-election.
The more likely explanation for Putin’s brazen belligerence is that it occurred because of, rather in spite of, Obama’s accommodating stance. History is replete with thugs such as Putin who have perceived such friendly overtures as a sign of weakness to be exploited, and we can think of no instances where they have responded in kind and abandoned their pursuit of a perceived national interest. Putin has explicitly stated his contempt not only for the weakness of Obama but of the entire western world that has elevated such men to positions of power, most recently in a speech to his diplomatic corps when he stated that “Domestic socio-economic problems that have become worse in industrialized countries as a result of the (economic) crisis are weakening the dominant role of the so-called historical West.”
— Bud Norman
The Central Standard Times 