The Commander in Chief’s Unskillful and Crisis Escalating Trash Talk about Russia Continues — Donald Rumsfeld’s Critique of the Administration’s Too Public Foreign Policy Was Exactly on Point

© 2014 Peter Free

 

26 March 2014

 

 

If you want to contain a crisis, you don’t do it while simultaneously publicly and gracelessly disrespecting your geopolitical adversary

 

There are times when Barack Obama’s intelligence seems to desert him, probably overwhelmed by his fear of attacks from America’s frequently insane and warmongering political Right.

 

Yesterday, the President foolishly said — among other things:

 

 

Russia is a regional power that is threatening some of its immediate neighbors — not out of strength but out of weakness.

 

They don’t pose the number one national security threat to the United States.

 

I continue to be much more concerned when it comes to our security with the prospect of a nuclear weapon going off in Manhattan.

 

© 2014 Scott Wilson, Obama dismisses Russia as ‘regional power’ acting out of weakness, Washington Post (25 March 2014)

 

President Obama seems to think that, if you want to deescalate a street confrontation, you do it by pumping up your opponent’s already considerable rage.

 

 

Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was correct — this Administration metaphorically could not negotiate its way out of an open paper bag, without setting it on fire first

 

As I have previously indicated — here, here, and here — the Russian Federation understandably wants the West to stop provocatively squeezing it out its own sphere of influence.  Russian rage at undeserved disrespect is the name of this geopolitical game.

 

Unfortunately, as former Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld said recently, the Obama Administration likes to play its diplomacy clumsily out on its self-selected Tough Guy stage, with the United States too frequently becoming the geopolitical loser.

 

 

Our Commander in Chief has inherited more power than he knows how to use

 

He consistently makes situations worse than they need to be.

 

In some respects, President Obama is the equivalent of the trash talking, badge-heavy nitwits that, in my cop days, I went out of my way to avoid having cover me.  When you feel capable, you do not need to advertise it by indulging in provocative bravado that infuriates the people with whom you are dealing.

 

 

Regional power?

 

Russia is significantly more than a regional power.

 

The United States has been whining for years that the Federation has the political reach to make things difficult in Syria and Iran.  Cooperating with the People’s Republic of China, the Russian Federation has been able to shut down international United Nations actions that it doesn’t like.

 

What is especially absurd about President Obama’s diminution of Russia’s real world status is the Federation’s continuing ability to incinerate the United States with nuclear weapons.

 

What kind of testosterone-poisoned presidential airhead indicates that the ability to project nuclear weapons around the world belongs to a merely regional power?  That is equivalent to telling a street hoodlum that the bullet in the .45 that he is holding won’t reach you.

 

 

The moral? — Commander in Chief Obama doesn’t have the street credentials to properly handle his authority

 

Somewhere along the line, President Obama seems to have misplaced his copies of the Art of War and common street psychology:

 

 

If your goal is peace, you do not unnecessarily enrage potential adversaries.

 

If your goal is power, you do not create foolish conflicts that ultimately weaken you.

 

If your goal is communication, you do so directly, rather than via gracelessly indulged domestic rabble rousing.

 

Provocatively displayed hubris is America’s most significant geopolitical adversary.