No, American Weakness Didn't Encourage Putin to Invade Ukraine

[DonViejo]

In fact, we've pushed U.S. power further east than anyone could have imagined when the Soviet Union collapsed.

PETER BEINART - MAR 3 2014, 8:41 AM ET

If you’ve listened to President Obama’s critics in recent days, you’ve almost certainly heard two claims. First, that under Obama, America is in retreat around the world. Second, that America’s retreat emboldened Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine.

Let’s take the second claim first. Obama’s critics differ as to which moment of White House fecklessness spurred Putin to act. “Ever since the [Obama] administration threw themselves in [Putin’s] arms in Syria … I think he’s seen weakness. These are the consequences,” insists Tennessee Senator Bob Corker. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, by contrast, suggests, “The big one that started this was the absolute retreat on our missile defense system in Poland and Czechoslovakia.” Either way, there’s a causation problem. If it was Obama’s weakness—in the Middle East or Eastern Europe—that encouraged the Russian president to invade Ukraine, then how do Corker and Rogers explain Putin’s decision to do something similar in Georgia in 2008, back when George W. Bush was president?

Which brings us to assertion number one. It’s true that the Obama administration has withdrawn troops from Iraq and is withdrawing them from Afghanistan. But from where Putin sits, American power hardly seems in retreat. From his perspective, in fact, the reverse is likely much closer to the truth.

To understand why, it’s worth casting one’s gaze back a couple of decades. Under Ronald Reagan, the frontier of American power in Europe was Berlin. Then, in February 1990, as East Germany began wobbling, Secretary of State James Baker journeyed to Moscow to discuss German unification. According to James Goldgeier, author of Not Whether But When, the definitive history of NATO expansion, Baker promised Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that if the Soviets allowed Germany to reunify, NATO—the U.S.-led Western military alliance that took form after World War II—would not expand “one inch” further east, not even into the former East Germany itself. But as the year progressed, the White House developed different ideas, and by the fall it was clear that a unified Germany would enter NATO, no matter what the Russians thought.

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http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/03/no-american-weakness-didnt-encourage-putin-to-invade-ukraine/284168/

[underpants]

1. Fracking

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1014&pid=745891

[dipsydoodle]

2. We will never know what subsequent events would have occured

if the EU had agreed to cough up the $8 billion asked for during the December meeting with Ukraine instead of the measly $1 billion offered which killed the talks. The EU is now offering a package of $15 billion having realised their mistake.

How those events have anything to do with American weakness , given the US was not involved in those talks defeats me. It was the EU who fucked up big time.

[The Magistrate]

3. A Good Analysis, Sir

[JayhawkSD]

4. "It’s true that the Obama administration has withdrawn troops from Iraq"

Actually, that is not true at all. George W. Bush made an agreement with Nuri al-Maliki before he left office that set the date for total withdrawal of all troops from Iraq. Obama merely happened to be in office when the military executed that agreement.