Obama's Foreign Policy: Now Russia Backfires

When Obama entered office in 2009, he was determined to discredit Bush's depiction of Iran, Syria and North Korea as the "axis of evil. Contending that Iran and Syria were merely misunderstood, Obama extended New Year's video greetings to Tehran (see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYkH9J2VBdM), while sending Senator John Kerry to court Syrian President Assad.

Well, Iran continued to develop nuclear weapons, and Assad proceeded to butcher thousands of innocent civilians.

The third arm of Obama's foreign policy was to "reset" relations with Russia. As we all know owing to an open microphone gaffe, Obama promised incoming President Putin with concessions following re-election in November (see: http://jgcaesarea.blogspot.co.il/2012/03/obamas-open-mike-chat-with-medvedev-yes.html). However, Obama's overtures to Russia are now unwinding. Putin views Obama as a weak sister, and as noted in a New York Times article entitled "Syria Crisis and Putin’s Return Chill U.S. Ties With Russia" (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/14/world/europe/putins-return-brings-rapid-chill-to-us-russia-ties.html?pagewanted=all) by Peter Baker, Russia is growing cold to the US:

"Signs of that divergence seem increasingly pronounced lately, despite private reassurances from Mr. Putin that he wants to deepen ties. Michael A. McFaul, a former Russia adviser to Mr. Obama, has been subjected to an unusual campaign of public harassment since arriving in Moscow as ambassador. A Russian general threatened pre-emptive strikes against American missile defense sites in Poland in the event of a crisis. Mr. Putin has cracked down on demonstrations while blaming Americans for them, and he skipped the Group of 8 summit meeting hosted by Mr. Obama last month.

'The reset failed to change the underlying suspicion and distrust of America shared by a majority of Russians as well as Putin himself,' said Masha Lipman, an analyst at the Carnegie Moscow Center. 'America is seen as a threat, an agent seeking to undermine Russia, to weaken it, to do harm to it. Russia always has to be on the alert, on the defensive.'"

With the US economy collapsing and all of his foreign policy initiatives backfiring, Obama must be wondering whether a million dollar smile will be sufficient to get him past Romney in November.