Obama and Putin in a Post-Foreign Policy Era

The Cold War was an extraordinary period in American history in that the perceived ideological threat posed by Communism and the perceived existential threat posed by the Soviet Union actually made foreign policy a driving concern of the American voter as well as the government.  In more normal times, Americans tend to be more insular and self-absorbed -- that certainly seems to be true today following the interventionist presidency of George W. Bush.  The recession and lingering unemployment have also given cause for Americans to look more inwards.  However, the rest of the world continues to move regardless of who is watching.  Even as we speak, troops are moving...Russian troops pouring into Ukraine, intent on wresting control of at the very least the Crimea.  Should Americans care?  Should the US government do anything?

What Russia's actions illustrate to me above all else is the broken state of the international system.  The United Nations can hardly deter war when China, France, Russia, the UK, and the US are permanent members of the United Nations Security Council with veto powers.  The very powers likely to be involved in wars are empowered to prevent the rest of the world from uniting against them.  The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is perhaps a more effective alliance, but its very name indicates its provincial outlook -- it was not intended to be a truly global alliance and it is not.  The only thing that seems to be saving us from global war is restraint and smaller alliances between countries.  When a major power stops showing restraint, as Russia has done, and it attacks a country that is not a member of an effective alliance such as Ukraine, the major power can seemingly do whatever it wants.

What I find so galling about the Ukraine War is how Russia's naked self-interest and lust for territory are its only real motivations for invading Crimea.  That Crimea has a large proportion of Russian speakers is irrelevant -- they could have a referendum on joining Russia if that's what they truly want and no Russian troops would have needed to be involved.  Indeed, I would gladly have supported such a referendum; why shouldn't the residents of the Crimea determine their own fate without compulsion?  Let there be an orderly and fair political process, and let everyone have a seat at the table, including the Tatars and Ukrainians who live in Crimea.  Now, though, there can be no genuine political solution free of compulsion because the Russian military has involved itself.  Any so-called Russian patriots in Crimea at this point may just be regular people who don't want to be killed.  There seems to be little to no evidence that the Ukrainian central government is oppressing Russians in Crimea either -- Crimea is already autonomous within Ukraine, and the chaos in Ukraine after the removal of President Viktor Yanukovych has left a transitional government preoccupied with simply functioning at a basic level at this point.  Russia merely has taken the opportunity to grab territory because it saw its neighbor was weak and vulnerable.  Whether Russia outright annexes Crimea or creates a vassal state as it has done in Transdniestria makes little difference; this is an old-fashioned war waged for an old-fashioned reason: greed.

I don't expect American voters to demand action against Russia any time soon.  The consequences of two major powers going to war with each other are potentially devastating.  For the same reason, I expect President Obama and the US government to act with caution as well, merely cutting some economic and political ties to Russia.  No doubt many other countries will do the same.  The problem, though, is that none of this seems good enough.  Russia knew the world would have a reaction of some sort, but it didn't care -- there is no effective deterrent to military actions by the great powers at this point.  When war isn't punished, I fear there will be more of it.  That's certainly been the lesson of history, learned painfully over and over again. In hindsight, President Obama's conciliatory gestures towards Russian president Vladimir Putin seem indefensible.  Scrapping the United States' negotiated missile defense agreement with Poland and the Czech Republic because of Russian objectives seems particularly foolish -- beefing up the defenses of our allies unfortunately located near Russia may be the only way to curb Russian expansionism and prevent much bloodshed in the future.  It's a sad state of affairs all around.  It seems that American preoccupation with foreign policy, as in the Bush years, as well as American indifference towards foreign policy, as we have under the Obama administration especially with regards to the non-Islamic world, lead equally to catastrophe.