Red Storm Rising

by JASmius

If The Donald really does believe that Barack Obama might try to fake some manly swagger in the Russo-Ukrainian crisis, I think he can relax:

Donald Trump said he fears that because President Barack Obama has shown weakness on the world stage in foreign policy efforts, he would now overplay his hand with Russia over the Ukraine "to show that he's all man."

Obama "is not a respected man. The thing I have the most concern about is that he's being so lambasted for not being respected, and for being a joke, that he'll do something really stupid to show that he's all man. And that's a real problem," the real-estate and entertainment mogul told "Fox & Friends" on Monday.

If Russia respected the United States, Trump maintained, they would not have mobilized forces into Ukraine after indicating they would not.

"A few days ago, they told [U.S. Secretary of State John] Kerry ... 'We will not go into Ukraine,'" Trump said. "Twenty minutes later, they went in. It's unbelievable."

Once again, it's about knowing how The One's mind works.  First, he doesn't care about Ukraine or what Vladimir Putin is doing to it.  Second, his mission has been and remains to remove America from even regional power status so that it can't deter such overt acts of aggression.  And, third, his impenetrable overconfidence in his own powers of persuasion perpetually convinces him that all he has to do to resolve a crisis is give a speech about it.  I'll bet you dollars to doughnuts that after his presser last Friday he checked off the "Ukraine" box and sped away to that DNC event to declare happy hour.  As far as he's concerned, it's off his radar screen.

So I highly doubt that O is going to be goaded into pulling it out and stroking it on the international stage, especially with Czar Vlad's tossed back over his shoulder.  If he were prone to geostrategic penis envy, he wouldn't have gutted and sodomized the U.S. military in the first place.

But even if he was, I doubt at this point that Putin would even notice:

Russia has issued an ultimatum to Ukrainian forces in Crimea to clear out by 5 a.m. Tuesday (10 p.m. Eastern Time) or face a "military storm," Russia's state-run news agency Interfax reported.  

In full, the statement read, "If they do not surrender before 5 a.m. (Ukrainian time) tomorrow, a military storm will commence against units and divisions of the armed forces across Crimea."

Russia's military moved from base to base in Crimea Monday, demanding Ukrainian forces surrender, but Ukrainian forces said there is no official Russian ultimatum that they're aware of, only psychological pressure and threats. 

Meanwhile, Russia also pressed hard Monday for Ukrainian politicians to return to the February 21st agreement that promised a new unity government — with fugitive President Viktor Yanukovych back in power — would rule until an early election no later than December. 

But the proposal seemed to be a nonstarter as diplomats met in Brussels, Kiev, and Geneva and warnings about the dangers of Russia's military actions were issued from European capitals. 

On the ground, pro-Russian troops held all Ukrainian border posts Monday in Crimea, as well as all military facilities and a key ferry terminal, cementing their stranglehold on the strategic Ukrainian peninsula.

Vladimir Putin doesn't sound like a man that's going to be dissuaded from his chosen course of action by anything short of DEFCON 1, does he?

Which, yet again, illustrates why diplomacy is not a halo-polishing, ego-stroking end in and of itself, but rather one tool in the statecraft tool box with which to wield national power on the world stage short of military confrontation so that war, whether deliberate or by miscalculation (and there's oftentimes a great deal of overlap between the two), is rendered, if not unnecessary, than at least considerably less likely.  Teddy Roosevelt may have been a dirty, filthy "progressive," but his famous exhortation to "speak softly, but carry a big stick" was and remains spot-on.  And then there was George Washington's wisdom that "if you want peace, prepare for war".  Hence the motto "Peace through strength."

You know who was the greatest diplomat of all time?  Otto Von Bismarck.  The first German chancellor knew two things with absolutely clarity: (1) His objectives in Europe; and (2) which could be obtained militarily and which would require realpolitik diplomacy.  Militarily he led Prussia in unifying all the minor German states into the German Empire and crushed France in a brief war in 1871 to remove any threat on his western flank for a generation and consolidate his internal gains.  Then he engaged in master diplomatic machinations that drew Austria-Hungary into the German orbit and isolated France and Russia individually and from each other.  If Bismarck's status quo had been left in place, Germany would have dominated Europe and been at peace.  The veritable best of both worlds.

Unfortunately, Kaiser Wilhelm I croaked in 1890, his punk-kid son Wilhelm II, who, as youth is want to do, thought he knew everything, took over, fired Bismarck's kiester, unwound his diplomatic web, pushed France and Russia together along with Italy and Britain, and guaranteed eventual war.  Germany went from supremacy and peace to being surrounded on three sides in a war that, once the U.S. was foolishly drawn in, became unwinnable.

In short, diplomacy in the national interest, keeps a president supplied with multiple useful options short of war; "fecklessness," as it's called, reduces that list of choices to two: war or surrender.

And we know which option Barack Obama will choose - every time.