Jim Geraghty starts by chronicling a spectacularly bad prediction, continuing our theme of earlier today:

The always-reliable Eli Lake, quoting apparently fallible sources, February 27: “American intelligence has concluded that Russia won’t openly invade Ukraine, despite a massive military exercise on the border and the armed takeover of local airports. U.S. intelligence estimates conclude that Russia has no intention of invading Ukraine. This, despite the launch of a massive, new Russian military exercise near Ukraine’s border and moves from armed men to seize two key airports in the country’s Crimea region.”

Word Sunday night: “A senior administration official told reporters on a conference call that Russian forces were ‘now in complete operational control of the Crimean peninsula.’ The official said, ‘There is no question that they are in an occupation commission in Crimea. They are flying in reinforcements and they are settling in.”

(drumming fingers)

How do you botch that? Obviously, a lot of us don’t think terribly highly of the foreign-policy instincts and chops of John Kerry, Bob Kerrey, Susan Rice, Joe Biden, and Barack Obama. But is this all-star team getting bad intelligence on top of their other problems? Or is it that they only hear what they want to hear from the intelligence community?

A sample of John Kerry’s keen eye for foreign policy:

“Russia chose this brazen act of aggression and moved in with its forces on a completely trumped up set of pretext, claiming that people were threatened. And the fact is that that’s not the act of somebody who is strong, that’s the act of somebody who is acting out of weakness and out of certain kind of desperation.”

Is it really an act of weakness, John? Because right now, Putin controls Crimea and he’s got Kiev shaking in its boots, and the only thing that Washington and the European capitals can agree on is that they don’t want to get into a shooting war with Russia. What’s desperate about it? Right now, Putin is basically daring the West, seeing what they’re willing to do to stop him. Perhaps not quite as explicitly as the UK newspaper The Sun puts it…

Maybe they’ll throw Russia out of the G8. What other consequences are there?

In that interview, Bob Schieffer said the White House described Barack Obama’s 90-minute phone call with Putin “the toughest phone call of his presidency.”

Ah. A tough phone call.

Thus the arsenal of democracy is reduced to the tools of the telemarketer.

The Washington Post‘s Jackson Diehl: “New White House background spin for journalists: Putin has made such a big mistake by invading Crimea that it’s a good thing, really.”

We have a White House full of officials who think they can spin a Russian invasion. It’s as if they think they can alter reality with their minds.

As I mentioned in an earlier Jolt, shortly after the Syria debacle, the Obama administration came into power oblivious to some hard lessons of foreign policy, and has proven strikingly resistant to those lessons: Being nicer to countries like Russia will not make them nicer to you. The United Nations is not an effective tool for resolving crises. Some foreign leaders are beyond persuasion and diplomacy. There is no “international community” ready to work together to solve problems, and there probably never will be.

You can pin this on Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Susan Rice, but most of all, the buck stops with the president. Those of us who scoffed a bit at a state senator ascending to the presidency within four years on a wave of media hype and adoration are not quite so shocked by this current mess. We never bought into this notion that getting greater cooperation from our allies, and less hostility from our enemies, was just a matter of giving this crew the wheel and letting them practice, as Hillary Clinton arrogantly declared it, “smart power.” (These people can’t even label a foreign-policy approach without reminding us of how highly they think of themselves.) They looked out at the world at the end of the Bush years, and didn’t see tough decisions, unsolvable problems, unstable institutions, restless populations, technology enabling the impulse to destabilize existing institutions, evil men hungry for more power, and difficult trade-offs. No, our problems and challengers were just a matter of the previous hands running U.S. foreign policy not being smart enough.

The whole “reset button” ceremony with Hillary Clinton and Russia’s Sergey Lavrovwas a formal commemoration of the incoming administration’s naïveté. The “famously stormy” relationship between Condi Rice and Lavrov was not a matter of Rice not being diplomatic enough or nice enough or trying hard enough. It reflected that Vladimir Putin and most of Russia’s highest levels of government defined their interests as opposing our interests.

This had to hurt the New Republic to recall this:

In the course of the last presidential campaign, Mitt Romney made a comment about America’s number one “geopolitical foe,” which Romney claimed was Russia. He was mocked by the president and many liberal commentators. Here are Romney’s remarks, in their full context, which came during a conversation with Wolf Blitzer:

ROMNEY:  Russia…is, without question, our number one geopolitical foe.  They fight every cause for the world’s worst actors.

BLITZER:  But you think Russia is a bigger foe right now than, let’s say, Iran or China or North Korea? Is that—is that what you’re suggesting, Governor?

ROMNEY:  Well, I’m saying in terms of a geopolitical opponent, the nation that lines up with the world’s worst actors.  Of course, the greatest threat that the world faces is a nuclear Iran.  A nuclear North Korea is already troubling enough.

But when these—these terrible actors pursue their course in the world and we go to the United Nations looking for ways to stop them, when—when Assad, for instance, is murdering his own people, we go—we go to the United Nations, and who is it that always stands up for the world’s worst actors? It is always Russia, typically with China alongside.

And—and so in terms of a geopolitical foe, a nation that’s on the Security Council, that has the heft of the Security Council and is, of course, a—a massive nuclear power, Russia is the—the geopolitical foe.

This all seems…exactly right.

George Will adds:

It comes from the Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin:

Our next president must be the anti-Obama

It’s instructive to see what a coherent alternative to the Obama-Hillary Clinton-John Kerry foreign policy might look like.

First, it would get the values and the rhetoric right. While Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) objects to tweaking a brutal aggressor such as Russian President Vladimir Putin, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) was taking swings at the despots in our hemisphere. On the Senate floor he declared, “This is the moment to point out that Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro’s abuse of his fellow citizens is intolerable to the United States. If he wants better relations with us, he should start by listening to the demands of his own people. He should lift the cloud of censorship that he is using to isolate Venezuelans from each other and from the rest of the world. And the United States should do all it can to help the people of Venezuela as they choose a different path, a path of freedom and prosperity, that will return this one-time enemy to its traditional role of our partner and friend. It would benefit them, it would benefit us, and it would benefit the world.” It is entirely apt that we make clear that good relations with the United States requires respect for basic human rights. (Cruz also called specifically for the release of opposition leader Leopoldo López, elucidated the noxious connection with Iran — and hence the need to proceed with sanctions — and made a clever proposal to deprive Venezuela of oil revenue. This is a model of cold-eyed realism and fidelity to American values.)

Second, a not-Obama foreign policy would not savage our military budget. The Foreign Policy Initiative outlines the array of threats we face and argues:

In the face of these threats, the United States is preparing to enter a third year of forced cuts that will reduce the Defense Department’s budget by almost a  trillion dollars this decade. At $496 billion, the proposed sequestration-level  defense budget for fiscal year 2015 is $45 billion below what President Obama had previously recommended for FY 2015 in April 2013 — and a whopping $95 billion below what Obama had recommended for FY 2015 in February 2011. As a result, the Pentagon’s base budget will fall from nearly 3.7 percent of gross domestic  product (GDP) when President Obama entered office in 2009 to just 2.8  percent — roughly the same GDP percentage level prior to al-Qaeda’s 9/11 attacks.

Even with partial sequester relief, real damage will be done to readiness, force structure and modernization. FPI cautions: “Even if the Pentagon avoids the worst budgetary outcome, Secretary [Chuck] Hagel and General Martin Dempsey, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, acknowledged that the cuts that they’re now proposing mean that ‘our future force will assume additional risks in certain areas.’ In fact, they used the word ‘risk’ some 23 times over the course of their briefing on Monday.” In  short, in a world that even the administration concedes is riskier than ever, we need a military budget that anticipates and can deter or, if need be, defeat those threats.

And, third, sober commanders in chief must abandon the notion that their own personal charm, earnestness or background is the key to resolving conflicts. We’ve seen time and again how Kerry foolishly anticipates “diplomacy” will work — in Syria, Iran or in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — if only pursued with diligence, as if no one who preceded him has ever tried to sway the Iranians, implored the Russians or cajoled the Palestinian Authority. It’s an egocentric and naive leader who would invest so much importance in personality. As Cliff May of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies puts it: “President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton convinced themselves that it was Mr. Bush’s cowboy swagger — not conflicting geopolitical interests — that were the root cause of Russo-American tensions. Their solution: ‘Reset’ relations with the Kremlin. That this was a misguided policy became evident when Mrs. Clinton, with elaborate fanfare, presented Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov with a button inscribed with the Russian word ‘peregruzka.’ She believed it meant ‘reset.’ In fact, it means ‘overcharge.’”

More on this in our next post.

Have you been paying attention to the conflict between Russia and the Ukraine?

If not, maybe you should, because the Washington Post reports:

Think that’s bad? The London Daily Mail reports:

A treaty signed in 1994 by the US and Britain could pull both countries into a war to protect Ukraine if President Putin’s troops cross into the country.

Bill Clinton, John Major, Boris Yeltsin and Leonid Kuchma – the then-rulers of the USA, UK, Russia and Ukraine – agreed to the The Budapest Memorandum as part of the denuclearization of former Soviet republics after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Technically it means that if Russia has invaded Ukraine then it would be difficult for the US and Britain to avoid going to war.

Putin installed 150,000 troops along Ukraine’s borders after the overthrow of Moscow ally Viktor Yanukovych by pro-European protesters. …

Sir Tony Brenton, who served as British Ambassador from 2004 to 2008, said that war could be an option ‘if we do conclude the [Budapest] Memorandum is legally binding.’

It promises to protect Ukraine’s borders, in return for Ukraine giving up its nuclear weapons.

Today Kiev has demanded the agreement is activated after insisting their borders had been violated. …

Moscow has been sending mixed signals about Ukraine but pledged to respect its territorial integrity. Putin has long dreamed of pulling Ukraine, a country of 46 million people considered the cradle of Russian civilization, closer into Moscow’s orbit.

More on the treaty:

Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances was a international treaty signed on February, 5, 1994, in Budapest.

The diplomatic document saw signatories make promises to each other as part of the denuclearization of former Soviet republics after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

It was signed by Bill Clinton, John Major, Boris Yeltsin and Leonid Kuchma – the then-rulers of the USA, UK, Russia and Ukraine.

The agreement promises to protest Ukraine’s borders in return for Ukraine giving up its nuclear weapons.

It is not a formal treaty, but rather, a diplomatic document.

It was an unprecedented case in contemporary international life and international law.

Whether is it legally binding in complex.

‘It is binding in international law, but that doesn’t mean it has any means of enforcement,’ says Barry Kellman is a professor of law and director of the International Weapons Control Center at DePaul University’s College of Law told Radio Free Europe.

You may recall that the Clinton administration’s favorite military engagement was an engagement in which the U.S. had no actual strategic interests — to name two, Somalia and Kosovo. Twenty years later, we do have an actual strategic interest because Bill Clinton signed that treaty, unless you don’t think the U.S. signature on a treaty, or “diplomatic document,” should mean anything. (In which case we should immediately reinstitute the Monroe Doctrine and the Platt Amendment and eject the Castros from Cuba and the Chavezistas from Venezuela.)

One comment observed that such entangling alliances are what started World War I. The more apt comparison is to a smaller-scale version of the Cold War, the original of which was fought in Vietnam formally and Central America and Africa informally. Cold War II wouldn’t (or perhaps isn’t) between the U.S. and its allies and the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact. But Putin would love to reassemble the Soviet Union without Communism. This isn’t about ideology; it’s about power.

You’ll notice that Putin has become expansionist during the Obama administration. That’s because Putin has concluded the U.S. won’t do anything about it. Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941 because Japan thought the U.S. was weak. Osama bin Laden planned 9/11 because he thought the U.S. was weak. What do you think Putin sees when he observes Obama, Joe Biden and John Francis Kerry?