Russia’s Doors, Putin’s Time

There are, and always have been, three doors to Russia, every one of which has been jealously guarded first by Russian Czars and in the Communist era by Russian Czars posing as proletarian workers such as Josef Stalin. There is a Western point of access (Ukraine, Poland and the Baltic states), a Middle Eastern point of access (Afghanistan, Iran) and a Southern point of access (China). Access doors open both ways and, depending upon one’s point of view, President of Russia Vladimir Putin has now either opened or shut all the doors. It would be paradoxical, though never-the-less true, to say he has shut the doors by opening them.

Mr. Putin was featured as Time magazine’s “Person of the Year” in 2007. That year, China’s leader Hu Jintao was featured as a runner up.

Mr. Putin seemed to be on his way out, Time noted: “His final year as Russia's President has been his most successful yet. At home, he secured his political future. Abroad, he expanded his outsize—if not always benign—influence on global affairs.”

But in communist “post-communist” Russia, things are not always as they seem. Putin was never out; he was simply playing musical chairs with Russia’s second in command Dmitry Medvedev. It was Mr. Medvedev whose knee President Barack Obama tapped prior to his re-election to office to convey a message to Mr. Putin. Reuter’s caught the moment this way:

“President Barack Obama was caught on camera on Monday assuring outgoing Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that he will have ‘more flexibility’ to deal with contentious issues like missile defense after the U.S. presidential election.

Obama, during talks in Seoul, urged Moscow to give him ‘space’ until after the November ballot, and Medvedev said he would relay the message to incoming Russian president Vladimir Putin.”

Mr. Medvedev apparently relayed the message, which may have been re-interpreted by Mr. Putin as indicating that Mr. Obama was a weak and indecisive president.

Proof of Mr. Obama’s weakness is strewn all over the world: There were no defense missile emplacements in Poland or any of the Baltic States; Mr. Obama’s “lead from behind” foreign policy in Libya and Syria had collapsed; the personal representative of the president of the United States, Libyan Ambassador Chris Stevens, was assassinated by armed militants associated with al-Qaida, a metastasizing group of terrorists that, the American public had been told during Mr. Obama’s second presidential campaign, had been decimated after Mr. Obama had cut short the video career of Osama bin Laden. For a moment there, it appeared that Mr. Obama had turned over his Middle East portfolio to the once and future Time magazine “Person of the Year,” Mr. Putin. And, of course, Mr. Putin was only too happy to lend a shoulder.

Next year, one may expect to find Mr. Putin’s mug on the cover of Time once again. Consider Mr. Putin’s triumphs: Mr. Putin has both shut and opened the Middle Eastern access doors. He is providing help to Iran in the county’s march towards the acquisition of nuclear weapons. The western door opens to natural gas pipe lines running from Russia through an as yet partly dismembered Ukraine to Europe, which can ill afford an interruption in energy supplies. The United States might supply Europe with sufficient energy resources, but its President, convinced the country can run on fuel cells, has been dithering on the opening of a Canada supplied energy pipe line. Afghanistan, which occasionally has provided a route used by Islamic terrorists to strike at the heart of Russia, has been, since the Taliban chased Russia out of the country, operating under an American protectorate now crumbling everywhere in the world. So long as an American Cerberus guards the Afghan door to Russia, the Islamic threat to Putin will be considerably reduced.

Most recently Mr. Putin and Chinese president Xi Jinping have struck what Charles Krauthammer has styled in a recent column “a spectacular energy deal — $400 billion of Siberian natural gas to be exported to China over 30 years." This last foreign policy gesture opens and closes the last of Russia’s doors. 

Mr. Putin’s “pivot to Asia” is a live option, Mr. Krauthammer writes, while Mr. Obama’s pivot to Asia has become a dead letter. Mr. Obama’s “withdrawal from the Middle East — where from Egypt to Saudi Arabia, from Libya to Syria, U.S. influence is at its lowest ebb in 40 years — is a fait accompli.”

Mr. Krauthammer’s columns are not read in the White House by Mr. Obama, who appears to have settled comfortably into a position of unarmed neutrality. His is the kind of foreign policy that is to be expected from a president chronically unable to determine friends from enemies. Those who cannot read the times will be done in by them.

In any case, the second appearance of Putin as Time magazine's’ “Person of the Year” is  imminent.

Towards A TR Conservative Republican Party

Many people may be surprised to hear that President Teddy Roosevelt, the Bull Moose megaphone and the first serious presidential progressive, was a Republican.

It is Teddy that prevents the term “Republican activist” from becoming an oxymoron. There is no question that TR –- some call him the good Roosevelt -- was what we should call “an activist.”

In the post-Ronald Reagan period -- the present era of a boisterous modern progressive party led nationally by President Barack Obama and here in Connecticut by the ubiquitous Governor Dannel Malloy -- some Republicans are beginning to ask dangerous questions: For instance, what would the policies of an activist Republican look like? Is it possible to imagine an activist conservative government that would carry us far from the modern progressive and destructive bonfire?

One of the most enticing features of modern progressivism is that it gives politicians something to do. Of course, they always go overboard, carrying most of us with them. A government that sets a minimum wage is an over-reaching government that has stopped governing. And the problem with over-reaching is simply this: If a U.S. Senator were to fancy himself a sort of populist consumer protection agent determined to guard his constituents from the ravages of sugary breakfast cereals, that senator would not have sufficient time or inclination to devote himself to the proper responsibilities of his office – say, developing a strategy to prevent Russian President Vladimir Putin from swallowing large parts of Eastern Europe and re-assembling the Soviet Union. This is what modern progressivism does: It burns down your house and then forces rug makers to sell you a carpet at a reduced price.

The conservative who chastises U.S. Senator Busybody for neglecting his constitutional responsibilities ought not to be shouted down as someone who hates government, when in fact he may be someone who appreciates much better than Senator Busybody the necessary and indispensable responsibilities of a responsible senator. But, more often than not, he is shouted down – as someone who believes cities should be allowed to rot while he twiddles his thumbs and repeats conservative nostrums concerning the dangers of an immodest omni-incompetent government.

Suppose a conservative TR, a Jack Kemp sort of guy, should come along in Connecticut and propose an “extreme” solution that would lead cities out of their jobless doldrums by means of a proposal to place business tax reduction zones in large poverty infested urban areas. If you’re a business in Hartford or New Haven or Bridgeport, for instance, you might be able to take advantage of a reverse progressive business tax that diminishes in proportion to a diminishing jobless rate in the targeted cities. Suppose reverse progressive tax reductions were applied to married couples in poverty stricken cities, individual tax reductions being greater in mom and pop households. Such a scheme might well reverse the plague of fatherless households in major urban centers. Would this not be a noble effort in reducing poverty in cities where fatherhood has become a distant memory?

One wonders how a modern TR would sell such ideas in Connecticut. He almost certainly would be instantly confronted by a governmental apparatus allied with powerful interest groups and a left of center media more intent on expanding transfer payments than lifting the poor from poverty. For every dollar Connecticut taxpayers send to Washington – a laundromat for dollars that otherwise would be invested in job production at home – Connecticut receives back about sixty-eight cents in services and rhetorical baloney. The percentage is probably similar in the case of tax money collected by the state and distributed by the General Assembly: For every dollar appropriated to alleviate poverty, a large bite is consumed by the state’s caritas apparatus. And since the advent of Mr. Malloy as governor, a portion of tax money collected is delivered, more or less as a pay-off, to multi-million dollar companies that have threatened to leave the state for greener pastures elsewhere; such tax consuming companies will be generous to the Democratic machine come election day.

Very likely any effective effort to ameliorate the condition of the poor in cities by making them independent of government succor would be a battle to the death. But then, if we could summon TR from the dust that is the final condition of all men and women – there are no rich or poor corpses – he would find a way. And that way would be shouted from bully pulpits in Hartford, Bridgeport and New Haven, whose recently elected mayor, Toni Harp, has just imposed more taxes on Mike Stratton, a New Haven alderman allied with a breakaway group of city lawmakers known as the People’s Caucus.

Mr. Stratton, a heretical Democrat in New Haven’s one-party town, was on the verge of proposing spending cuts and operational cut backs.

When Mr. Stratton rose in opposition to the tax increase levied by the wife of New Haven’s most notorious tax scofflaw, lately deceased, he was told – politely, to be sure – shut up and go away.

Revolutions begin this way.

The New Year, Connecticut’s Novice Senators, Russia And Afghanistan

Connecticut U.S. Senator Chris Murphy’s young years were showing in an interview he gave to the Connecticut Post just before the New Year opened. Murphy assumed office on January 3, 2013. Possibly by the time this column appears in print, Mr. Murphy’s career in the Senate will be one year young.

The high point of his yet shallow senatorial career, Mr. Murphy said in the interview, was his near heroic resistance to the National Rifle Association (NRA).

His opposition to the NRA, the one term senator said, possibly would not pay legislative dividends for years. However, the resistance he has offered the NRA represents the point of a spear. Advocates of tougher gun laws, he told the paper, are now organizing to offset the political clout of the NRA.

"For the past 20 years,” said Mr. Murphy, “the NRA has worked in a vacuum. Now, there are groups that are counterpoints to the NRA. I consider myself part of the political resistance to the NRA,” a small wave, so to speak, that announces the coming tsunami of resistance.

Unfortunately for Mr. Murphy and his fellow guerrilla fighter in the U.S. Senate, Dick Blumenthal, also a newly minted senator, the two NRA resistance fighters were not able to convince a sufficient number of senators, in a body controlled by Democrats and possibly the most progressive President the Democratic Party has produced since Woodrow Wilson hung up his spurs, to adopt very mild gun control measures, far less severe than those measures rushed into law in Connecticut following the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

In fact, Mr. Murphy’s brash and very public resistance to the NRA may have persuaded some senators favorable to mild gun control measures to place a ten foot pole between themselves and Connecticut’s two new U.S. Senators, one snorting for battle, and the other, Mr. Blumenthal, who wishes to go down to history as the U.S. Congress’s first consumer protection senator.

Most recently, a Connecticut newspaper reported that Mr. Blumenthal was pressuring United Parcel Service (UPS) to issue refunds to customers whose gifts did not arrive in time for Christmas. “I am disappointed,” Mr. Blumenthal thundered in a press release, “to learn that so many consumers in Connecticut and across the country made purchases this holiday season expecting their gifts to arrive in time for Christmas, but instead were left empty-handed.” As Attorney General in Connecticut for 20 years, Mr. Blumenthal’s disappointment frequently was translated into expensive multi-year suits against parties that presumed to disappoint him. As U.S. Senator, Mr. Blumenthal appears to have brought into office with him an abundance of his vices and few of his virtues.

Even his junior partner in the Senate, Mr. Murphy, knows that the U.S. Congress should be concerning itself with larger issues – such as Afghanistan. “The long list of foreign challenges facing the U.S. in 2014,” Mr. Murphy told the paper during his interview, “is topped by the drawdown of U.S. forces in Afghanistan and the ongoing efforts to persuade Iran to halt its nuclear weapons program.”

Mr. Murphy also promised to keep an eye on Russia: "There's no doubt that Russia is trying to expand its influence around the region and world and revert back (sic) to the kind of abusive autocracy that they got rid of 20 years ago.”

The “abusive autocracy” Russia presumably “got rid of 20 years ago” was, in fact, not an autocracy but rather a totalitarian enslavement of nations that previously had declared autonomy from Russia and were for nearly three quarters of a century -- from the Communist Revolution in Russia in 1917 to the destruction of the Berlin Wall in 1989 – forced into the Soviet orbit. But why quibble over antique historical points?

The most recent “intelligence estimate” on Afghanistan, a consensus report involving all U.S. intelligence agencies, contains some bad news and some worse news.

The bad news, to put it bluntly, is that if the U.S. withdraws all its troops from Afghanistan, sometimes called “the graveyard of empires,” the country is very likely, very quickly, to revert to Taliban hands. The worse news is that even if the U.S. were to retain in the country more than 12,000 troops, the minimum number necessary to sustain the present inadequate status quo, the security gains achieved since 2010 would still significantly erode in the south and east of the country.

Given these options, “some White House officials," according to a Tribune report, are pressing for a full and immediate withdrawal.

Following release of the report, the Obama administration was peppered with questions, and the questioners were told by an administration official who requested anonymity that President Barack Obama “has not made any decisions about troop numbers, nor will he” in the absence of a signed agreement with the mercurial Hamid Karzai that would permit U.S. troops to remain after 2014.

When Mr. Blumenthal has finished squeezing all the publicity he thinks he needs for re-election from the UPS contretemps, and when Mr. Murphy similarly leaves off cuffing the ears of law abiding NRA members, both Connecticut’s relatively new U.S. Senators might want to address themselves to immediate and pressing foreign policy issues such as: Should the United States withdraw from Afghanistan in the new year – yes or no?

Perhaps the Taliban in Afghanistan should be President of Russia Vladimir Putin’s problem. Geography is destiny, and Afghanistan is a terrorist doorway to Russia.

Is Malloy Fooling All the People Some Of The Time Or Some Of The People All Of The Time?

One news publication apparently has an ear for a political pitch:

“In the first-term Democratic governor’s recent speeches, echoes can be heard of the broad themes that President Obama successfully used in 2012 to make a case for his second term, despite stubbornly high unemployment and a tepid economic recovery, the same conditions confronting Malloy.

“Like Obama, Malloy is asking for more time to overcome fiscal challenges left by a Republican predecessor, rattling off statistics that point to progress and ignoring those that do not. And like the president, the governor acknowledges the electorate’s fears and frustrations about the pace of recovery.”

The publication notes that Governor Dannel Malloy has not yet formally announced his candidacy. His on the stump remarks are styled by the publication as a “soft opening of Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s unannounced re-election campaign.” Pause for a moment over the oxymoronic expression “soft opening of an unannounced campaign.” It is not modesty but rather political calculation that so far has prevented Mr. Malloy from shouting his candidacy for governor from Connecticut rooftops.

But suppose – just to suppose – that the state’s recovery from the national recession, always painfully slow in Connecticut, has been impeded by measures adopted by Mr. Obama to spur the recovery? In that case, would Mr. Malloy be willing to detach his political program from the usual made-in-Washington campaign script and head out, to vary a term use by Huckleberry Finn, “for the territories?” For Huck, “the territories” were potential states in which slavery had not yet had a chance to put down roots, an important consideration for his friend Jim, over whom the possibility of enslavement  hung pendulously like a damoclean sword.

It is true that a progressive script disclaiming responsibility for a lackluster economy did work well for Mr. Obama, even though he had occupied the presidential office for the preceding four years. A few months into his second term, however, Mr. Obama’s inauthentic campaign “reality” crashed into real reality. The Benghazi imposture, the raid by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) on the constitutional privacy rights of much derided and inoffensive conservative organizations, the defection of Edward Snowden to Russia and the consequent drip, drip of previously closely guarded spying methods of the American spook machine, the abject surrender of Mr. Obama’s Middle East policy to President Vladimir Putin of Russia, the stressful – some would say fatal -- architectural fault lines in Obamacare, and a continuing lack luster economy, all this and more has rubbed raw the trust Americans place, almost as a matter of course, in their president. The principal features of the Obama-Malloy script are a ganglion of suppositions, many of them untrue or doubtful.

No doubt new presidents and governors “inherit” problems from their predecessors. However, along with the manageable difficulties come certain benefits. Both Mr. Obama and Mr. Malloy did pledge to overcome the difficulties of their predecessors, and both inherited, along with a weakened economy, a constitutional framework they did not have to invent from whole cloth, business enterprises they did not have to establish from the ground up, and traditional economic configurations they did not have to configure from scratch – on the whole, a rich, even an enviable patrimony. As for the “inherited problems,” both chief executives were swept into office on pledges that they would settle them; and if the problems remain unsettled or grow more severe during their time in office, one always hopes voters will have the good sense to throw the bums out. Grousing about predecessors after one has had years to implement plans offered in campaigns to solve such problems borders on whining.

During the soft opening of his thus far unannounced political campaign, Mr. Malloy, borrowing a page from the Obama campaign, boasted that jobs in Connecticut were on the uptick, presaging a recovery flowing from Mr. Malloy’s sagacious political programs. That soap bubble burst when it collided with a less politically campaign oriented report issued by UConn economists.

The report noted "Connecticut has not created and sustained net new jobs in 25 years. The extraordinary persistence of weak job creation argues powerfully for profound structural weaknesses in the state's economy, weaknesses that surely predates (sic) the devastating recession that hammered the state economy at the opening of the 1990s or the financial crisis in 2007-2008." The report did not stress that the “profound structural weaknesses” began in the state with the imposition of the Lowell Weicker income tax, that it took ten years for the state to recover the job losses incurred during the Weicker recession, or that Mr. Malloy’s “solution” to the budget deficits left to him by his predecessors, the largest tax increase in state history, was eerily similar to Mr. Wicker’s false solution. With considerable chutzpah, the UConn economists suggested that job losses in the state could be stemmed, if only temporarily, as soon as Mr. Malloy begins to spend bonded money already allocated for capital expenditures – perhaps by adding a few more buildings or professorships to UConn. Demands of this kind should be made discreetly.     

The real solutions to years of anemic economic growth lie outside Mr. Malloy’s progressive fantasy world. Stop borrowing money, except for justifiable state-wide capital projects; this year, the Malloy administration borrowed nearly a billion dollars to finance a change in state accounting processes. Reduce municipal mandates, thus relieving the pressure on town officials to increase property taxes. Cut business taxes across the board, and end the crony capitalism that transfers taxes from the dwindling savings accounts of   hard pressed taxpayers to the budging pockets of tax gobbling CEOs of multi-billion dollar corporations. Cut spending. Establish term limits; more elections more often are a corrective for voter apathy. Tell the unions in Connecticut that no one has a right to strike against the public safety, anytime, anywhere, for any purpose.  Govern wisely, parsimoniously and well. And try as much as possible to keep your grubby hands off people’s bibles, their wallets and their guns.

These steps on the road to recovery would mark a promising beginning. 

Murphy’s European Apology Tour

U.S. Senator Chis Murphy plans to travel to Europe on an apology tour, according to a brief notice in a Hartford paper.

“Over the last several months,” Mr. Murphy wrote in a media release, “our European allies have raised legitimate concerns about the nature and scope of U.S. intelligence programs, and I agree that at times, U.S. surveillance programs have not been conducted with the appropriate restraint and security, both in the United States and in Europe. While foreign citizens do not enjoy the same constitutional protections as American citizens, the United States should have processes in place that assure non-U.S. citizens that all possible steps are being taken to limit the scope of our surveillance programs so that we are targeting only the information absolutely necessary to find and catch individuals who pose a security threat to the United States and our allies. My goal for these meetings will be to help cement the overall relationship between the United States and Europe and discuss surveillance programs in our countries.”

The brief news account does not mention where Mr. Murphy plans to travel in Europe -- Germany, France, Spain, England or the Vatican.

Mrs. Pesci and I just returned from France, whose socialist president, more unpopular in his own county than president Barack Obama is at home, still feels the whip and lash of an out of control American spy agency.

Germany’s head of state, Chancellor Angela Merkel, heatedly objected when she discovered -- thanks to Edward Snowden and his patron, Russian President Vladimir Putin -- that the Americans had tapped her private cell phone.

That item made the news four days running before we boarded the plane for home.

Presidential flack catcher Jay Carney’s various attempts to explain away the obvious have made him a laughing stock throughout Europe.  In a first response to European unease, Mr. Carney assured Ms. Merkel on behalf of the president that the United States is not nor would in the future tap the cell phone line of Germany’s head of state. It took news broadcasters about one hour to note that Mr. Carney had agilely danced around the question: Has the Obama administration in the past tapped the private phone lines of Ms. Merkel? It has been reported that Ms. Merkle’s phone lines have been under siege for more than ten years.

   

European grown-ups understand that nations do spy on each other – but tapping the private line of a European head of state suggested to them that a time honored line had been crossed.

Just before boarding an airline for home, we found that the Obama administration had tapped the Pope’s phone lines. Someone in the airport joked that the Obama administration was perhaps seeking how best to obtain an indulgence for its many secular sins.

The second most prominent story during the weeks we were in Europe concerned the spectacular failure of the launch of Obamacare.

A stevedore who tied our boat to a pier in Arles joked, “Here come the Americans. They are all FBI agents.” He was joking of course, but clearly there was a scorpion’s sting in his remark.

If Mr. Murphy does alight in Germany during his apology tour, it is possible he may bump into Mr. Snowden who, according to a recent news report, has expressed interest in testifying in a German inquiry into U.S. spying.

The Washington Post has reported that Snowden’s appearance in Germany would be contingent upon a pledge that Germany would not shuttle the accused felon to the United States. The possible testimony of Mr. Snowden in Germany, the paper reported, “puts Merkel into a tight spot. German voters are furious with the U.S. government over the spying revelations, and allowing Snowden into Germany would be a popular move. But the Obama administration has made clear that it is willing to go to great lengths to retrieve Snowden — including, said Bolivian President Evo Morales this summer, forcing the leader of a sovereign country to make an emergency landing because of suspicions that Snowden was on his jet.”

“If there were the possibility to hear Snowden as a witness,” said Thomas Oppermann, a Social Democrat who heads Germany’s parliamentary intelligence oversight committee, “without bringing him into danger and completely ruining the German-USA relationship, we should use it.”

Unless Mr. Murphy is willing to travel through Europe on his knees, begging pardon of every European he meets, he will not be warmly received. It may be more useful for him to stay home, iron the wrinkles out of Obamacare, work to construct a passable budget – Mr. Obama’s first since achieving office -- and apologize to the Europeans from afar, where he will be safe from the taunts of stevedores and European schoolchildren.

Syria And The Collapse Of US Foreign Policy

A couple of months ago, President Barack Obama drew a red line in Syria. He said if Syrian strongman Bashar al Assad, the Middle East’s answer to North Korea’s runt dictator, were to use chemical weapons against his political opponents, this would catch Mr. Obama’s interest and trigger a military response.

At least, that’s what everyone thought he said.

A little over a year ago, at one of Mr. Obama’s infrequent news conferences, the president said:

“I have at this point not ordered military engagement in the situation, but the point that you [a reporter] made about chemical and biological weapons is critical. That’s an issue that doesn’t concern just Syria. It concerns our close allies in the region, including Israel; it concerns us [the US]. We cannot leave a situation in which chemical and biological weapons are falling into the hands of the wrong people.  We have been VERY clear to the Assad regime, but also to other players on the grounds, that a red line for us is if we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons start moving around or being utilized. That would change my calculus; that would change my equation. [Here a reporter begins to ask a question: “Somehow under… And Mr. Obama continues] In a situation this volatile, I wouldn't say that I am absolutely confident. What I’m saying is that we’re monitoring that situation very carefully. We have put together a range of contingency plans. We have communicated in no uncertain terms with every player in the region that that’s a red line for us, and there would be enormous consequences if we start seeing movement on the chemical weapons front—or the use of chemical weapons. That would… that would change my calculations significantly.”

Mr. Assad, a host of American mouthpieces assured us, promptly crossed Mr. Obama’s red line and slew with chemical weapons some 1,429 people. Both the figure and the culprit are in dispute.

Following the mass poisoning, former Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, who replaced Hillary Clinton as Mr. Obama’s Secretary of State, was dispatched to huff and puff like Mars, the Greek God of war. Here is Mr. Kerry in August pinning the tail on the donkey:

"What we saw in Syria last week should shock the conscience of the world. It defies any code of morality. Let me be clear: The indiscriminate slaughter of civilians, the killing of women and children and innocent bystanders by chemical weapons is a moral obscenity. By any standard, it is inexcusable. And despite the excuses and equivocations that some have manufactured, it is undeniable."

A military response was imminent. When Mr. Obama said -- “We have been VERY clear to the Assad regime, but also to other players on the grounds, that a red line for us is if we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons start moving around or being utilized” -- he wasn’t just whistling Dixie. The response, however, would be un-Bushian. It would entail no American boots on the ground.  It would not lead to a Vietnam War boondoggle. Mr. Kerry, who both fought in Vietnam and later protested the war in the company of “The Winter Soldiers,” surely was trustworthy on this point.

Not to worry, the assault targeting Mr. Assad’s war material would be limited in time and scope, “an unbelievably small effort,” Mr. Kerry later explained.

Some people were worried, among them Russian President Vladimir Putin. Assad threatened reprisals as American war ships were dispatched to the area. Mr. Putin also threatened reprisals. Israel stoutly prepared to defend itself from anticipated attacks. Great Britain’s Parliament, for the first time since 1782, voted down a war resolution introduced by its Prime Minister. France flourished a war flag then ran it down the flagpole. After pressure on all sides had been brought to bear against him, Mr. Obama agreed to send the proposal for a limited engagement to Congress. Democratic senators bailed on Mr. Obama; Republican war hawks supported him. In Connecticut, U.S. Representative Chris Murphy said niet; Senator Dick Blumenthal promised to mull the matter over before casting a vote. The world, as sometimes happens when Mars begins bawling from the rooftop, turned upside-down.

In a “Yes, the earth is flat” moment, Mr. Obama denied that HE had laid down a red line:

"First of all, I didn't set a red line. The world set a red line. The world set a red line when governments representing 98 percent of the world's population said the use of chemical weapons are [inaudible] and passed a treaty forbidding their use, even when countries are engaged in war. Congress set a red line when it ratified that treaty. Congress set a red line when it indicated that in a piece of legislation entitled the Syria Accountability Act that some of the horrendous things happening on the ground there need to be answered for. So, when I said in a press conference that my calculus about what's happening in Syria would be altered by the use of chemical weapons, which the overwhelming consensus of humanity says is wrong, that wasn't something I just kind of made up. I didn't pluck it out of thin air. There's a reason for it."

And then, quick as the flick of a serpent’s tail, a miraculous thing happened: Eirene, the Greek Goddess of peace, Pax among the Romans, gave Ares, Mars among the Romans, a boot in the arse.

War hawk, peace hawk, war hawk Kerry, during a press availability in London, answered a question – Under what circumstances might this march towards war be averted? – by making what a press spokeswoman later would term a throw-away, purely rhetorical  remark. “Sure, he [Bashar al-Assad] could turn over every single bit of his chemical weapons to the international community in the next week - turn it over, all of it without delay and allow the full and total accounting, but he isn't about to do it and it can't be done.”

Mr. Putin intervened with Mr. Assad and then proceeded to exploit an entente. Syria and Iran, both enemies of the United States, are client states of Russia. The proposal casually tossed of by Mr. Kerry suddenly became a reality. Mr. Assad acceded to the Putin-Kerry proposal to turn over his chemical weapons to a United Nations agency, aborting a vote in Congress authorizing Mr. Obama’s belligerency.

The Congress, called upon by Mr. Obama to lay its fingerprints on a resolution giving the president authority to bomb Syria, let out its held breath, blowing off the roof of the Capitol building and flattening the Jefferson, Lincoln and Washington monuments.

The White House later announced that the same proposal had been spurned by Mr. Putin a year earlier. Now amenable to the proposal – given certain revisions -- Mr. Putin made arrangements with both Syria and Iran to supply both counties with new arms. Very likely, the turnover of chemical weapons from Syria to the United Nations, traditionally a playpen of autocratic regimes unfriendly to the United States, will not be able to be verified while Mr. Assad is at war with his opposition. As a condition of the entente, Mr. Putin has stressed the importance of U.S. disengagement. Translation: The U.S. must not ship arms to the enemies of Mr. Assad, while no such prohibition would encumber Mr. Putin. Such would appear to be the conditions of a Putin brokered entente between the United States and Syria. It was an offer Mr. Assad could not and did not refuse.

Among the winners in the serendipitous deal brokered by Mr. Putin, other than Mr. Putin himself, are Syria and Democrats in the U.S. Congress, who narrowly missed a bullet. In the absence of the Putin-Kerry-Obama-Assad entente, the Congress was poised to vote on U.S. intervention in Syria. Anti-war Democrats, weary of  the repeated engagements of U.S. troops in such corners of the world as cosmopolitan Afghanistan, the graveyard of empires, some Democrats were in the process of jumping Mr. Obama’s war ship and did not relish an up or down vote on Mr. Obama’s and Mr. Kerry’s “unbelievably small effort.” That vote almost certainly would have affected upcoming Congressional elections.

Having from time to time rented the American military out to international interests as an enforcer of what Mr. Obama has called “international norms,” the American people have become suspicious of lofty supra-national presidential claims.  In fact, there is no such thing as an international foreign policy – never had been, never will be. A nation’s foreign policy, throughout history rooted in sound distinctions between friendly and unfriendly states, becomes incomprehensible as soon as it is detached from national interests. For this reason, a president who fancies himself a world historical individual cannot be the architect of a rational national foreign policy. Unfortunately for the United States, Mr. Obama’s international ambitions are, to put it colloquially, too big for his nation’s britches. One does not expect clarity in foreign policy from a U.S. president who seems incapable of making proper distinctions between the friends and enemies of the United States.

The intentions of Mr. Putin, who rarely strays from what he thinks may be the national interests of Russia, are far more lucid. The United States having rented its military might to international interests, has now permitted its foreign policy to be kneaded and shaped by Mr. Putin. Mr. Obama and Mr. Kerry are mere onlookers leading, as always, from behind. 

Blumenthal And Murphy Contemplate War: What Would Clausewitz Do?

U.S. Senator Chris Murphy has not said whether or not he thinks it was wise diplomacy when President Barack Obama drew his red line in the sand on the question of the use of chemical weapons by Syrian strongman Bashir al Assad against his opponents. But the answer to the question can be deduced from Mr. Murphy’s position on a promised U.S. military intervention. Mr. Assad having stepped across Mr. Obama’s red line, Mr. Obama seems poised to respond militarily in some thus far mysterious fashion.

Mr. Murphy, the junior U.S. Senator from Connecticut, has been tagged by his state’s media  as “one of the most vocal opponents of a proposed air strike.” His Democratic comrade in the Senate, Richard Blumenthal, is less pacific. Mr. Blumenthal is urging prompt military action in Syria “to send a message to Assad.”

That message, one may be sure, will not be received warmly by either Mr. Assad or President of Russia Vladimir Putin. Russia has supported both Bashir al Assad and his murderous father Hafez al-Assad who, thirty years ago last month, launched one of the bloodiest chapters of modern Arab history: the Hama Massacre. Syria has been an Assad family operation since Hafez al-Assad was elected president 1971.

Mr. Murphy, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has not been unmoved by the chemical attack on civilians: “I saw the pictures of the little kids killed by chemical weapons, and I understand why people want action.” he said. However, he pointed out, the United States has not enjoyed much diplomatic success in the Middle East: “But after 10 years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s clear the U.S. isn’t very good at pulling strings in Middle East conflicts.” An air strike will not dislodge Bashir al Assad, Mr. Murphy has said, and the United States can rid the country of chemical weapons only if it sends in ground troops, not a likely eventuality. The commitment of ground troops would only stiffen military resistance and further damage the status of the United States among the Syrian people. And then too, Mr. Murphy said, there is the danger of the “quagmire,” as in “the Vietnam quagmire.”

If Mr. Murphy had the ear of Mr. Obama a year ago, he might have advised the president against drawing “red lines.”

John Dickerson of Slate, not a conservative publication, noted that although Mr. Obama was “supposed to be the wise and careful communicator,” he had “done nothing but corner himself… there's no doubt that Obama's rhetoric has increased the penalty for inaction. It's one thing to fall short of the standard for the U.S. role in the world, as some commentators define it. It's a bigger failing to fall short of your own assertions.”

Mr. Blumenthal, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, is more sanguine.

The United States, he said on a CNN broadcast, should launch an air strike “targeted to high-value military assets and limited in its duration and scope.”

There may be unanticipated repercussions to such a strike – Mr. Putin, Edward Snowden’s kindly host, is making bellicose noises – but, Mr. Blumenthal said, he is “more concerned about repercussions for failing to respond to this violation of morality and international law.”

There is something deadly unserious in Mr. Obama’s proposed military response. The purpose of diplomacy is to change minds. The purpose of military measures is to change conditions, which is why Carl von Clausewitz said that war “is an act of violence to compel our opponent to fulfill our will.” War, therefore, is a continuation of diplomacy by other means or, as Clausewitz said, “the continuation of policy by other means.” But the strength of policy depends upon a purity and clarity of intentions. No clear policy can be deduced from Mr. Obama’s proposed response. The “red line” he has proposed demarcates no rational foreign policy. This is a president who seems incapable of distinguishing clearly between friends and enemies, a distinction that lies at the center of any coherent foreign policy.

Both Connecticut’s U.S. Senators should insist that any military actions taken by Mr. Obama should advance the national interests of the United States. Americans are weary, and more than weary, with presidents who have rented out the American military to international interests that do not always conform to national interests. The American people did not elect Mr. Obama to enforce international law as perceived by the United Nations, an international play pen of states many of which are hostile to the United States.

There are reasons for going to war, and those presidents who engage in war should make their intentions plain to the American people before they embark on a venture in which kindheartedness should, according to the clearheaded Clausewitz, play no prominent role:

“Kind-hearted people might of course think there was some ingenious way to disarm or defeat the enemy without too much bloodshed, and might imagine this is the true goal of the art of war. Pleasant as it sounds, it is a fallacy that must be exposed: War is such a dangerous business that mistakes that come from kindness are the very worst.”

The Trouble With Lameduckery

The president’s office is time sensitive because of term limits. No president since Franklin Roosevelt has served more than two terms or eight years in office.

Mr. Roosevelt was the only president elected to a third term; his supporters pointed to the war in Europe as a reason for breaking with precedent. Mr. Roosevelt won a fourth term in 1944 during World War II but suffered a cerebral hemorrhage in office the following year and died. After more than a dozen years in office, the bloom had fled the rose.

The 22^ndamendment owed its inspiration to a precedent established by President George Washington’s farewell address and Thomas Jefferson’s aversion to monarchy. In 1807, Jefferson wrote in reply to a query from Vermont’s legislature, “if some termination to the services of the chief Magistrate be not fixed by the Constitution, or supplied by practice, his office, nominally four years, will in fact become for life."

New York Democratic Rep. Jose Serrano reintroduced a bill in Congress early in January of this year repealing the 22nd Amendment, but the bill is not likely to pass, however infatuated more than 50 percent of the American public and 90 percent of the news media have become with wunderkind President Barack Obama.

The presence of a presidential term limit presents both opportunities and problems for the chief executive.

Mr. Obama was looking on the bright side of his lameduckery when he whispered to then Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that he would have "more flexibility" to deal with contentious issues like missile defense after the U.S. presidential election.

During talks in Seoul, Mr. Obama “urged Moscow to give him‘space’ until after the November ballot, and Medvedev said he would relay the message to incoming Russian president Vladimir Putin,” according to a March 2012 Reuters report.

Two months after Mr. Obama begged Mr. Medvedev for more space, Vladimir Putin was elected, for a second time, President of Russia. The present Russian government, apparently unconcerned with Mr. Jefferson’s quibbles, is a product of centuries of monarchical government, followed by a promising but betrayed revolution, followed by 30 years of Stalinism, monarchy’s modern counterpart. Mr. Putin and Mr. Medvedev have managed to satisfy an apparent hunger in Russia for democratic forms by swapping jobs every so often, a modern tyrant’s answer to the 22^nd amendment.

Had Mr. Putin been running for president of the United States, he would not have been eligible to serve, because the 22^ndamendment is a bulwark against proto-Stalinist chief executives; it nips in the bud the megalomania of the larval tyrant by giving the president of the United States only two terms of “space” in which he may ruin the country and bring republican government to its knees.

Here is the hitch with lameduckery: At some point during a second term in office, it becomes obvious to presidential supporters that the duck is lame. At that point, politics pivots. During the second term of virtually every president who labors under the austere restrictions of the 22^ndamendment, the president is found gathered together with his ardent supporters during his first term -- including party leaders in the Congress -- and everyone in the room realizes that there is but one lame duck in the room; the rest of them will be running for re-election long after the president has strut his hour upon the stage. They begin to think, dangerously, of surviving in a political universe that does not include the nominal leader of their party. This is a prelude to funeral rights, the beginning of the end of what the French call “la trahison des clercs,” the betrayal of the intellectuals, in many authoritarian regimes the footstools of megalomaniacal tin pot political saviors.

Modern monarchical and authoritarian regimes, both fascist and communist, solve the problem by having non-subservient intellectuals -- usually violently or artfully repressed in authoritarian regimes -- shot or imprisoned or socially castrated.

Authoritarian regimes fail for a good reason: The larger and more omnicompetent a central authority strives to be, the more incompetent it becomes; a government that strives to do everything will do nothing well. There are no small errors in fascist or quasi-fascist regimes. Even in Cuba, the balled fist is loosening: One half of the Castro tyranny, Raul, a boilerplate communist, recently announced that he was considering term limits.

In governments operating under republican constitutions, the pivot, that point during which a party understands that the captain of the ideological ship will soon be departing, occurs usually midway into a second presidential term.

Assuming Mr. Serrano is unsuccessful in scuttling the 22^ndamendment, political commentators will begin mapping the ideological cracks in the Obama administration around the second year of the Mr. Obama's second term. A collapse in the economy will of course push the date closer to the beginning of his second term.