WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama is once again faced with the complicated reality of following through on his tough warnings against overseas provocations as the White House asserts that Russia is stoking instability in eastern Ukraine.
Obama has vowed repeatedly to enact biting sanctions against Russia's vital economic sectors if the Kremlin tries to replicate its actions in Crimea, the peninsula it annexed from Ukraine, elsewhere in the former Soviet republic. Despite those warnings, Russian President Vladimir Putin appears to be testing Obama's limits, instigating protests in eastern Ukraine, the White House says, and massing tens of thousands of troops on the border, but so far stopping short of a full-scale military incursion.
"They have been willing to do things to provoke the situation that no one anticipated," Matthew Rojansky, a regional analyst at the Wilson Center, said of Russia. "It's such a high-stakes, high-risk situation, and here they are right in the middle of it."
For Obama, the U.S. response to the chaos in Ukraine has become more than a test of his ability to stop Russia's advances. It's also being viewed through the prism of his decision last summer to back away from his threat to launch a military strike when Syria crossed his chemical weapons "red line" — a decision that has fed into a narrative pushed by Obama's critics that the president talks tough, but doesn't follow through.
While there has been no talk of "red lines" when dealing with Putin, Obama has said repeatedly that the Kremlin's advances into eastern Ukraine would be a "serious escalation" of the conflict that would warrant broad international sanctions on the Russian economy. But perhaps trying to avoid another Syria scenario, White House officials have carefully avoided defining what exactly would meet Obama's definition of a "serious escalation," even as they make clear that they believe Russia is fomenting the violence in cities throughout Ukraine's vital industrial east.
"We are actively evaluating what is happening in eastern Ukraine, what actions Russia has taken, what transgressions they've engaged in," White House spokesman Jay Carney said Monday. "And we are working with our partners and assessing for ourselves what response we may choose."
As with the situation in Syria, Obama faces few good options as he watches Russia destabilize Ukraine, the former Soviet republic that has sought greater ties with Europe.
Obama still, arrogantly, thinks that he is representing a great nation, which we once were. There are few countries who would really care what he says, and those, we are probably giving BILLIONS of dollars in "aid" to, each year ...... "Oh, yes, you be good man, Bama, keep sending money, OK?" His wife wants to "enlighten" China on how to educate their young, and did so on her recent vacation to China, with her Mom and the two kids and one heck of an entourage. We are at the very edge, the brink of catastrophe, and few, if any realize it. Read and listen to the foreign press, then you will see how we are pictured, around the world. They all love us, as long as we send money. "OK, General, get our troops ready, we may have to go to war ..... what, how many, what do you mean, no gasoline ......................."
