The West and Russia: Why Obama's Legacy Hinges on Europe

[unhappycamper]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/foreign-policy-legacy-of-obama-administration-in-european-hands-a-960902.html



Barack Obama has labeled Russia a "regional power" that is acting out of weakness rather than strength. That may be so. But the US president's own foreign policy legacy depends heavily on Vladimir Putin -- and Europe.

The West and Russia: Why Obama's Legacy Hinges on Europe
An Analysis by Sebastian Fischer
March 26, 2014 – 04:19 PM

Barack Obama is has a reputation for extreme rationality -- or for being coldly calculating, depending on the viewpoint. Self-control is paramount, and he rarely loses it. One can assume, then, that Obama's barbed comments on Russia, delivered at a Tuesday press conference in The Hague, were designed to provoke. They also show just how vexed the US president is by Russian President Vladimir Putin's exploits in Crimea.

Russia, Obama said following the Nuclear Security Summit in the Netherlands, is a "regional power" that is threatening its neighbors "not out of strength, but out of weakness."

It is a comment that is sure to ruffle Putin's feathers; the Russian president, after all, has shown a penchant for consulting the czarist playbook it his attempt to boost his country's role on the global stage. But Obama wasn't done yet. The US too exerts influence over its neighbors, the president said. However: "We generally don't need to invade them in order to have a strong cooperative relationship with them." And: "Russian actions are a problem. They don't pose the number one security threat to the United States."

It would be difficult to prove the US president wrong. Russian power is certainly not what it used to be and its expansionary tendencies are largely a reaction to the weak geopolitical position in which it finds itself. And it certainly does not represent a direct threat to the US: An invasion of Alaska seems unlikely and a nuclear attack is out of the question.