Putin’s Rearguard Battle

Shlomo Ben-Ami shines a light on the flaws in Vladimir Putin’s efforts to position Russia as a major world power. – Project Syndicate.

And here lies the problem: Putin’s sense of Hobbesian realism calls for the adoption of an approach to world politics that is in essence a struggle of all against all, while Obama’s realism encourages disengagement in the hope of avoiding such struggle, ceding one battle after another – the eventual result is to set the ground for a struggle for which no one is really prepared.