The following is an excerpt from OpinionJournal.com’s “Best of the Web” written by the editor, James Taranto.
Rules for Russians
Vladimir Putin’s much-discussed op-ed in today’s New York Times is a clever piece of work, but the conclusion is diabolical–and we mean that in the original sense of “devilish”:
My working and personal relationship with President Obama is marked by growing trust. I appreciate this. I carefully studied his address to the nation on Tuesday. And I would rather disagree with a case he made on American exceptionalism, stating that the United States’ policy is “what makes America different. It’s what makes us exceptional.” It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation. There are big countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still finding their way to democracy. Their policies differ, too. We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord’s blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal.
That last line is a fallacy of composition. From the premise that all men are created equal, it does not follow that all countries are. But the rhetorical trick is clever. Putin (or perhaps a ghostwriter…) rests his disparagement of American exceptionalism on its very basis–on the first of the “truths” that the Founding Fathers held “to be self-evident.”
This is right out of Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals“: “The fourth rule is: Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules. You can kill them with this, for they can no more live up to their own rules than the Christian Church can live up to Christianity.” (Putin also appeals to the pope’s authority.) [Saul Alinsky was a community organizer who influenced Barack Obama through his teachings and his book “Rules for Radicals.”]
And the Russian president applies this rule not just to America, but to Obama, whose own ambivalence about American exceptionalism is well known:
It is alarming that military intervention in internal conflicts in foreign countries has become commonplace for the United States. Is it in America’s long-term interest? I doubt it. Millions around the world increasingly see America not as a model of democracy but as relying solely on brute force, cobbling coalitions together under the slogan “you’re either with us or against us.”
Can you think of another world leader who rode similar sentiments into office? Hint: He defeated John McCain and Mitt Romney.
Putin’s piece is aimed at influencing American public opinion for the purpose of undermining the effectiveness of American power. It deviously reinforces both dovish and hawkish arguments against the administration’s Syria policy. It reminds the doves that military action against Syria goes against everything they believe–and that Obama as a candidate claimed to believe. It reminds the hawks that Obama has shown no inclination or capacity to lead a serious military effort.
Washington’s responses have been pitiful. “That’s all irrelevant,” CNN quotes a White House official as saying: “[Putin] put this proposal forward and he’s now invested in it. That’s good. That’s the best possible reaction. He’s fully invested in Syria’s CW disarmament and that’s potentially better than a military strike–which would deter and degrade but wouldn’t get rid of all the chemical weapons. He now owns this. He has fully asserted ownership of it and he needs to deliver.”
In his op-ed, Putin even disputes that the regime used poison gas. “There is every reason to believe it was used not by the Syrian Army, but by opposition forces, to provoke intervention by their powerful foreign patrons, who would be siding with the fundamentalists.” He isn’t committed to disarming the regime but to keeping it in power–a goal that is served by undermining whatever shred of resolve America might have had to act.
“I almost wanted to vomit,” the Hill quotes the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Democrat Bob Menendez, as saying. (Alinsky frequently capitalized on the reflex for physical disgust, too, as in the 1964 O’Hare Airport plan that we noted in April.)
Sen. John McCain tweeted: “Putin’s NYT op-ed is an insult to the intelligence of every American.” For an example of an insult to the intelligence, consider McCain’s comment last week on a Phoenix radio show–noted here Monday–that “there would be an impeachment of the president” if he put “boots on the ground” in Syria. McCain assumed his listeners were too stupid to see that this was an empty threat, and that if it were not, it would be a reckless one.
Putin doesn’t take his readers for idiots, he takes Obama for a fool–a bumbling improviser who can be rolled by appealing to his vanity and his short-term political needs, and whose actions have no broader purpose. Even the New York Times editorial page acknowledges that last point: “The [Tuesday] speech lacked any real sense of what Mr. Obama’s long-term or even medium-term strategy might be, other than his repeated promise not to drag a nation fed up with wars into a ‘boots-on-the-ground’ fight.”
Yet the Times ends on a hopeful note: “At least Syria has admitted that it has chemical weapons, for the first time ever; Mr. Putin has acknowledged to the world that there must be limits on the blank checks he was writing his client state; and Russia and the United States are working toward a common strategic goal for the first time in a very long time.”
So America has no strategy and is “working” with Russia “toward a common strategic goal”? The only way to reconcile those two assertions is to admit that Putin has capitalized on America’s purposelessness in order to advance his own purposes. As a Times news story puts it: “Suddenly Mr. Putin has eclipsed Mr. Obama as the world leader driving the agenda in the Syria crisis.”
“Putin is bluffing that Russia has emerged as a major world power,” argues Stratfor.org’s George Friedman:
In reality, Russia is merely a regional power, but mainly because its periphery is in shambles. He has tried to project a strength that he doesn’t have, and he has done it well.
Because America is so much mightier than Russia, the American presidency is a much stronger position than the Russian presidency. But a strong man in a position of weakness, if he is ruthless about taking advantage of his adversary’s vulnerabilities, can get the better of weak man in a position of strength. Saul Alinsky understood that, and so does Vladimir Putin.
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