News from the New Party

The President's spine is missing

Charles Krauthammer delivers an alarming verdict on President Obama's opening exchanges with the rest of the world.  After detailing a catalogue of Russian provocations since the election last November, including the threat to deploy Iskander missiles in the Kaliningrad Oblast bordering Poland and Lithuania, Krauthammer comments:

President Bush's response to the Kaliningrad deployment—the threat was issued the day after Obama's election — was firm.

He refused to back down because giving in to Russian threats would leave Poles and Czechs exposed and show the world that, contrary to post-Cold War assumptions, the U.S. could not be trusted to protect Eastern Europe from Russian bullying.

The Obama response? "Biden Signals U.S. Is Open to Russia Missile Deal," as the New York Times headlined Biden's Feb. 7 Munich speech to a major international gathering. This followed strong messages from Obama's team even before the inauguration that Obama wasn't committed to the missile shield. And just to make sure everyone understood that Bush's policy no longer held, Biden said the U.S. wanted to "press the reset button" on NATO-Russian relations.

Not surprisingly, the Obama wobble elicited a favorable reaction from Russia. (There are conflicting reports that Russia might suspend the Kaliningrad blackmail deployment.) The Kremlin must have been equally impressed the other provocations — Abkhazia, Kyrgyzstan, the rapid reaction force — elicited barely a peep from Washington.

Iran has been similarly charmed by Obama's overtures. A week after the new president went about sending sweet peace signals via al-Arabiya, Iran launched its first homemade Earth satellite. The message is clear. If you can put a satellite into orbit, you can hit any continent with a missile, North America included...

Krauthammer's tour de force takes in Pakistan's capitulation to the Taliban in the Swat region before concluding: 

I would like to think the supine posture is attributable to a rookie leader otherwise preoccupied (i.e. domestically), leading a foreign policy team as yet unorganized if not disoriented.

But when the State Department says that Hugo Chavez's president-for-life referendum, which was preceded by a sham government-controlled campaign featuring the tear-gassing of the opposition, was "for the most part . . . fully consistent with democratic process," you have to wonder if Month One is not a harbinger of things to come.

If so, we have a great deal more than a global recession to worry about.