White House officials were left scrambling…
“We have seen reports that President Putin has announced a planned withdrawal of Russian forces from Syria. We expect to learn more about this in the coming hours,” said one senior administration official on Monday afternoon.
A speedy Russian exit from Syria would confound President Obama’s talking point that Putin had walked into a “quagmire” in that country’s civil war that he would come to regret. Obama made the case most recently in an interview with the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, in which Obama said Russia was “overextended” and “bleeding” in Syria.
It’s telling that Obama thinks that the only thing that matters is the agenda at international gab-fests. That’s because the president, like most European heads of state, lives in a 21st century, post-power world where international law is more meaningful than brute force. Putin, by contrast, inhabits a 19th century, Realpolitik world where strongmen act to advance their own interests with scant regard for the feelings of other states, much less of multilateral institutions such as the G20 or the United Nations. In the clash between these two incompatible visions of the world, there is no doubt which one is winning: From Crimea to Syria, Putin is rewriting the rules of the international game in his favor.
