Weakness You Say?

"Russia is a regional power that is threatening some of its immediate neighbours, not out of strength but out of weakness," the president said. The US also has influence over its neighbours, he added, but: "We generally don't need to invade them in order to have a strong cooperative relationship with them.

Cuban Missile Crisis anyone?

Bay of Pigs anyone?

Panama anyone?

Seriously.

We're supposed to be stupid right? But fine then. Let Russia decide to drop a few nukes and ballistic missile "shields" into say, Venezuela and Cuba and see what happens. Anyone up for that?

But let me agree with Obama for a moment though. He is right that Russia has been and is showing weakness. Russia allowed itself to be surrounded by NATO. It allowed countries bordering it to allow opposition troops closer than the US would allow if it were similarly situated. That NATO has been allowed to spread to the extent that it had does show weakness on the part of Moscow. As a matter of fact, that Russia and to an extent China, has allowed the US to run roughshod around the world without any opposition by them is also a sign of supreme weakness. I believe that both the Chinese and the Russians know this but neither of them are strong enough to do anything about it.

For example. If Russia was so opposed to NATO in Libya, why didn't it float it's own fleet into the Mediterranean and fly some planes in opposition to the NATO warplanes? If China and the Russians so objected to the actions of the US in Iraq, why didn't they run some ships and planes over there and present a threat? Why didn't they make it clear that unless the actions in these countries were stopped they would fire on any ship or plane that so much as pointed a turret in the wrong direction?

Because both the Chinese and the Russians know they are not really up for that kind of conflict. The Chinese has a vested interest in keeping the US "happy". US consumers make the Chinese a lot of money. They aren't going to shit on that over the Ukraine, Iraq, Syria or wherever. Those countries currently cannot make up for the money they get from the countries they would piss off if they actually went to bat over the issues they point out. The Russians are in even deeper mess because they are right on the border of western Europe and they too would have serious business losses, among other things, to deal with. However; the Russians DO have an interest in securing their borders and that means taking aggressive actions with nations that border them.

So yes, in a sense Obama is quite correct about the weakness of Russia. Putin knows this too.