Putin Smarter than Obama and Trump?

Trump’s recent tweet on Vladimir Putin, again raised legitimate concerns about the president-elect’s favorable bias towards Russia and the advisability of conducting foreign policy via tweets.  Setting aside these concerns, Trump’s assessment of Putin as being smart is very accurate.

Putin is much shrewder than Obama in international affairs.  Putin thinks strategically while our President thinks tactically.  Witness Putin’s versus Obama’s approach to the civil war in Syria.  Obama’s statement, “Assad must go”, was his initial foray into the Syrian civil war.  This tactical statement gave verbal support to the opposition.  

Unfortunately it was not followed up strategically.  Obama ignored the advice of his Secretary of State and his Secretary of Defense to arm the Syrian rebels.  The chance to overthrow Assad lost.  Later it was strategically impossible to arm the opposition who became contaminated with Islamic terrorists.

The President drew a red line regarding the use of chemical weapons in Syria.  Without regard to strategic consequences, Obama cancelled promised military action to uphold the red line.  Obama’s feckless behavior projected unreliability to our Middle-East allies and weakness to our enemies.

Putin acted strategically.  He offered to broker the removal of Syrian chemical weapons.  Acceptance by the U.S. of Russia’s role resulted in several strategic advantages for Putin.  It ended the U.S. push for international isolation of Russia for its use of military force in Crimea and Ukraine.  It inserted Russia back into the middle-east after thirty-five years of absence.  What followed was closer ties to Syria and its ally Iran, and the establishment of a Russian military base in the heart of the Middle-East. 

The roles of the U.S. and Russia in the Middle-East flipped.  Russia was now the key player in the Middle-East.  The U.S. marginalized.  In the past, Middle-East negotiations often took place in the United States.  This time, the peace negotiations between Assad and the rebels was on Russian soil.  The United States was not even invited to participate.  

Putin’s and Obama’s actions over Russian interference in the Presidential election will hopefully be instructive to our next President.  Acting tactically, Obama publically rebuked Russia rather than just relying on retaliation through secret cyberattacks.  Hoping to hamstring Russian relations with the next administration, Obama kicked out Russian ambassadors.  

Acting strategically, Putin did not respond in kind.  He did not retaliate by removing U.S. ambassadors from Russia.  In the process Putin projected statesmanship and removed a potential black cloud hanging over relations between Russia and the next U.S. administration.

Trump then made his infamous tweet about how smart Putin is.  Going forward, the question is this.  Will Trump, with his inflated ego, realize that Putin is so much smarter than him?