When Russia annexed Crimea and backed a separatist war in the Donbas region of Ukraine in early 2014 – all to impede Ukraine’s move toward integration with the West – the Obama administration responded by imposing sanctions and by publicly scolding Russia for its breach of international norms.
But President Obama, convinced that the U.S. had more important priorities on the global stage than confronting Russia in its “near abroad,” refused to authorize the U.S. sale of lethal weapons to Kyiv – although the private sale and export of arms did occur.
The president received sharp criticism from some Republican members of Congress who wanted a more forceful response to Russian aggression. They said Mr. Obama had badly underestimated Russian President Vladimir Putin. After all, in 2012, Mr. Obama had mocked former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney during a presidential debate after the latter had said Russia was America’s “number one geopolitical foe.”
But as Mr. Obama explained to The Atlantic in 2016, “The fact is that Ukraine, which is a non-NATO country, is going to be vulnerable to military domination by Russia no matter what we do.” In his view, exerting violence to control Ukraine was a sign of Russian weakness that harmed its long-term interests.
In this episode of History As It Happens, historian Jeremi Suri, an expert on contemporary politics and foreign policy, says Mr. Obama may have misread Mr. Putin’s ambitions. But his approach to dealing with Russian aggression reflected a dilemma that has faced most U.S. presidents, who have been susceptible to domestic criticism while trying to reasonably defend U.S. interests overseas.
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“Obama’s strategy was two-fold. One, to try to continue to engage Russia. He believed, quite rationally, that Russia needed us. Their economy was going in the wrong direction, living off oil and gas – some of which we import, by the way,” said Mr. Suri, a scholar at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin.
“Second, [Obama] was concerned about Republicans basically inflating threats and using that to rile people up, making it hard to negotiate not just with Russia, but with our European allies, the Chinese, and others. He was trying to tone down the politics of foreign policy.”
In the end, the sanctions imposed on Russia for its behavior in 2014 failed to deter Mr. Putin, who correctly concluded from this and other episodes that the West would not go to war over Ukraine.
Listen to the full conversation with Jeremi Suri about Mr. Obama’s foreign policy by downloading this episode of History As It Happens.
