Historian Victor Davis Hanson On How Obama’s Incompetence Has Encouraged Our Global Enemies
Why does it seem like the world is unraveling? Some of us aren’t surprised, and in fact we’ve been predicting that the dictators of the world would look at this weak president as an opportunity to expand their power.
Classical scholar Victor Davis Hanson is just one of those voices, and he explains expertly how it is that the world’s despots are reacting predictably to a president who doesn’t believe in American exceptionalism – they help him prove it.
It’s about 11 minutes, but well worth the listen – if the video doesn’t load up above, here’s a link to the audio file:
From the show transcript:
…very early on in 2009, the Obama administration, with its cosmic naiveté, produced this reset with Russia. And we can see now the fruits of the reset. Putin immediately understood he was dealing with an adolescent, naif in Obama who gave him a victory in Poland and Czech Republic on missile defense, where remember, Obama just jettisoned it as the way to appease Russia, and to show how he was going to play nice, assuming reciprocal behavior. Well now, we’re seeing that reciprocal behavior in the streets of Ukraine.
Ukraine is the key to determining whether Putin will succeed in rebuilding a mini Soviet empire. Without Ukraine, Russia cannot do that. With Ukraine, it becomes a mini Soviet empire with Kazakhstan on one side, and Belarus already subdued on the other. And then it puts pressure on Eastern Europe.
Putin understands that, which is why he stepped in to prevent Ukraine from concluding this deal with the European Union that would have consigned Ukraine to the West, to freedom, and to democracy, which is what those people are in the streets for. And that’s why they’re getting their heads bashed in.
That’s the kind of analysis that you won’t hear from the mainstream media, but is sorely needed to make sense of why this world is heading more and more into a precipice caused by the absence of American leadership.
