[bhunter]

Given Obama's dismal domestic policy results, one tend to overlook his bumbling foreign policy. His contemptible concept of "leading from behind" needs to be changed. A vacuum will soon be filled by other international actors that will certainly not care about U.S. interests. China is already on the move and Russia will follow in order to polish their tarnished status.

Here is one developing problem as a result of Obama's actions:

Consider Russia. Russian President Dmitri Medvedev announced that he was stepping aside to permit Vladimir Putin to run (essentially unopposed) for president next year. That means that Putin is likely to be president of Russia for 12 more years because, constitutionally, Putin can now serve two more consecutive six-year terms.

Unfortunately, President Obama had placed a huge, strategic bet that Putin was not coming back. As CNN reported on July 6, 2009: "In an interview with the Associated Press late last week, Obama seemed to be trying to work through the sticking points by driving a bit of a wedge between Medvedev and Putin. 'The old Cold War approaches to U.S.-Russia relations is outdated and that it's time to move forward in a different direction,' said Obama. 'I think Medvedev understands that. I think Putin has one foot in the old ways of doing business and one foot in the new.'"

It doesn't take much to imagine where Putin, the former KGB operative, will place one of those booted feet when he gets back in office. That foot placement will be felt hard in Washington, D.C.

As Foreign Affairs magazine described it a few days ago, "Putin's return is likely to complicate Russia's thawing relations with the West, particularly the U.S.-Russia 'reset' begun in 2009. ... 'If Putin returns then I guess we will need another reset,' joked a former high-ranking Kremlin official earlier this month. The White House said on Saturday that it would keep making progress in the reset regardless of who the next Russian president was."

It's not just that the president has given away a lot to gain Medvedev's approval (now of no value to us) by: 1) giving up our anti-missile defensive commitment to our friends Poland and the Czech Republic and 2) publicly attacking the corruption of Putin's associates, who dabbling in domestic Russian politics, tried to make Medvedev look stronger to his fellow Russians. It's hard enough for an American president to dabble in American politics. Most shrewd American presidents resisted the temptation that Obama couldn't.

cf. http://www.rasmussenreports.com/publ...lures_increase