Obama Takes a Leaf Out of the Reagan Playbook

They call it a tentpole speech, one of the big moments of a presidential trip.

So when Barack Obama strolled across the stage of the Palais Des Beaux Arts in Brussels on Wednesday, everyone knew it would be a big moment, better orchestrated and vetted than his odd comments, delivered yesterday in the Netherlands, that Russia was a mere “regional power.”

Instead he offered a full-throated denunciation of Russia’s annexation of Ukraine and a vow to stand with NATO allies.

There was no wishing that Russia was weak. Today he took the Russian bear for what it is--aggressive, stepping away from the established world order it had tentatively embraced after the Cold War.

Obama denounced Russia’s “brute force” and said it had run “roughshod” over its neighbors.  Addressing and rejecting Moscow’s charge that the U.S. was being hypocritical--having invaded Iraq without U.N. sanction and encouraged a Kosovo plebiscite--Obama noted the vote in the Balkans was under U.N. auspices and he had opposed the Iraq conflict.  

“We did not grab its resources for our own gain,” Obama said in words that might have even made Dick Cheney smile. “Instead, we ended our war and left Iraq to its people in a fully sovereign Iraqi state that can make decisions about its own future.

The president didn’t offer sanctions or any other new ideas to dislodge Russia from Crimea. And he also made it clear he didn’t regard this as akin to the long, twilight struggle with the Soviets.

“Understand as well, this is not another Cold War that we’re entering into,” the president said before some 2000 guests, mostly students. “After all, unlike the Soviet Union, Russia leads no bloc of nations, no global ideology. “

That’s true of course. There’s no Che Guevara or Mao Tse-Tung who will find inspiration in Russia’s black-masked march to Sevastopol. But it’s not likely to be a quick affair either. Russian nationalism has been stirred and it seems unlikely to diminish anytime soon.

Which leaves this president--and the one that follows him in less than three years—with the dull blade of sanctions and a razor-sharp need to keep the Europeans together. But as Obama himself said, the U.S. had no realpolitik stake in Ukraine. It’s far away and Washington doesn’t have the economic entanglement with Moscow that Berlin or Krakow does.

That left Obama to deliver a rousing defense of freedom, a little updated Reaganism that cheered “free markets” and Czech dissidents, Nelson Mandela, Burmese parliamentarians and other harbingers of liberty. In that sense Obama’s speech had some elements of the Reagan Berlin Wall speech. It was defiant and clear.

And like Reagan, Obama ultimately had no choice but to appeal to Moscow. “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall, “ Reagan famously said.  It was an appeal, maybe a demand, but certainly not an order. Reagan’s options were to hike military spending, push back at the edges of Soviet ambition such as Nicaragua and hope the contradictions of Communism would do their magic.

They did. Obama faces a lesser challenge, Putinism vs. Communism, but a harder one in some ways. Russia’s petro economy is not in Soviet style decline and Putin is immensely popular. A handful of sanctions won’t discredit Putinism.

For Reagan, it was up to the Soviet leader to choose whether to comply, just as Obama knows it’s up to Putin.