Look at Obama’s incredulous reaction to being told that Putin is challenging

The US’s “train and equip” programme for Syria “did not work”, President Barack Obama said in a TV interview broadcast yesterday night. It’s hard to see how this might induce Russian Federation to stand down in Syria, and this idea also ignores how Putin may respond.

Kroft put this criticism to Obama, saying, “You said a year ago that the United States – America leads”. President Obama added, “we’ve never been under any illusion that militarily we ourselves can solve the problem inside of Syria”. “I’ll leave it up to the pundits to make that determination”, Obama says. “He’s got people on the ground”, Kroft said.

President Obama has been consistent on Syria.

After a good laugh from all parties, co-host Tracy Clayton moved on to an ostensibly unrelated question: “What’s the weirdest thing about you?”

The sheer hubris of a bully would not allow him to acknowledge defeat and give up a botched plan to loot, hurt or murder. Obama perceives Putin’s recent actions-the carving out of rump territories in Crimea and the Donbass and the bombing of U.S.-aligned rebels in Syria-as a desperate attempt to reverse a tide that’s shifting against Russian interests. And with respect to the Middle East, we’ve got a 60-country coalition that isn’t suddenly lining up around Russia’s strategy. The situation in Afghanistan is very precarious and the Taliban is on the march again. The “JV” ISIS caliphate encompasses large areas of Iraq and Syria, and Israel faces a nuclear-armed Iran openly threatening its existence.

The interview from the White House’s Roosevelt Room was contentious at times, and Kroft grew visibly frustrated at a few of the President’s responses; at one point Kroft remarked, “I feel like I’m being filibustered, Mr. President.” Today, the core has become somewhat miniscule as the US, conscious of its failures in Syria as in other Middle East countries, intends to reduce its role and to carry out a more modest policy. Halperin and Heilemann later said that Obama’s weak defense of Clinton may indicate whom he would support to be his successor.

If we are to affect Russian and Iranian behavior in Syria, we have to begin to play by rules they understand. The USA, as Obama notes, is objectively the most powerful player in the Middle East by whatever metric one wishes to apply: diplomatic alliances, economic clout, military strength, cultural influence, and so forth.

Obama also suggested that Russia’s airstrikes in Syria are a sign of the growing weakness of Vladimir Putin of Russian Federation. And I’m sure that he factors that expertise – that personal expertise and knowledge into his own counterintelligence efforts. “This president invited him back in to negotiate a deal with Assad on chemical weapons that Assad didn’t stand up to, and now Putin is deciding to use military force there”.

The Christie campaign has been promoting its candidate as a strong Ronald Reagan-type antidote on the American right for the perceived “weakness” of Obama’s administration.

Ashton Carter argued that the US will not cooperate with Russian Federation as long as it continues to pursue “this misguided strategy”. “But if they do they will turn to deciding what else they want to control in that part of the world”, he said.

“I think we need to look very had at what happened, and I think that the policy needs a refocus and needs to be reenergized across a number of dimensions”.