From John Hinderaker at Power Line, we learn about a cause for despair:

Former Secretary of State Madeline Albright spoke at a forum in Omsk, Siberia. Pravda reported that her speech “surprised the audience.” No wonder. The Russians in attendance must have wondered how they managed to lose the cold war:

Madeleine Albright said during the meeting that America no longer had the intention of being the first nation of the world…

The former US Secretary of State surprised the audience with her speech. She particularly said that democracy was not the perfect system. “It can be contradictory, corrupt and may have security problems,” Albright said.

America has been having hard times recently, Albright said. “We have been talking about our exceptionalism during the recent eight years. Now, an average American wants to stay at home – they do not need any overseas adventures. We do not need new enemies,” Albright said adding that Beijing, London and Delhi became a serious competition for Washington and New York. “My generation has made many mistakes. We give the future into the hands of the young. Your prime goal is to overcome the gap between the poor and the rich,” the former head of the US foreign political department said.

There you have it. And Albright was Secretary of State during the relatively moderate Clinton administration. I’m afraid she speaks for most Democratic foreign policy “experts.” Promoting American weakness: it’s not a bug, it’s a feature.

By the way, since “overcoming the gap between the poor and the rich” is the world’s number one priority, do you suppose Albright waived her speaker’s fee, which is listed coyly as more than $40,000? No, I don’t think so, either.

There is serious trouble ahead among the nations as a result of Obama putting away American power as he creates a weak, poor, socialist state out of what has long been the strongest and most successful country in history.

Mark Steyn comments accurately on Obama’s ever more disastrous foreign policy (read all of what he writes here):

You’ve got to figure that by now the world’s strongmen are getting the measure of the new Washington… The Europeans “negotiate” with Iran over its nukes for years, and, in the end, Iran gets the nukes, and Europe gets to feel good about itself for having sat across the table talking to no good purpose for the best part of a decade. In Moscow, there was a palpable triumphalism in the news that the Russians had succeeded in letting the Obama fellow have their way. “This [the breaking of the promise by the US to provide  anti-missile shields to Poland and the Czech Republic] is a recognition by the Americans of the rightness of our arguments about the reality of the threat or, rather, the lack of one,” said Konstantin Kosachev, chairman of the Duma’s international affairs committee. “Finally the Americans have agreed with us.”

There’ll be a lot more of that in the years ahead.

There is no discreetly arranged “Russian concession.” Moscow has concluded that a nuclear Iran is in its national interest – especially if the remorseless nuclearization process itself is seen as a testament to Western weakness. Even if the Israelis are driven to bomb the thing to smithereens circa next spring, that, too, would only emphasize, by implicit comparison, American and European pusillanimity. Any private relief felt in the chancelleries of London and Paris would inevitably license a huge amount of public tut-tutting by this or that foreign minister about the Zionist Entity’s regrettable “disproportion.” The U.S. defense secretary is already on record as opposing an Israeli strike. If it happens, every thug state around the globe will understand the subtext – that, aside from a tiny strip of land [on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean], every other advanced society on earth is content to depend for its security on the kindness of strangers.

Some of them very strange. Kim Jong-il wouldn’t really let fly at South Korea or Japan, would he? Even if some quasi-Talibanny types wound up sitting on Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, they wouldn’t really do anything with them, would they? OK, Putin can be a bit heavy-handed when dealing with Eastern Europe, and his definition of “Eastern” seems to stretch ever further west, but he’s not going to be sending the tanks back into Prague and Budapest, is he? I mean, c’mon …

Vladimir Putin is no longer president but he is de facto czar. And he thinks it’s past time to reconstitute the old empire – not formally (yet), but certainly as a sphere of influence from which the Yanks keep their distance. President Obama has just handed the Russians their biggest win since the collapse of the Iron Curtain. Indeed, in some ways it marks the restitching of the Iron Curtain. When the Czechs signed their end of the missile-defense deal in July, they found themselves afflicted by a sudden “technical difficulty” that halved their gas supply from Russia. The Europe Putin foresees will be one not only ever more energy-dependent on Moscow but security-dependent, too – in which every city is within range of missiles from Tehran and other crazies, and is, in effect, under the security umbrella of the new czar. As to whether such a Continent will be amicable to American interests, well, good luck with that, hopeychangers.

In a sense, the health care debate and the foreign policy debacle are two sides of the same coin: For Britain and other great powers, the decision to build a hugely expensive welfare state at home entailed inevitably a long retreat from responsibilities abroad, with a thousand small betrayals of peripheral allies along the way. A few years ago, the great scholar Bernard Lewis warned, during the debate on withdrawal from Iraq, that America risked being seen as “harmless as an enemy and treacherous as a friend.” In Moscow and Tehran, on the one hand, and Warsaw and Prague, on the other, they’re drawing their own conclusions.

Today it is officially announced that Obama has broken America’s promise to Poland and the Czech Republic to supply them with anti-missile defense shields – as we said he would two weeks ago (Obama abandons Poland and Czech republic to the enemy, September 3). Why is he doing it? The Russians were furiously against the plan, so that’s one poor reason. But the main and outrageous reason is, of course, that Obama is not interested in defending America or its allies or the free(-ish) world.

At ‘the corner’ of the National Review Online, Jay Nordlinger writes:

I thought Barack Obama would be a poor and troublesome president. Did I think he would yuk it up with Hugo Chávez, smirk with Daniel Ortega about the Bay of Pigs, turn his wrath on a Central American country trying to follow its constitution, denounce President Bush abroad, bow to the king of Saudi Arabia, endorse a radical Middle Eastern view of how Israel came into being, knock Western countries that try to protect Muslim girls from unwanted shrouding, invite the Iranian regime to our Fourth of July parties, stay essentially mute in the face of counterrevolution in Iran, squeeze and panic Israel, cold-shoulder the Cuban democrats in order to warm to the Cuban dictatorship, scrap missile defense in Eastern Europe, and refuse to meet with the Dalai Lama [this item doesn’t annoy us as much – JB] — in addition to his attempts to have government eat great portions of American society? No, I did not. You?

Yes, we did. We said so, in generalized prediction. We only don’t understand why the whole country couldn’t see what Obama would set about trying to do: at home, turn America into an impoverished socialist country, and abroad, ally America with its enemies and alienate its friends.

From The Heritage Foundation (whose work we greatly appreciate):

According to the Polish daily newspaper, Gazeta Wyborcza, sources in the United States have confirmed that the Obama Administration has made the decision to abandon the U.S. anti-missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic. Unfortunately, this news is not surprising at all. In March, President Obama “secretly” offered to give up the missile defense sites in Poland and the Czech Republic in exchange for Russia’s help in discouraging Iran from building nuclear weapons.

This is a grave mistake for several reasons. First, the decision to abandon the “third site” deployment of missile interceptors in Poland and a radar in the Czech Republic violates President Obama’s pledge to support missile defense that is “pragmatic and cost-effective.” Ground-based missile defense is effective, affordable and available now. Second, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), alternatives to the third site do not provide a comparable level of defense. The CBO concluded that the estimated $9-14 billion 20-year cost of the third site was half of the estimated costs of a sea-based alternative. Third, reneging on our promise to Poland and the Czech Republic sends a terrible signal to our allies in the region. Abandoning our best missile defense option in Europe only encourages Iran to speed up their ballistic missile program so that they can get their threat in place before a European missile defense system is available. This abandonment is not simply a mistake, it is a sign of weakness to countries like Iran, North Korea and even Russia.

President Obama is passing up the opportunity to protect the region against Iran, assert our authority and power to protect less powerful nations and present a strong and united front to the world. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton assured the U.S. allies in the Middle East that if Iran acquires a nuclear weapon, the U.S. will offer a “defense umbrella” to protect them. What does this mean in the context of Obama’s abandonment and proposed $1.4 billion cuts in the missile defense budget?

What does it mean?  Could it possibly mean that Obama does not want to protect Europe against Iran – or Russia? Or protect ‘less powerful nations’ at all? Or ‘present a strong and united front to the world’?

James Carafano writes in the Washington Examiner:

The Pentagon budget the president sent to the Hill would have slashed production and deployment of U.S.-based missile interceptors by about a third. The cuts would have come from missile defenses that are already tested, proven and, for the most part, paid for. So much for the promise of “pragmatic and cost-effective” defenses.

Case in point: The Obama budget included absolutely zero funds to replace “Missile Field One.” This Alaskan missile field, now part of the missile defense shield, includes the first silos built to test the long-range interceptors.

The silos were not built for long-term use. They now need to be replaced. But the Obama budget request zeroed out that funding … even though the budget still retained an already paid-for fleet of interceptors.

Talk about penny-wise and pound-foolish! Those paid-for interceptors can be of no use without silos from which to shoot them. The Obama budget would have left them silo-less.

The White House also started backpedaling from the previous administration’s commitment to field missile defense interceptors in Poland that would protect both our allies and our troops in Europe from the growing Iranian missile threat. The administration tried to justify the delay by saying it wanted to look at “pragmatic and cost-effective” alternatives.

One alternative it says it wants to consider is a mobile, land-based system. Cool, huh? Except that such a system exists nowhere other than on some PowerPoint slides. So much for “pragmatic.”

The other alternative it is considering is a sea-based system. But sea-based defenses are much more expensive to operate than land-based silos. Moreover, our current sea-based system can’t intercept long-range missiles.

A new sea-based interceptor will have to be developed to do the job. Thus, the “pragmatic and cost-effective alternative” the administration says it wants to consider is demonstrably more expensive and totally unproven.

Obama’s defense budget also killed a missile defense research and development program called the Kinetic Energy Interceptor. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said it was “going nowhere,” expensive and unproven. What he did not mention is that, so far, the only part of the KEI program that has actually been built is a “fire-control” system that links the missile-detecting sensors to the interceptors.

The fire-control part of KEI has been fully tested. It is a robust system that could be utilized with any land- or sea-based interceptor (not just the proposed KEI missile). By killing the funding for the entire program, the fire control system (the part American tax dollars have already paid for) will be terminated as well — another violation of the “proven and cost-effective” pledge.

Finally, Obama promised that he’d work to replace today’s tested, proven and paid-for technologies with something even better: A future system that could knock down enemy missiles at their most vulnerable point — the “ascent phase,” right after they’ve been fired.

OK, except the Pentagon’s proposed budget lacks any real funding for such a program. Nor do Pentagon planners have any idea what such a program might look like. In short, today’s real, working weapons systems are being replaced with vague promises.

David Solway writes:

I will say this bluntly and without equivocation. Obama is a disaster of the first magnitude, bowing to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, smiling benignly on Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and cuddling up to Dimitry Medvedev—and by extension Vladimir Putin—of neo-Soviet Russia. He still maintains a flaccid negotiating stance toward an oppressive Iranian regime repudiated by its own people and rapidly closing in on nuclear capability. He would no doubt parley amiably with Hu Jintao of communist China should it launch an invasion of Taiwan, another small democratic nation in approximately the same “straits” as Israeland Honduras.

No less and perhaps even more frightening is Obama’s now undeniable intentions vis à vis his own country, imposing his own brand of demagogic politics upon the people he ostensibly represents. Unimaginable budgetary deficits, fiscally unsustainable policies, redistribution of honestly come by income, severe cutbacks in defence, bills hastily rammed through Congress affecting an entire population, soaring unemployment, opacity rather than transparency in the decision-making process, rule by charisma and fiat, the spectre of restrictions on freedom of expression—these are Obama’s gifts to his country. The new direction which American foreign policy has taken, alienating its democratic allies and mollifying tyrannical and illicit governments, renders the U.S. even more vulnerable to what we might call the expropriation of its destiny. Its enemies will not hesitate to seize the opportunity when it presents itself to undermine American interests and security.

“We are living at the edge of a catastrophe,” warned Newt Gingrich, addressing the Heritage Foundation onJuly 20, 2009. Whatever one may think of Gingrich, he is speaking truth to power, and truth to the powerless as well. Gingrich is concerned about the prospect of a massive terorist attack for which Americais manifestly unprepared, but the attack of its own administration on the nation’s traditional liberties and endangered solvency is equally menacing. This is the calendar of events envisaged by the international Left whose program, however  improbably, has now taken root in the United States, the presumed bastion of freedom in the world. The enemy is within the gates and the outlook for the future is perturbing, to say the least. But there is a certain ironic justice at work. What Israel and Honduras are now discovering, America too will learn in the course of time.

 I do not fear Abbas, Zelaya, Putin, Chavez or the rest of that disreputable bunch. I am alarmed when I consider Ahmadinejad and Khamenei. But I am scared to death of Obama.

How was it possible that some of us could see  clearly that the election of Obama would be disastrous, yet a majority of voters could not see it at all?

Charles Krauthammer comments on the reduction-of-arms negotiations between Obama and the Russian leadership:  

We could today terminate all such negotiations, invite the Russians to build as many warheads as they want, and profitably watch them spend themselves into penury, as did their Soviet predecessors, stockpiling weapons that do nothing more than, as Churchill put it, make the rubble bounce.

Obama says that his START will be a great boon, setting an example to enable us to better pressure North Korea and Iran to give up their nuclear programs. That a man of Obama’s intelligence can believe such nonsense is beyond comprehension [but why doesn’t this cause CK to revise his opinion that Obama is intelligent? – JB]. There is not a shred of evidence that cuts by the great powers — the INF treaty, START I, the Treaty of Moscow (2002) — induced the curtailment of anyone’s programs. Moammar Gaddafi gave up his nukes the week we pulled Saddam Hussein out of his spider hole. No treaty involved. The very notion that Kim Jong Il or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will suddenly abjure nukes because of yet another U.S.-Russian treaty is comical.

The pursuit of such an offensive weapons treaty could nonetheless be detrimental to us. Why? Because Obama’s hunger for a diplomatic success, such as it is, allowed the Russians to exact a price: linkage between offensive and defensive nuclear weapons.

This is important for Russia because of the huge American technological advantage in defensive weaponry. We can reliably shoot down an intercontinental ballistic missile. They cannot. And since defensive weaponry will be the decisive strategic factor of the 21st century, Russia has striven mightily for a quarter-century to halt its development. Gorbachev tried to swindle Reagan out of the Strategic Defense Initiative at Reykjavik in 1986. Reagan refused. As did his successors — Bush I, Clinton, Bush II.

Obama, who seeks to banish nuclear weapons entirely, has little use for such prosaic contrivances. First, the Obama budget actually cuts spending on missile defense, at a time when federal spending is a riot of extravagance and trillion-dollar deficits. Then comes the “pause” (as Russia’s president appreciatively noted) in the planned establishment of a missile shield in Eastern Europe. And now the “Joint Understanding” commits us to a new treaty that includes “a provision on the interrelationship of strategic offensive and strategic defensive arms.” Obama further said that the East European missile shield “will be the subject of extensive negotiations” between the United States and Russia.

Obama doesn’t even seem to understand the ramifications of this concession. Poland and the Czech Republic thought they were regaining their independence when they joined NATO under the protection of the United States. They now see that the shield negotiated with us and subsequently ratified by all of NATO is in limbo. Russia and America will first have to “come to terms” on the issue, explained President Dmitry Medvedev. This is precisely the kind of compromised sovereignty that Russia wants to impose on its ex-Soviet colonies — and that U.S. presidents of both parties for the last 20 years have resisted.

Resistance, however, is not part of Obama’s repertoire. Hence his eagerness for arcane negotiations over MIRV’d missiles, the perfect distraction from the major issue between the two countries: Vladimir Putin’s unapologetic and relentless drive to restore Moscow’s hegemony over the sovereign states that used to be Soviet satrapies.

That — not nukes — is the chief cause of the friction between the U.S. and Russia. You wouldn’t know it to hear Obama in Moscow pledging to halt the “drift” in U.S.-Russian relations. Drift? The decline in relations came from Putin’s desire to undo what he considers “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe” of the 20th century — the collapse of the Soviet empire. Hence his squeezing Ukraine’s energy supplies. His overt threats against Poland and the Czech Republic for daring to make sovereign agreements with the United States. And finally, less than a year ago, his invading a small neighbor, detaching and then effectively annexing two of Georgia’s provinces to Mother Russia.

That’s the cause of the collapse of our relations. Not drift, but aggression. Or, as the reset man referred to it with such delicacy in his Kremlin news conference: “our disagreements on Georgia’s borders.”