Never underrate nor overrate the power of rhetoric in politics. The eloquence of Ronald Reagan, Winston Churchill, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt amplified their greatness, generating critical public support for their towering achievements. Conversely, President Obama’s penchant for prevarication and vacillation has invited aggression globally. For instance, the president’s recent admission that the administration does not yet have a strategy for dealing with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) defanged the strong language of his Secretary of Defense and Secretary of State, who labeled ISIS a grave threat the U.S. must defeat.
Yet soaring rhetoric can never substitute for sound strategy, prudence, or the fortitude to act decisively when necessary. On the contrary, speaking loudly while carrying a puny stick usually yields the worst outcome, emboldening adversaries, demoralizing allies, and encouraging war by miscalculation. President Obama’s pledge at the NATO summit to defend the Baltic allies and Vice President Biden’s blustering warning to follow ISIS “to the gates of hell” will ring hollow and do more harm than good without following through with bold deeds to match.
China’s, Russia’s Iran’s, and ISIS’s defiance of the U.S. under the Obama administration has escalated as much because of the president’s propensity to make empty threats without consequences as from the ambivalence his words frequently convey. Witness Iran crossing with impunity the administration’s tepidly asserted red lines regarding the Iranian nuclear program. Or the murderous Assad regime in Syria flouting the Obama administration’s firmly stated warning not to use chemical weapons against its own population, or the president pledging, then reneging, on his categorical pledge to win the war in Afghanistan. Or the president’s flaccid and dissembling response to the terrorist attack on Benghazi, which killed four Americans including the ambassador. The president blamed it fatuously on an anti-Islamic video rather than the real perpetrators.
On a strategic level, witness the fatal contraction in the president’s 2012 pivot to Asia, which devoted only meagre resources to contain an increasingly assertive authoritarian China, bent on dominating the most important geopolitical region for the 21st century.
These vacillations matter. Russian President Vladimir Putin clearly disdains the torrent of administration warnings of severe consequences. And why wouldn’t he? The president flinches rather than delivering after each fresh act of Russian aggression the he rhetorically deplores.
No single speech or series of speeches from Obama or leading members of his Administration can repair the damage overnight to American credibility that the widening gulf between the president’s rhetoric and what the reality has wrought. That will require moral clarity, clear strategic thinking, and sustained decisive action on multiple fronts. Here is what the Administration should do stop Putin in his tracks, rather than enable his delusional ambitions of imperial grandeur.
- Arm the legitimate Ukrainian government immediately and generously.
- Finally impose serious and unconditional sanctions on the energy and banking sectors vital to the Russian economy.
- Raise rather than slash the U.S. defense budget.
- Increase significantly American military presence in Eastern European NATO countries.
- Deploy missile defense systems in Central Europe.
- Repudiate the New Start Arms Control Treaty, which was highly disadvantageous to the United States, especially in the realm of missile defense.
- Demonstrate that in every facet of our foreign policy, Putin is an adversary rather than a partner for peace.
Those intrepid souls curious about what Obama needs to put paid to Biden’s pledge to defeat ISIS can read my recent column on that subject.
Americans rightly revere Lincoln’s majestic Gettysburg Address, Churchill’s heroic promises of nothing but “blood, toil, tears, and sweat,” and FDRs inspiring fireside chats because all three not only radiated their determination to achieve victory but persevered to attain it. The Iranian Hostage Crisis ended under Ronald Reagan not just because his stern warnings, but his well-earned reputation for acting accordingly. The Berlin Wall fell not just because Reagan admonished Gorbachev to tear it down, but because of the massive military, economic, and moral restoration of American power that preceded it.
The foreign policy successes of Presidents Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower owed mainly to their actions rather than their eloquence, which neither possessed in abundance as public speakers. Truman’s decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan, repel the communist invasion of South Korea, and triple the defense budget spoke louder than his words about the robustness of deterrence. The geniality and garbled syntax Eisenhower cultivated in public did not fool our adversaries, who measured the formidability of the man by his long record of military service, including as commander of D-Day that liberated Western Europe from Nazi tyranny.
Likewise, America’s friends and foes will judge Obama and Biden based what the United States actually does next rather than what the president says in Estonia about his resolve to defend Eastern Europe. Inaction or a feeble, pinprick response to Putin and ISIS will crystalize the perilous perception in Tehran, Beijing, Moscow, and the deserts of the Middle East that America’s word is not its bond. Ultimately, the United States sorely needs a president who means what he says, says what he means, and acts accordingly. Meanwhile, we and our allies will continue to pay a steep price for not having one.