Trying to understand Putin and Obama.

• Author: Vernuccio, Frank V., Jr.
• Position: The World Today - Vladimir Putin and Barack Obama

The Russian president "seeks to make his nation the world's preeminent military power," while his American counterpart, "almost immediately upon taking office ... began alienating U.S. allies."

THE DEPLOYMENT of Russian military power to the Middle East, in alliance with both Iran and the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad--who has committed massive human rights offenses and has violated international accords through his use of banned weaponry--provides conclusory evidence of Vladimir Putin's world view. Simply put, it is evident that the Russian president--who invaded the Ukraine, dramatically has ramped up his nation's military spending, violated nuclear arms agreements, resumed nuclear bomber patrols along U.S. coastlines, and is establishing bases in Cuba and Nicaragua--seeks to make his nation the world's preeminent military power.

Despite the increasingly hollow sounding claims from the White House--as well as from both Republicans and Democrats--that the U.S. is the world's strongest nation, the fact is that the Russian-Chinese-Iranian axis has supplanted the U.S.-NATO alliance as the globe's most significant military.

That status is based on the power of Putin's armed forces and on his own steely determination. Unconstrained by public opinion, he has displayed no qualms about partnering with pariah states such as Iran and Syria. He pays no political price for telling outright lies, such as he fabricated when he claimed he was going into Syria to fight ISIS, or that some of his new missiles do not defy treaty prohibitions, or that his claims to expanded Arctic territories are legal. Indeed, he unabashedly has stifled dissent within Russia through physical, financial, and extralegal intimidation.

One of the key links in the U.S. victory in the first Cold War was the shared interest of Washington and Beijing in taming the Kremlin. Putin has reversed all of that, and the Chinese, with their booming economy and greatly expanded military, now are allied with Russia against the U.S. In essence, Putin is the classic expansionist leader, not dissimilar from those who preceded him in Germany and Japan in World War D. Indeed, it must be remembered that the then-Soviet Union began WWII in a neutrality agreement with the Nazi regime. Moscow only went with the Allies after Adolf Hitler ordered the invasion of the USSR.

Putin, then, is not hard to understand. He almost is a stereotype, but what about Pres. Barack Obama? In the span of a mere seven...