Where Experience Matters - Ukraine's drama, Obama's weakness

Competency and at least experienced advisers could help. Obama lacks all these. Unfortunately for all, this has been the case, time and again, from Benghazi to Tehran. m/r

Ukraine's drama, Obama's weakness - latimes.com

By John Bolton

December 12, 2013

It's the job of U.S. leaders to see beyond today's domestic issues to protect larger national interests well into the future.

Ukraine's civil conflict strikes many Americans as a distant and unimportant dispute, one hardly connected to their daily lives. Such a lack of interest in international affairs is understandable, perhaps, because of the focus on economic recovery since 2008, but it's badly misplaced given the stakes involved, not just in eastern and central Europe but around the world.

More alarming, and far less justifiable, as a cause for such inattention is the failure of America's national political leadership. President Obama's inattention to national security distinguishes him from his predecessors, Republican and Democrat alike, since Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Unlike them, his first thought every morning seems to be not the international threats facing the United States and its allies; rather, as he said in the 2008 campaign, his aim is to "fundamentally transform" America. Only when international affairs cannot be avoided or where potential domestic political gains are manifest (such as thekilling of Osama bin Laden) does Obama emerge from his domestic policy bubble.

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/commentary/la-oe-bolton-ukraine-obama-security-20131212,0,2182232.story#ixzz2nN3e23fO