Trapped in a Little Box
3rd October 2015
President Obama has the habit of offering advice to other leaders, explaining how they should think. In 2014 he told Iran that an “Iraq in chaos on their borders is probably not in their interests”. Later in 2014 he told Vladimir Putin that a standoff in Ukraine was not in the interests of either country”. In September of that same year he told Turkey that “it’s certainly not in their interest for all that instability and violence to be occurring so close to their border”.
Surely they see it; and just as surely they will respond as he has foreseen. It must come as a cruel disappointment that so many world leaders disregarded his counsel in 2015, often doing the opposite of what he suggested. Iran is deeply enmeshed in Iraq. Russia is building up forces in the Ukraine. Turkey is in a renewed fight with the Kurds upon its borders.