It is United States strategy to start low with the sanctions to encourage Putin to take an "off ramp" in the crisis, and then to escalate if he...stays on the highway. Not an unreasonable sounding strategy in the abstract. It is the strategy, for instance, that was suggested by McNamara and adopted by JFK and successor administrations in prosecuting the Vietnam War. In other words it sounded reasonable in 1962 BUT WAS PROVED NOT TO WORK! In other words.
For the President of the United States to announce "comprehensive sanctions" when that phrase equals freezing the foreign assets of seven individuals, not including the leader, of a hostile country in the middle of an international crisis means that that president is impotent, afraid, getting bad advice (and taking it), out of touch with the reality of how such puny measures are going to be perceived, out of touch with their even theoretical efficacy, clueless as to the utter meaninglessness of these sanctions to this particular opponent, unfamiliar with the meaning of the English word "comprehensive," oblivious to history...In other words it means that that president is Barack Obama.
For the President of the United States to announce "comprehensive sanctions" when that phrase equals freezing the foreign assets of seven individuals, not including the leader, of a hostile country in the middle of an international crisis means that that president is impotent, afraid, getting bad advice (and taking it), out of touch with the reality of how such puny measures are going to be perceived, out of touch with their even theoretical efficacy, clueless as to the utter meaninglessness of these sanctions to this particular opponent, unfamiliar with the meaning of the English word "comprehensive," oblivious to history...In other words it means that that president is Barack Obama.
