Obama Messed Up in 2014, Missed Chance to Stop Putin, His Top Spy Admits

Eight years ago, when Russian leader Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine for the very first time, President Barack Obama messed up the American response.

It should have been much more substantial and aggressive, according to the admission of Obama’s own highest-ranking intelligence officer.

According to the ex-top spy under Obama, a more forceful counter-reaction to Putin may have avoided the present-day crisis and approaching, full-fledged invasion of Ukraine.

‘Wish We’d Done More’

The very belated admission has come from James Clapper, the former Director of National Intelligence.

Clapper served as the fourth Director of National Intelligence; he was in office for almost the entire duration of Obama’s two terms in the White House, from August 2010 until January 2017.

It was precisely on Obama and Clapper’s watch that Putin first invaded Ukraine to punish the Ukrainians for ousting a totally corrupt, Moscow-puppet president, and for wishing to integrate with the West.

Clapper told Fox News on Tuesday he wished the administration of Obama reacted much more strongly when Putin forcibly violated the international borders in Europe back in 2014.

By now, there is no question the weak response of the United States under Obama and its NATO allies has been whetting Putin’s appetite for expanding his modern-day empire running on lavish energy profits from oil and natural gas exports to the West.

Clapper added that today, Putin and Russia have become far “more emboldened” than they were back then.

‘Too Slow and Incremental’

The Biden administration’s own foreign policy weakness was blatantly demonstrated with the apocalyptic loss of the war in Afghanistan to the Taliban terrorists. Now, it appears to be taking the same approach of caving in to Russian power and appeasing Putin.

That seems to be case as on Tuesday, Biden announced what he said are the “first tranche” of sanctions on Russia and Putin’s regime. These sanctions are targeting several main Russian banks and several top Russian oligarchs close to Putin.

While Biden claimed the new anti-Russian punitive measures in question are going far beyond the sanctions the West imposed on Moscow since 2014, Republicans in Congress have called out their weakness.

This is strongly reminiscent of the weakness of Obama when dealing with Putin, which made today’s huge Ukraine mess possible.

A statement signed by the leaders of the Republican Party, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, declared Biden has never materialized his “tough talk on Russia.”

The statement also points out that Biden keeps “choosing appeasement”, which is basically what Obama did throughout his second term.

Last month, Celeste Wallander, proposed by Biden for assistant secretary of defense (who served as under-secretary for defense in the Obama administration), also admitted their response to Putin’s aggression in 2014 “was too slow and incremental”.

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