Putin’s aggression is the price of western weakness

One cannot legislate for a quiet world. When a former Princeton University college professor was elected president of the United States, he joked before his inauguration that ‘it would be the irony of fate if my administration had to deal chiefly with foreign affairs’. That was Woodrow Wilson, speaking in March 1913. Similarly, the Hawaiian-born Barack Obama came to office with little interest in what lay over the Atlantic. He wanted to be the Pacific president, more concerned with Asia than the squabbles of the old world.

Fate, it turned out, had other plans. This week Obama has found his visit to Europe dominated by talk of Russian militarism — and has ended up almost begging his Nato allies to do more to address the problem on their doorstep in Ukraine. Fat chance. Debt-addled Europe has neither the money nor the stomach for confrontation — it must rely, as always, on Uncle Sam.