The end of the old order

In Epitaph, Richard Fernandez recalls how Obama was so wedded to managing the decline that he could not act to stop or reverse it.

The roots of today's new tensions have roots deep in Obama's and even George W. Bush's term. Yet so great was the establishment's commitment the post Cold War order it seemed irresponsible or unlucky to admit things were breaking down even when they manifestly were. Time and again when challenged by China's naval island building, Russia's expansion into the Ukraine, Beijing's theft of the classified OPM database, the shootdown of MH17 and the disintegration of Syria, Obama with remarkable sang froid maintained the air of business as usual.

Ben Rhodes in his account of how Obama drew a Red Line in Syria then erased it, described how avoiding the perception of crisis was so important to his boss. "We in the Obama administration stepped up to the brink of military action against Assad. And then, suddenly, we stepped back." Rhodes wrote:

I wanted to do something about the catastrophe in Syria, just as I had advocated intervention in Libya. ... It was as if Obama was finally forcing me to let go of a part of who I was—the person who looked at Syria and felt that we had to do something, who had spent two years searching for hope amid the chaos engulfing the Arab world and the political dysfunction at home. ...

I saw what he had been doing—testing Congress, testing public opinion, to see what the real maneuvering room was for his office when it came to intervention in Syria. ... On the flight home, Obama mentioned that he’d had a private conversation with Putin on the margins of the summit. ... This time, Obama again suggested working together to remove and destroy Syria’s chemical weapons.

He reposed his trust in Putin because ... what else could he do? Obama's observation that “maybe we never would have done Rwanda” caught the essential sense of helplessness of the 44th president. While he may have sensed that the post WW2 order was grinding to an end and the fruits of Ronald Reagan's victory over the Soviet Union were sliding from his grasp, though the era was dying Obama could not bring himself to bury it.