Dimitri Simes puts the hurt on the shallowness of the administration's foreign policy

Read it all here.  A taste:

"Obama’s new sweeping pronouncements are dangerous.  If they don’t prove hollow, further discrediting the United States in the process, they compel him put the United States in very dangerous territory.  Obama appears to think that he can threaten to do anything, anywhere, against American enemies without any consequences for what he says, does, or doesn’t do.  It is precisely because Obama is weak that he has a propensity for offering sweeping inflammatory pronouncements that deter no one but can be exploited by anyone looking for an excuse to disregard sovereignty of others whether in Ukraine or elsewhere.

But imagine if Russian President Vladimir Putin—who likes to use U.S. actions as precedents for his own conduct—paraphrased Obama: “We will hunt down terrorists who threaten our country, wherever they are.  That means I will not hesitate to take action against ISIL in Syria, as well as Iraq [or Ukrainian fascists].  This is a core principle of my presidency:  If you threaten America [Russia], you will find no safe haven.”  The President made clear not only that he feels entitled to attack ISIL positions in Syria, but that he would do it without any coordination with Assad’s government while simultaneously arming the so-called moderate rebels, who in addition to fighting ISIL are also at war with the Syrian government. The Russian Foreign Ministry has already issued a stern warning that attacks in Syria without UN Security Council authorization would be acts of aggression. The Assad regime, which recently suffered significant setbacks at ISIL’s hands, took a more open-minded approach, but still made clear that it wants to be consulted by U.S. officials before any airstrikes and naturally totally opposes any plan to arm other rebel groups.

The president has promised to “ultimately destroy” ISIL, so does he expect Putin, whom he is busy attempting to isolate and humiliate over Ukraine, to sit idly?  Putin is unlikely to provide S-300 anti-aircraft missiles to Assad, not because of any deference to Obama, whom he reportedly considers an arrogant coward, but because of reluctance to irritate Israel, which refused to vote for a US-orchestrated resolution condemning the Russian annexation of Crimea in the UN General Assembly.  Nevertheless, there are many other governments or groups Moscow can support that would increase threats to America—and some could be more serious than the one we face today from ISIL.

Related: Obama rejects "best military advice" on how to deal with ISIS.  Is there such a thing as "best military advice"?