Obama Failing to Check Russian Imperialism, Former CIA Head Says

In the eyes of former CIA director James Woolsey, Russian President Vladimir Putin is like the farmer Abraham Lincoln once recalled, who said he wasn’t greedy for land, he only wanted what adjoined what he already owned.

“That’s Putin,” Woolsey said.

That imperial impulse drove Putin to annex Crimea from Ukraine, and one of the Baltic states is “quite possibly next,” said Woolsey, who attributes Russia’s audacity partly to a U.S. administration that lacks the appetite to keep it in check.

“Since (U.S. President Barack) Obama backs down and backs down and backs down and backs down, it is virtually certain, from Russia’s point of view, that Obama’s not going to stand up to them, so they have plenty of leeway to use force.”

An outspoken critic of Obama’s foreign policy, the hawkish Woolsey, who in addition to heading the CIA during the Clinton years took part in arms control negotiations, was in Toronto this week to discuss the nuclear agreement with Iran.

But with Russia into the second week of its military intervention in Syria, complicating a civil war that was already complicated enough, Woolsey offered his take on Putin, himself a former intelligence czar, in an interview with the National Post.

“Russia is an empire and has long believed that it ought to be extended enough to the Mediterranean that it has a warm water port. It now has that in Syria,” said Woolsey, who chairs the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

From airstrips in Syria and warships in the Caspian Sea, Russia has conducted more than 100 missile strikes since Sept. 30, and while Moscow claims it is targeting the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and al-Qaida, it has also bombed insurgent forces fighting against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, including those that make up the Free Syrian Army.

“They’re not going after ISIS, they’re going after the groups the CIA has had a hand in training because they don’t want to have any entity or group that supports the United States being strong,” Woolsey said after speaking to the Mackenzie Institute security think-tank.

“So they’re very systematically weakening anybody who might stand up to them,” he said. “I think there’s no real way to change that probably without a change of administration, so we’re probably stuck with Obama’s approach, such as it is, for the next 15 months or so.”

Given the lack of an effective U.S. strategy for Syria or Iraq, Woolsey said, it was “questionable” for Washington to expect the help of allies such as Canada, which has deployed CF-18s to the region and Special Forces to train Iraqi Kurdish fighters.

“Although I’m glad to have Canada with us, even when we’re not fighting very well, it’s asking a lot of a country that’s sacrificed a good deal to help preserve Western liberties in the 20th century and early 21st to stay involved in something where we’re not fighting seriously,” he said.

The Iraqi Prime Minister, Haider al-Abadi, appeared to share that assessment of the U.S. response, telling France 24 last week the U.S. lacked the will to fight ISIL and had provided only “limited” support rather than the “massive air power” Iraq had expected. He also said he would welcome Russian airstrikes in Iraq.

Putin agreed to join the war in Syria after meeting personally in Moscow with General Qassem Soleimani, head of Iran’s Quds Force, Reuters and the Associated Press reported. The Quds Force is on Canada’s list of terrorist entities, largely because it finances, arms and trains its Lebanese proxy force, Hezbollah.

With Russia’s involvement, Syria has now become the battleground for “three tumultuous empires” — Russia, Iran and ISIL, which believes it is establishing a puritanical Islamic state that it intends to expand “sort of like an oil slick” into neighbouring Arab nations, according to Woolsey.

“You now have two of those empires joined together, Iran and Russia, in an effort to defeat the third, ISIS. And they may succeed. But if they do they will turn to deciding what else they want to control in that part of the world,” he said.

Not one to mince words (he told Canada AM this week he would like to see Edward Snowden “hanged by the neck until he was dead”), Woolsey called Iran a “theocratic, totalitarian, genocidal empire.” And the recent nuclear agreement has only made it more dangerous, he said, easing economic sanctions that had squeezed its economy and moving Tehran further “along the path to having a nuclear weapon.”

Once Iran has a nuclear weapons capability, neighbouring Arab states will want it as well, he said, which will turn the ancient and bloody Sunni-Shia rivalry into a nuclear standoff. “We and the Russians had our difficulties, and some close calls during the Cuban missile crisis, but ultimately common sense more or less prevailed,” he said. Would a nuclear-armed Iran or ISIL be so rational? “I don’t think so.”

President Obama “really needs to move quickly to rebuild American power and position and reputation,” he said. That means more solidly supporting pro-Western groups like the Kurds and Israelis. “So I think there are a number of things he could do to improve the situation but it’ll take time, probably long after his second term is over.”