One has to feel a little sorry for President Obama.  Here he is, trying his best to achieve a socialist utopia in the United States and try as he might to withdraw from the rest of the world – it keeps pulling him back in.

If one can recall 2009-2010, the President put in place the wheels for an eventual total withdrawal of American influence in the Middle East to allow the region to heal itself without further suffering caused by the obviously overbearing and malign American presence. Assuming a stable Iraq, he determined to fully withdraw from the Status of Forces Agreement that kept American boots on the ground.  He announced the timing of American withdrawal from Afghanistan at the same time he announced a temporary surge of troops, thereby laying the ground work to force the Afghan government to parlay with the opposition Taliban.  Most profoundly, when faced with an Iranian government teetering on the edge of collapse under the pressure of the millions of Iranian citizens pushing for change in the Green Revolution, he determined to stay disengaged with events so that he could get in the good graces with the mullahs and devise a long term agreement of cooperation that would “open” Iran to the rest of the world. Then there was that “red line” in Syria that wasn’t.  And the Libyan over throw of Qaddafi and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood election  that was supposed to be part of the “Arab Spring”.

Okay, the Middle East thing has been pretty much a disaster, but at least the President could rely on smart diplomacy and a prosperous and stable Europe to achieve lasting stability after an appropriate reset with Russia.  Despite the tensions of the cold war and the never ending hostility of the various hateful tribes of the Balkan peninsula, Europe had managed to go 70 some years without armed conflict, building itself into the democratic statist and socialist utopia Obama could only dream about for America, and securing an economic and diplomatic weight that could balance off more of that infamous overbearing and malign American influence, this time on the European continent.

Don’t look now, Mr. President, but a progressively unstable Europe may not have your back after all.

For a continent that has not known tank and artillery fighting since World War II, tank and artillery fighting have come to Europe. President Putin of Russia, sensing hesitation and weakness  like a hawk senses a wounded field mouse, followed up his blatant territory grab of the Crimea from Ukraine with further land grabs in eastern Ukraine under the proxy of the self declared Donetsk People’s Republic.  For some reason, the government of Ukraine took personally Putin’s attempt to swallow a third of sovereign Ukrainian territory and has fought back.  For the first time since World War II, there is conflict in Europe that has already caused the deaths of thousands.  Spiegel Online reports the absurdities of the new European border at Donetsk, and the progressively desperate situation for those caught on the wrong side of the line. The attitudes on both sides are hardening as the bodies pile up. European bodies.  Putin’s escapades have not been limited to Ukraine.  Similar land grab experiments following the model that a majority Russian speaking population in a portion of a sovereign country is reason enough to bring Russian military forces to assist in “Russianizing” – a pattern repeated in both Georgia and Moldova.  Now the New York Times reports that for the first time since the cold war the US is pre-positioning heavy weaponry in eastern Europe.  This time it is to support erstwhile NATO allies in the Baltics, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania, who fear Putin is about to “Russianize” parts of their territory laden with heavily Russian speaking minorities. The possibilities for dangerous and untoward events are numerous.

Additionally, the Germans are beginning  to express how “tired” they are for what seems like the twentieth time, the never ending requirements to underwrite countries in the European Union that can not pay their way as part of the Euro economy. Greece, 17% of whose GDP goes to pensions, is unwilling to undertake the severe austerity required to maintain the Euro against such social compacts, and instead asks for more German economic support and debt they can not pay back.  To the Greeks, the Germans owe it to them.  The Germans have been willing to suppress their natural position as Europe’s biggest continental power, given their history, but they are not about to give in to the Greeks forever.  A “Greexit” is in the cards, i.e., Greece leaving the Euro, and the domino effect on other Euro countries in similar straights to Greece, could see the Euro implode.  Germany would left holding the economic detritus, and their reactions could bring some long suppressed European tensions back from long forgotten to oh so hotten.

War with thousands of dead Europeans. Russian and American/NATO tanks facing each other.  Europe in economic crisis.  Germany once again having to look out for its own interests.  And a dollop of islamic radical infestation from a collapsing Libya to stir the pot. The President has a transformation on his hands that has the potential to supersede all his other transformations.  The mother of all transformations, as it were.  Taking the overbearing and malign American influence out of the world may not have been all it was cracked up to be.