First, a disclaimer: I voted for Barack Obama both times he ran
for president and would do so again, even though his presidency has been a
disappointment to many of his supporters and a failure by his own standards.

Most of Obama’s policy failures follow the same pattern: He
starts out with good intentions and exhorts everyone to do the right thing, but
then does nothing to bring about the desired results. When his efforts run into
opposition he simply gives up. His good intentions (which, as the saying goes,
pave the road to Hell) only serve to make the failures worse.

Back in 2008, candidate Obama promised to heal the ideological
rifts that beset Washington and to usher in a new era of bipartisanship and
cooperation. At the time, he had an opportunity to stomp on his Republican
opponents, pinning on them the blame for the disastrous economic and
international policies of the Bush Administration. He could then work with them
from a position of political strength. Ronald Reagan did this very effectively in
the 1980s, never missing an opportunity to criticize “our predecessors” well
into his second term in office.

But Obama started his term on a wrong foot: he tried to
ingratiate himself with the Republican Right, allowed his opponents to
reorganize and rally, and ended up presiding over the most bitterly divided and
dysfunctional government in modern history.

Candidate Obama was going to be the first post-racial
president; instead, the country has been convulsed by the worst race protests
and riots since the 1960s, whereas political attacks on the President himself
have acquired distasteful racist undertones.

No president has ever spoken more about the need to support
working families, and yet on his watch the middle class continued to
disintegrate, income differentials widened substantially and a new class of the
super-rich “one-percenters” has become solidified. Increasingly, the wealthy
are using their enormous resources to privatize the American democratic system.

Early in his presidency, Obama laid out a bright vision of a
democratic Middle East in his famous Cairo speech. The result? He is set to
leave the region in a state of unprecedented turmoil. Arab Spring revolutions
were either suppressed or brought disaster almost everywhere they occurred, while
the army of the Islamic State is now conquering strategic cities in Iraq and
Syria.

Obama’s tentative efforts to get Israel to limit settlement
expansion in occupied territories have come to nothing: Obama is now widely
despised by the Israelis and distrusted by the Palestinians. His common-sense
deal with Tehran to keep Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon is regarded with
great suspicion, if not disgust, across the entire Middle East.

And then there is the misbegotten “reset” in relations with
Russia. It was a nonstarter from the start: its embarrassing mistranslation
into Russian as “overload” revealed that Obama’s State Department lacked
competent Russian translators and suggested that the White House completely
misunderstood the nature of the regime in Moscow.

It is true that at the time, early in Dmitry Medvedev’s
presidency, there was hope for liberalization, shared both inside and outside
Russia. No one could have predicted that Putin would return to power in 2012
amidst widespread protests by Moscow intelligentsia, and then would promptly
become divorced from reality. The annexation of Crimea came as a complete
surprise amid the costly Winter Olympics extravaganza in Sochi, designed to
showcase Russia’s modernity and normalcy to the outside world.

Nevertheless it is a fact that Obama risks leaving a new Cold
War as his legacy. Combined with his other policy failures, it is not going to
look good on his historical record. However, it is also the one policy area
where something can be done relatively quickly. Moreover, the White House may
need Moscow’s cooperation to keep the situation elsewhere in the world, notably
in Syria, from deteriorating further in the next year and a half.

Putin may be open to a compromise deal – if it satisfies his conditions.
Crazy or not, the Russian president realizes that he has painted himself into a
corner. The dismemberment of Ukraine and the acquisition of a land corridor to
Crimea is not going to happen imminently, the Russian economy is precariously
balanced and any further military escalation in “Novorossiya” will trigger more
severe sanctions. Putin is therefore seeking to trade restraint in Eastern
Ukraine for a de facto American acquiescence to the annexation of Crimea and an
easing of the sanctions regime.

The Obama Administration seems to be leaning toward some kind
of bargain along those lines. It would also help Hillary Clinton’s efforts to
succeed Obama. If relations with Russia continue to deteriorate when the
election campaign heats up, her role in formulating the reset policy with the
Kremlin while she was Secretary of State may come to haunt her.

Russia has already started to wind down its Novorossiya project
and mop up recalcitrant commanders in Donetsk and Lugansk. Terrorist commander
Alexei Mozgovoy became the latest prominent victim of Putin’s “peace process”.
Meanwhile, during his latest visit to Russia, Secretary of State John Kerry
pointedly avoided any mention Crimea.

Needless to say, any retreat by Putin will be tactical in
nature as well as very temporary. He will not stop trying to undermine Ukraine,
degrade its economy and damage political stability. He has no choice. A
pro-Western, prosperous Ukraine outside its orbit is something the Kremlin is
not ready to contemplate conceptually, but even on a strictly practical level,
without a land link, Russian Crimea is neither politically nor economically
viable over the long term.

Obama’s political expediency in striking an agreement with
Putin is understandable. However, if it happens now, while Ukraine is still
politically weak, while its economic and financial situation is shambolic and
while it has only limited ability to protect itself from Russian terrorism, the
issue will merely be swept under the carpet. The next U.S. president – be that Hillary Clinton or her as-yet-unknown Republican opponent – will have to deal with
it soon after assuming office – unless, of course, the whole thing blows up in Obama’s face even
before he leaves the White House.