As usual, Obama’s case depended upon a much longer view of history. Ultimately, he argued, the bill would come due for Putin’s interventions—the money spent on wars abroad, the impact of sanctions on his economy, the rot of a corrupt system in which Putin and his cronies ran Russia as a cartel. But in the reality of politics in 2015, Putin was better than Obama at putting himself at the center of events that captured attention. We ended up looking as if we were reacting to Putin, and not the other way around.
