BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON

“At every step, Russia has come before this council to say everything but the truth. It has manipulated, obfuscated, and outright lied.”

US Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Powers speaking in an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council August 28, 2014

Ambassador Powers seems to represent the United States with great competence and a forceful presence, but her statement last week and those of President Barack Obama on the Russian invasion (why not call it what it is?) of Ukraine raise another question: What is the United States going to do about it?

President Barack Obama conceded last week that his Administration does not yet have a strategy for dealing with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). ISIS is the radical terrorist organization fighting a holy war in the Middle East to establish an Islamic State.

But the United States doesn’t have much of a strategy for dealing with Russia, either; at least anything visible to the naked eye. What does the President say to Olga Garina, whose son, Yegor is a Russian paratrooper currently under guard in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, a long way from his Russian home, according to an excellent article in the Washington Post.

Yegor got to Kiev presumably via Eastern Ukraine reinforcing the “Ukrainian separatists,” who are fighting to overthrow the Western-leaning government of President Petro Poroshenko. He is among 1,000 Russian troops in Ukraine, according to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Russia calls them volunteers, but it is hard to believe anyone volunteers for anything in Russia without a gentle nudge from the military command.

The Russian presence is not only felt, it is all-consuming and controlling. Those peasant Ukrainian separatists, who live in a country with an average annual income of between $4,000-$7,000, have managed to procure tanks, armored vehicles, rocket launchers, surface to air missiles, and a host of other modern and expensive weapons, in their war against the Poroshenko government. It’s a poor country and its people are poor but these guys have all of the finest equipment, and it’s no secret to anyone where it came from. It was shipped across the Russian border in one convoy after another. They even shot down a passenger jetliner travelling at 30,000 feet. You don’t do that with a pitchfork.

So along with the equipment, there is no longer any doubt about the active engagement of Russian troops in Ukraine, thanks in part to the presence of Yegor and his comrades, who have been killed or captured there. The Russian government has declared mothers of soldiers, including Olga who are challenging the government on the whereabouts of their sons, a “foreign agent”.

“This is not a homegrown indigenous uprising in eastern Ukraine. The separatists are backed, armed, and financed by Russia. We’ve seen deep Russian involvement in everything they’ve done.” President Obama said last week.

That is Obama-speak for, yes, it is an invasion by one sovereign country of another, similar for example to the invasion of the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein of Kuwait. (Again, though, why not call it what it is?)

The US must not remain adrift on Ukraine without a strategy even if there isn’t one for ISIS, a Hydra-like global terrorist threat of immense complexity and ramification. The Ukraine situation is complex, but more transparent. What the civilized world is dealing with is a Hitleresque, narcissistic, megalomaniac Russian dictator on some kind of Quixotic quest to restore Mother Russia to her glory years under Peter the Great, or God forbid, the brutal tyranny of Josef Stalin’s Soviet empire. It was under Stalin’s collectivism that millions of Ukranians died of starvation.

[Oddly enough, Putin compares the Ukrainians fighting to preserve their own country, with Hitler’s invasion of Russia during World War II. The media do not explain Putin’s rationale; they only report it, which is unfortunate. An explanation would help us understand him better. Does he still consider Eastern Ukraine, or all of Ukraine, as part of the nonexistent Soviet empire, even though it has been a sovereign nation since 1991?]

Maybe the United States’ lack of strategy is the Obama Administration strategy. After all, the US has embraced non-strategies, or strategies that are not clear to the American public in Syria, Iran, North Korea, Turkey, Central America, or the Congo, and even to some extent in the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is taking full advantage of international crises, American and European weakness and indecision, and a weak and divided Ukraine. In that environment he is free to flex his well-exposed muscles and begin the mystifying reincarnation of the grand Soviet Republic, from Crimea to the Arctic Ocean and then all points East and West.

The United States has responded to Putin’s aggression with limited economic sanctions, the best we could muster with the European Union’s assent. But a response is not a strategy. It is just a response. And the strength of the sanctions themselves is suspect.

Clearly, more needs to be done to restrain Putin and appeal to the Russian people. More needs to be done to fortify and arm the Ukrainian army, such as it is. More needs to be done to define and strengthen the role of NATO, the military arm of Western democracy. More needs to be done to define and direct our relationship with the European Union and its relationship with Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean. More needs to be done to enhance the relevance of the United Nations. This is the time for the UN to live up to its legacy and its charter.

Clearly, the American people are more inclined for the United States to be more assertive. According to Susan Page, writing in USA Today, “After years of retrenchment in the wake of two costly wars, a new USA TODAY/Pew Research Center Poll finds that Americans increasingly are open to a larger U.S. role in trying to solve problems around the world.” The study found that 54 percent think President Obama is not tough enough on foreign policy and national security, and only 36 percent said he’s about right.

The US has demonstrated to the world, quite emphatically over the past decade, that American might, American influence and American prestige, the kind President Theodore Roosevelt exercised more than a hundred years ago to bring the Russian Czar to the table with the Japanese, no longer exist. We have emptied the quiver and we have not a slingshot and stone left with which to battle international evil. It is time to regain what we’ve lost, but maybe under a different paradigm, one that depends upon consensus, international cooperation and international unity of purpose. It is the strategy and leadership we saw from George HW Bush when Saddam invaded Kuwait. Much is different between Kuwait and Ukraine, of course, but good principles don’t dissolve in changing circumstances.

The other dilemma for the American people, in particular, and our allies worldwide, is that it is impossible to tell how President Obama views the world and the crises we face together. There is no knowing from one day to the next in which direction his mind is focused. He acts as though he left his range finder on a golf cart. He can be a visionary internationalist one day and a laid back isolationist the next. One day he extols the power of the Presidency and the next he succumbs to its weakness. There is just so much we can do and sometimes there is nothing we can do, he claims, on the one hand, and on the other he says he will go to any lengths to protect Americans from harm or the threat of it. There are grand visions one day and silly platitudes the next. There is an endless stream of meetings, messages, symbols and statements, but no subsequent action. There is so much smoke, but no one can find the fire in this Administration.

Barack Obama is a President without clear and consistent definition. He is a character cut from the movie, Sin City, sometimes a kaleidoscope and sometimes a pencil sketch.

We’ve reached the point on so many levels–Ukraine, immigration, ISIS, Israel and Palestine among them–that it is incumbent upon us to embrace some strategy, but to the President’s credit, not just any strategy. The United States needs to put its foot down and see if it leaves an imprint. If it doesn’t then we need bigger shoes.

Editor’s Note: Mike Johnson is a former journalist, who worked on the Ford White House staff and served as press secretary and chief of staff to House Republican Leader Bob Michel, prior to entering the private sector. He is co-author of a book, Surviving Congress, a guide for congressional staff. He is currently a principal with the OB-C Group.