Remember when the hot mike incident happened with Obama and the then Russian President Medvedev? Obama told Medvedev that after his re-election he could be so much more flexible with Russia.

This week, Russia has come out and told the US that they will not extend the 1992 agreement where the US helped Russia safeguard its nukes while the defunct USSR was having trouble. The agreement was extended a few times and has been beneficial to the US. The concern was nuclear material going missing and ending up the hands of bad guys.  So now Russia is in a position of strength and they no longer want this agreement to continue.

When you telegraph weakness and lead from behind, the various governments of the world see no downside with pushing us aside or trying to weaken our position.  This is some of that smart diplomacy Obama has promised us all.  When we project weakness, every tin-pot dictator or Libyan or Al Qaeda bad guy thinks “why not?”.