Obama's legacy: Ukraine and Syria

Obama’s failure to stand up to this neocon/liberal-hawk foreign-policy elite over Syria and Ukraine may well define his historical legacy. He allowed the Syrian conflict to escalate with shipments of U.S. weapons to rebels both directly and indirectly adding to the country’s carnage. Obama also acquiesced to the provocative overthrow of Ukraine’s elected president on Russia’s border and allowed the crisis to escalate into a risky stand-off with nuclear-armed Russia.

So writes Robert Perry in Trump’s Need to Trust Americans Consortium News 12/21/2016.

If the title seems like an impossible wish, it's because it is. But Perry is using the stock technique of giving advice in a disinterested tone to an incoming President. Even though in this case the chance of the advice being followed is somewhat smaller than that of the proverbial snowball in Hell.

But in a later piece, The Good That Trump Could Do 12/23/2016, he spins a really optimistic scenario in which Trump challenges "the neocon/liberal-hawk establishment that rules the roost of Washington’s foreign policy."

I don't see any clear signs that Trump's crew is going to be fulfilling such optimistic hopes.