President Barack Obama’s drive to provoke a thermonuclear confrontation with Russia has been stymied through a series of war-avoidance moves that have fundamentally altered the global strategic landscape.

The key initiating blow to Obama’s effort was Russian President Vladimir Putin’s brilliant flanking maneuver in Syria. Now it is universally confirmed that Russia has established a deeper military presence inside Syria.  A new Russian-built airbase near Latakia on the northern Syrian Mediterranean coast will be completed within several weeks.  The Islamic State and Nusra Front offensive to oust President Bashar Assad has been set back by the Russian actions.  President Obama is in a state of rage, but is boxed in by the Putin actions.  Putin has deepened the trap for Obama by pressing for the US President to agree to a face-to-face meeting later this month in New York City on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.  Putin’s speech before the General Assembly will set forth a proposal for a global war against the Islamic State and other, allied terrorists.

Even before the Putin actions in Syria, sane forces in Western Europe were terrified into action by the recognition that Obama was driving for confrontation with Russia, and that such a confrontation could rapidly turn into a thermonuclear war.  When Putin took the decisive action in Syria, while pressing for implementation of the Minsk Accords to end the crisis in eastern Ukraine, European governments, led by Germany, made a major policy shift.  Germany, and now France, have welcomed the Russian initiative in Syria and called for broad cooperation between the West and Russia to solve the crisis, which has flooded Europe with refugees from the Obama-British wars in the Middle East and North Africa.

Inside the United States, a revolt has erupted among military intelligence personnel assigned to the Central Command, who have filed formal complaints that high-level Obama officials have been pressuring them to “cook” the intelligence on the war on the Islamic State, to create the appearance of success, when, by every sane measure, the US-led war on ISIS has been an utter failure.  In effect, Obama and DNI Gen. James Clapper, who is accused of leading the pressure campaign on the analysts, are following in the footsteps of Vice President Dick Cheney, in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in March 2003.  Decades earlier, the same “body count” arguments, being foisted on the Centcom analysts, were used to prolong the doomed Vietnam war.

These combined actions have blunted Obama’s war drive against Russia—for the time being.  There can be no let-up on the demand for Obama’s removal from office, either through impeachment, forced resignation, or the invoking of the 25th Amendment.  So long as Obama remains in office, even if he is restrained by sustained war-avoidance efforts, the danger will remain.  The estimate is that Obama is doomed by his own failed policies, but his removal is the only guarantee that his doom will not also lead to doom for mankind as a whole.