Here’s Obama on Russian preferences, in response to a question by Bill Plante:

[T]here are going to be some constraints in terms of what we can do if President Putin and Russia are ignoring what should be their long-term interests. Right now, what we’ve done is impose sufficient costs on Russia that, objectively speaking, they should — President Putin should want to resolve this diplomatically, get these sanctions lifted, get their economy growing again, and have good relations with Ukraine. But sometimes people don’t always act rationally, and they don’t always act based on their medium- or long-term interests. That can’t deter us, though. We’ve just got to stay at it.

With the caveat that I share Obama’s preferences and think Putin has badly miscalculated on Ukraine, this is still one of the more sanctimonious assessments to come out of the White House in some time. It assumes that because Putin doesn’t want what Obama wants, then Putin must be acting irrationally. Maybe, just maybe, Vladimir Putin and Russian nationalists place a different value on controlling neighboring territory than Barack Obama. Or, to get all social science-y about it, maybe Obama is conflating his own subjective rationality with everyone else’s instrumental rationality.

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How, exactly, does Obama think this sounds in Moscow? Like the gentle advice of a benevolent friend, or the patronizing tone of a bullying big brother?

To be clear, this is hardly unique to this president; it’s a common tic among all top foreign policymakers. As a senior U.S. diplomat once told me, “If there’s anything the United States is good at, it’s telling other countries what’s in their best interests.” I think this flaw is particularly pronounced among foreign policy Zen Masters, however. Part of this might be because, to explain why they are not taking aggressive action, they feel the need to explain why a revisionist actor is destined to fail.

By way of contrast, compare what Obama said with Michael McFaul’s Politico essay, in which he makes a similar assessment that Putin is choosing poorly. McFaul, however, at least acknowledges a key point:

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Like some in Russia (though, I fear, a dwindling minority ) , I believe that a more democratic, more market-oriented Russia, which abides by the international rules of the game, is the path to greatness. But over the course of his nearly 15 years in power, Putin has demonstrated that he sees a different path to glory, one that does not involve democratic governance, that is suspicious of private property, and, increasingly, that ignores or circumvents international rules and norms Putin himself used to champion. But let’s not judge Putin by my standards. Let’s evaluate his success with reference to his own, clearly stated agenda.

McFaul goes on to point out how Putin has failed to achieve most of his great power objectives; it’s a pretty compelling case. The key here, however, is that McFaul explicitly acknowledges the divergence between his preferences and Putin’s.