While Obama was distracting you with Mohammed the bomb-faking kid, Russia made a major anti-Iran, anti-Obama move in Syria, sending a reported 2,000 personnel to take over a large Syrian airbase in Latakia, along with the naval port of Tartous.

Under Obama and the Left, America has retreated from the world. We have abandoned our allies, all the way from Japan and South Korea to Saudi Arabia and Israel. Obama has supported the paleofascist Ikhwan (brotherhood) in the Sunni Arab world, and Iran in the Shi'ite half of Islam. China has snatched a major part of the South China Sea, with its undersea mineral wealth. Russia is gradually pushing Europe back from the East.

Putin is a strategic opportunist, and his chess game isn't hard to guess. We know he wants to exploit American weakness and betrayal of our allies to rebuild Russia as a superpower.

Russia's big move into Syria is designed to accomplish several objectives.

First, Putin is propping up Syrian president Assad. This seems to serve Iran's strategy of surrounding the Arab Sunnis and Israel in a Shi'ite Crescent. But in fact, Putin has just sliced the Iranian Crescent in half by interposing a blocking force. Assad will owe his survival to Uncle Putin, not the theocracy of Iran.

Putin has an alliance of convenience with Tehran, but Russia has centuries of experience fighting Muslim enemies, all the way to the end of the Ottoman Empire in World War I. Putin has battled Muslim rebels in Chechnya and doesn't need a rising nuclear Caliphate next door, an hour's flight from Russia’s borders.

Putin is nobody's friend. He is a Russian nationalist, with a close domestic alliance with the Orthodox Church, just like the czars.

In the Armageddon world Obama has allowed to rise, Putin is a rational player compared to the suiciders of Iran.

As usual, Putin is playing a double game, helping to build Iranian nuclear power stations, each of which is also a big, fat target for air or missile attack. Putin is taking money to sell Iran 100 long-distance air-refueling planes designed to project military power far from their Iranian bases. The trouble is that those planes put Russia well within the flight radius of Iran's new nuke bombs. So Putin just sliced Iran's pincer movement around Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Israel.

Move, countermove.

Putin claims to want to fight ISIS. He may do so. It's good cover, and would give Russia military clout in Iraq and parts of Syria.

Putin desperately needs a bigger energy supply to maintain his political clout in Europe, to supply Russia with fuel, and to try to set up a second OPEC with Russia at the top.

By rescuing the Saudis and Israel from Iranian aggression, Putin is piling up IOU's in the fast-changing world of energy politics. The world price of oil is collapsing with the spread of shale exploitation, and there is no way to stop it. China is becoming a shale producer in the South China Sea.

Russia's new military position in Syria gives him clout in the jihad war: near Turkey, now under Islamofascist Erdogan; blocking Iran, the Obama-favored regional hegemon; and as the new superpower protector of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf oil producers.

Russia's Syrian bases are also pressuring the Eastern Mediterranean, with its new shale energy discoveries; the Eastern flank of NATO; and the Balkans, under increasing threat from Iranian and Sunni subversion.

Western Europe keeps importing hostile Muslim populations from Pakistan, Africa, and the Middle East. The Germans just collapsed in the face of a phony invasion by thousands of "refugees," many men of military age, who did not bother to hide their hatred for their new welfare hosts. Europe's flabbiness is an open invitation to aggressors, both Russia and Islam, and Russia seems more rational.

Muslim infiltration and power-buying in Europe goes back to the rise of OPEC in the 1970s. The French have a long history of allying with Russia against Germany, and today they seem to be rebuilding that alliance to keep 50 million militant Muslims in check. Only Russia has the will and the military capacity to resist jihad by infiltration. France just launched a bombing raid against ISIS training camps, which happened to coincide with Putin's troop movement into Syria, which also claims to be a move against ISIS.

Our (former) allies, Egypt, Israel, and Saudi Arabia, having been backstabbed by Obama, are not saying a word against the Russian move into Syria. They may not trust Putin, but they can make deals with him. They know what he wants. Saudi Arabia can offer oil and price coordination with Russia, and help to control the Chechen rebels. Israel can utilize its new shale discoveries in the Eastern Med, and is a valuable source of badly needed technology; Egypt is in desperate straits in fighting ISIS and the Ikhwan, and can use direct military help in the Sinai Desert. Even Jordan has been directly threatened by the Iranians.

One big name is missing in all this: America.

Obama has sucked the air out of our alliances and Putin is filling the vacuum. Our own government is essentially shafting us, too, by blocking domestic oil production, for one example.

The environmental movement has always helped the Arab oil producers by creating a phony psychology of oil scarcity, putting the Saudis in control of the world price of oil.

As long as Obama is in power, things are likely to get worse for America.

By sacrificing sixty years of Pax Americana the Left has taking a wild, historic gamble. The Left hates the American ideal, and expects to benefit from Obama's dictatorial shenanigans.

It's a paradox that Vladimir Putin, who saw the Soviet model crumble, is now allied with the last powerful church in the world to become the rising new hegemon.

America got infiltrated and suckered. The new powers won’t be nice guys.