Barack Obama has a problem. In his quest to fundamentally change America, the rest of the world has not stopped turning and peoples around the globe have been on a life or death quest for freedom from oppressive regimes. This would be good news for any American president who really embraced the notion of democratic freedom and wanted to help shape world opinion in it’s favor, but alas, therein lies the rub. Obama has been doing his level best to quash basic fundamental freedoms in his own nation. So this talk of democratic freedoms in other nations holds little interest to him. Take your pick, Egypt, Syria, North Korea, and most heartbreakingly, Iran. The Iranian Green Revolution was Obama’s first major foreign policy test and he failed miserably.

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These other world issues seemingly aren’t even on Obama’s radar. It’s rather difficult to compartmentalize the notion of democratic freedoms abroad when in his own heart of hearts our president has little time for them at home. This is what change looks like on both the domestic and the international front during an Obama presidency. Obama’s own strident leftist ideology handcuffs him on the realities, or concerns, of foreign affairs. What drives this president is his own long-seething resentment of the history and traditions of the United States. This is the genesis of Obama’s 2008 campaign slogan Hope and Change. His message to people around the world seeking basic human rights and political reform seems to be “Good luck with that, I’ve got my own problems here.” The danger of this nonchalance and ineptitude is obvious to anyone that is not blinded by the ideology of far left Utopianism. It comes as no shock that tyrants and oppressive regimes across the globe have taken notice of this amateurism and shown no fear of repercussions from an American president so thoroughly out of the loop.

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Now we see the latest people’s uprisings in Venezuela and Ukraine. In Venezuela the people, in a nation that should be celebrating an economic boom given the oil wealth that their nation enjoys, are instead lashing out at the reality of years of Socialism cum Marxism, and  demanding the resignation of Hugo Chavez’ hand pick successor President Nicolas Maduro. Obama’s position on this uprising? Got me? It certainly hasn’t been one of solidarity with the Venezuelan people. Not of any solidarity that actually matters anyway.  Jay Carney strongly denounced the strong handed approach of Muduro’s thugs and paramilitary police from the podium during a White House presser. That’ll teach ‘em!

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The situation in Ukraine is every bit as dangerous, and perhaps more so, than the pro democracy uprising in our own hemisphere. The Russian Bear is awakening from his hibernation in the form of Vladimir Putin. Putin desperately wants to reconstitute the old Soviet Bloc nations. The Ukraine is fundamental in that quest. While the disparate opposition forces have forced the sacking of president Viktor Yanukovych and taken over the capital city of Kiev, it’s anyone’s guess as to how this struggle for democracy will end. It’s a certainty that Putin has no reason to fear an American president who handed over an embarrassingly lopsided deal with the START Treaty. Not to mention the Edward Snowden debacle and the Iranian quest for nukes, in which Putin, predictably, supported the Iranian hardliners. In Obama’s defense their is little he can actually do to affect the outcome of a Ukrainian revolution. However, it’s Obama’s own fecklessness that has given any opponents of genuine democracy the green light to crack down on their citizens.

Former Soviet citizen and world renowned Chess champion Gary Kasparov took to Twitter recentl to tweet this gem, “I’ve said it before, but if Barack Obama had been president instead of Ronald Reagan, I’d still be a citizen of the Soviet Union.” Ironically enough, like it or not, the people of Ukraine may soon be citizens of a newly reconstituted Soviet Union. Anything could happen, but it’s a safe bet that Vladimir Putin nor Nicolas Maduro have any reason to fear their opponent in this global chess match.

Checkmate.