The Con­sti­tu­tion requires Pres­i­dent Oba­ma to leave office in 700 days.  If he has his way, Vladimir Putin and Ben­jamin Netanyahu will pre­cede him into pri­vate life.

It should not be sur­pris­ing that a Pres­i­dent who prides him­self on refus­ing to nego­ti­ate with elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives has so lit­tle patience with some of his fel­low nation­al lead­ers.  Or that regime change has become a lead­ing char­ac­ter­is­tic of the Pres­i­den­t’s for­eign policy. 

One out­come of that pol­i­cy was on dis­play last Sun­day when an Islam­ic State (IS) affil­i­ate in Libya released video of the group decap­i­tat­ing 21 Egypt­ian Christians.

It was a bit­ter and chill­ing reminder of the President’s first and most vio­lent for­ay into regime change – the over­throw of for­mer Libyan Pres­i­dent Muam­mar Qaddafi. The U.S. bom­bard­ment of Libya top­pled Qaddafi and pro­duced what Jon Lee Ander­son, writ­ing in the New York­er, calls “the tyran­ny of a dan­ger­ous and per­va­sive insta­bil­i­ty.”  Last Sunday’s behead­ings pow­er­ful­ly remind­ed us of the deprav­i­ty this insta­bil­i­ty has produced.

Our strat­e­gy in Libya eeri­ly par­al­lels our cur­rent cam­paign against Islam­ic State in Syr­ia and Iraq.  We con­duct­ed airstrikes from a safe dis­tance in sup­port of unsa­vory fac­tions on the ground, each exploit­ing our offen­sives to its own ends.   And as in our present war against IS, we had no plan for pick­ing up the pieces in Libya once hos­til­i­ties ceased.  Our efforts pro­duced chaos and blood­shed, for which the Admin­is­tra­tion is pre­dictably unrepentant.

“We were keen for the Libyans to take the lead,” White House Deputy Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil Advis­er Ben Rhodes told Ander­son.  “Every­one knows the dan­gers of a com­plete­ly U.S.-owned post­war envi­ron­ment.  We might have used a heav­ier hand, but there’s no guar­an­tee it would have made a difference.”

Once Qaddafi was gone, the U.S. made no dif­fer­ence at all.  A year after his fall, Libyan ter­ror­ists asso­ci­at­ed with an al Qae­da off­shoot attacked our diplo­mat­ic facil­i­ty in Beng­hazi, killing four Amer­i­cans.  By last sum­mer, we had evac­u­at­ed our diplo­mat­ic per­son­nel. Libya has become what one mil­i­tary con­trac­tor called “scum­bag Wood­stock,”  draw­ing Islam­ic extrem­ists from across the region to its grue­some fes­ti­val. It is no sur­prise that IS affil­i­ates have found their way to this twist­ed Yasgur’s farm.

Per­haps we will return to Libya one day.  As improb­a­ble as it seems, the Pres­i­dent has us back at war in Iraq, an inter­ven­tion that we under­took only once Bagh­dad had met our demand for regime change.  The Pres­i­dent con­di­tioned esca­lat­ing mil­i­tary inter­ven­tion against the IS on their dump­ing Nouri al-Mali­ki, whose Dawa par­ty fin­ished first in last April’s elec­tion.  The Iraqis oblig­ed.  The new gov­ern­ment in Bagh­dad, mean­while, is no bet­ter than the one we insist­ed be replaced.  Sec­tar­i­an divi­sions have per­sist­ed and grown more vio­lent, Shi­ite mili­tias con­tin­ue to fill in for an incom­pe­tent army, and the new gov­ern­ment of Haider al-Aba­di is no less cor­rupt than Maliki’s.

Our dab­bling in regime change isn’t always accom­pa­nied mil­i­tary inter­ven­tion.  Part of our exit strat­e­gy for Afghanistan was to install a leader we could deal with once our troops depart­ed.  The Admin­is­tra­tion went all in behind Abdul­lah Abdul­lah, whom they regard­ed as a sure thing to win last year’s elec­tions.  But the redun­dant­ly named can­di­date threat­ened to start a civ­il war once it became clear he’d lost.  Only exten­sive diplo­ma­cy by Sec­re­tary of State John Ker­ry man­aged to turn what might have been a dis­as­ter into a mere omi­nous turn of events.  Afghanistan’s frac­tious and unsta­ble gov­ern­ment seeks to hang on as the dead­line for U.S. troop with­draw­al nears.

Some­times the Pres­i­dent has a hard time decid­ing whether or not he wants regime change.  He called for the over­throw of Syr­i­an Pres­i­dent Bashar al-Assad in 2011 and in August 2013 threat­ened airstrikes to facil­i­tate his ouster.  But the night before Con­gress was to vote on whether to autho­rize the mil­i­tary action, the Pres­i­dent deliv­ered a nation­al address announc­ing that he’d changed his mind.  Today we are bomb­ing some of Assad’s oppo­nents while prepar­ing to train and equip rebels that we’ve “vet­ted.”  It’s not clear whether we’re try­ing to get rid of Assad or keep him in power.

But while the Pres­i­dent can’t seem to make up his mind about Assad, he has been a rock of con­sis­ten­cy on want­i­ng Ben­jamin Netanyahu shunt­ed aside.  The Pres­i­dent can bare­ly con­ceal his con­tempt for the Israeli prime min­is­ter and no longer even tries.  In 2011 he was inad­ver­tent­ly caught on a micro­phone com­plain­ing that he was “tired” of Netanyahu and of hav­ing to “deal with him every day.”

And while House Speak­er John Boehner’s [R‑OH] deci­sion to invite Netanyahu to address a joint ses­sion of Con­gress next month has been wide­ly crit­i­cized, the more telling devel­op­ment was the President’s deci­sion to snub the Israeli leader dur­ing his sched­uled vis­it to Wash­ing­ton for next month’s AIPAC con­ven­tion.  The offi­cial White House expla­na­tion – that Oba­ma doesn’t want to influ­ence the Israeli elec­tions – is an implau­si­ble eva­sion.  Oba­ma wants noth­ing more than to influ­ence the elec­tions and rid him­self of Netanyahu, though it is per­haps a mere coin­ci­dence that one of his for­mer polit­i­cal oper­a­tives is pro­vid­ing cam­paign advice to an Israeli oppo­si­tion party.

The Pres­i­dent may well get his wish on Netanyahu, who is embroiled in a scan­dal over alleged finan­cial malfea­sance.  What­ev­er the out­come, Israel is a durable democ­ra­cy com­mit­ted to the rule of law that will tol­er­ate a change of lead­ers with­out tur­moil or unrest.

The same can’t be said for the coun­try on which the Pres­i­dent inflict­ed his most dam­ag­ing for­ay into regime change: Ukraine.  A lit­tle more than a year ago, Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of State Vic­to­ria Nuland and a parade of Amer­i­can diplo­mat­ic offi­cials pub­licly backed pro­test­ers in Kiev’s Maid­an Square who were call­ing for the ouster of Ukraine’s elect­ed pres­i­dent Vik­tor Yanukovych.  Her boss John Ker­ry issued a state­ment assur­ing demon­stra­tors that “the Unit­ed States stands with the peo­ple of Ukraine.”

The Ukraini­ans would learn soon enough that the U.S. had no inten­tion of mak­ing good on Kerry’s pledge.  On Feb­ru­ary 21, Yanukovych signed an agree­ment with the Maid­an protest lead­ers allow­ing him to remain in office until elec­tions lat­er in the year.  The Rus­sians and the EU wit­nessed the agree­ment, which seemed to have brought the months-long stand­off to a peace­ful conclusion.

But instead of dis­pers­ing, the pro­tes­tors on the fol­low­ing day seized con­trol of gov­ern­ment build­ings, oust­ed Yanukovych and declared a new gov­ern­ment. The U.S. rec­og­nized the new­ly-pro­claimed regime as Ukraine’s legit­i­mate rulers.

Putin was momen­tar­i­ly unable to respond, as the Win­ter Olympic Games in Sochi were wind­ing down.   But Russ­ian offi­cials denounced the pro­test­ers’ actions as a coup.  The U.S. and EU con­tin­ue to reject this characterization.

What is remark­able about this action is that the White House either did not antic­i­pate Putin’s reac­tion to the ouster of Ukraine’s elect­ed leader or didn’t care about the con­se­quences.  It still has no plan to reverse the seizure of Crimea that occurred just a few days after the Sochi clos­ing cer­e­monies or the fight­ing that has left pro-Russ­ian rebels in con­trol of por­tions of east­ern Ukraine.

We active­ly encour­aged regime change in Ukraine with­out count­ing the cost, then stood aside as Putin sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly dis­mem­bered a Euro­pean coun­try with­out mil­i­tary con­se­quence.  And though we have no solu­tion for the mis­ery that grips Ukraine, the Pres­i­dent may well hope that he has a solu­tion to one of the sources of that mis­ery: Vladimir Putin.

Even the Pres­i­dent must know that the sanc­tions we’ve imposed on Rus­sia won’t deter Putin from his Ukrain­ian adven­tures. It is like­ly that their pur­pose is to stir dis­con­tent with Putin among the Russ­ian oli­garchy in hopes of pro­vok­ing his ouster.  Alexan­der Motyl laid out that line of think­ing in a recent edi­tion of For­eign Affairs.  Motyl argues that Putin’s days are num­bered and it is hard to escape the con­clu­sion that this is pre­cise­ly what Pres­i­dent Oba­ma intends.

But even Motyl con­cedes that sack­ing Putin would prob­a­bly not lead to a more open, demo­c­ra­t­ic or pro-West­ern Russ­ian gov­ern­ment.  Putin’s suc­ces­sor, Motyl writes, “is like­ly to be a hard­lin­er.”  For the Pres­i­dent, that would like­ly be an accept­able out­come, so long as Putin is gone.

Putin’s ouster would per­haps be the crown­ing achieve­ment of a for­eign pol­i­cy that lacks pur­pose and coher­ence, fails to iden­ti­fy ends that align with our inter­ests, and takes action with­out think­ing through the con­se­quences.  With­draw­ing abrupt­ly from Iraq, bomb­ing Libya, mis­lead­ing Ukrain­ian demon­stra­tors into believ­ing we had their backs, and attack­ing IS from the air while avoid­ing direct com­bat may scratch a polit­i­cal itch, but expe­di­ence is not a strat­e­gy.  Noth­ing is more cost­ly than inter­ven­tion on the cheap.

Much more is required of a Pres­i­dent who believes that Amer­i­ca should pro­vide lead­er­ship in an increas­ing­ly chaot­ic world.  Let’s hope that the Pres­i­dent who takes office in 700 days is up to the task.