In deal­ing with the Russ­ian incur­sion into Ukraine, Pres­i­dent Oba­ma will hear no bet­ter advice than this: lis­ten to Angela Merkel.

A week ago, it appeared that Ukraine would prove an embar­rass­ment for Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin. Demon­stra­tors in Kiev demand­ed the res­ig­na­tion of the country’s Russ­ian-backed Pres­i­dent, Vik­tor Yanukovych, reject­ing a ten­ta­tive set­tle­ment with protest lead­ers that would have allowed him to retain pow­er tem­porar­i­ly. Yanukovych fled to Rus­sia and a tran­si­tion gov­ern­ment was formed in Kiev, which prompt­ly charged him with mass murder.

Putin was momen­tar­i­ly pow­er­less. The Sochi Olympics were still on and any imme­di­ate Russ­ian inter­ven­tion was out of the ques­tion. The deeply divid­ed coun­try appeared des­tined to be gov­erned by an anti-Russ­ian coali­tion heav­i­ly influ­enced by the Euro­pean Union, a humil­i­at­ing defeat for Putin.

And then the Olympics end­ed. Putin didn’t move imme­di­ate­ly. He wait­ed a few days to strike, until IMF Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Lagarde arrived in Wash­ing­ton to meet with US Sec­re­tary of State John Ker­ry to dis­cuss the costs of bail­ing out the fledg­ling Ukraine government.

Putin’s move was char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly sur­gi­cal and cun­ning. Troops wear­ing no insignia seized the Crimean Par­lia­ment build­ing, air­ports and oth­er crit­i­cal facil­i­ties, estab­lish­ing con­trol over Ukraine’s south­ern­most region. Ukraine was effec­tive­ly partitioned.

Putin did­n’t claim respon­si­bil­i­ty for the action, dis­miss­ing it as an “inter­nal mat­ter,” while express­ing oppo­si­tion to any “esca­la­tion of vio­lence,” a warn­ing to the gov­ern­ment in Kiev and its West­ern allies not to retal­i­ate. Whether he is con­tent to estab­lish hege­mo­ny in Crimea or intends to broad­en con­trol through­out the pro-Russ­ian east­ern Ukraine or beyond is at this moment unclear. The unan­i­mous vote by the Russ­ian Par­lia­ment to approve Putin’s request for per­mis­sion to deploy Russ­ian troops through­out Ukraine is not promising.

Still, there are very good rea­sons why he might choose to lim­it his ambi­tions. The Crimean city of Sev­astopol is home to the Russ­ian fleet, a crit­i­cal warm water port that serves both its mil­i­tary and com­mer­cial inter­ests. It is now firm­ly in his grasp.

Crimea’s ports are a valu­able asset in a nation on the verge of insol­ven­cy. Ukraine’s cur­ren­cy (the hrvy­nia) is plum­met­ing, its banks are bleed­ing cap­i­tal and investors won’t buy its debt. The gov­ern­ment believes that it needs $35 bil­lion in aid and loans over the next two years, some of it to pay out­stand­ing debts and salaries. An aid pack­age of that size seems unlikely.

But even if the IMF, with US back­ing, were to come up with that sum, Ukraine’s econ­o­my remains depen­dent on Moscow. Rus­sia is its largest trad­ing part­ner. The country’s biggest import is Russ­ian nat­ur­al gas. Most of its exports go to Rus­sia and oth­er for­mer Sovi­et nations.  Even huge amounts of West­ern aid couldn’t save Ukraine if Rus­sia were to impose tar­iffs on its goods or threat­en its gas supply.

Ukraine, in short, is hard­ly worth fight­ing over. Which means that the West will like­ly meet Putin around a nego­ti­at­ing table, not on a bat­tle­field. It is essen­tial that it be rep­re­sent­ed by an adult, some­one who under­stands Putin and knows how to extract the best deal pos­si­ble. Pres­i­dent Oba­ma, after achiev­ing noth­ing in a 90-minute tele­phone con­ver­sa­tion with the Russ­ian leader on Sat­ur­day night, proved once again that he is not that per­son. Angela Merkel is.

The Ger­man Chan­cel­lor is both thor­ough­ly Euro­pean and, hav­ing grown up in com­mu­nist East Ger­many, famil­iar with the ways of Russ­ian bul­lies. She pre­sides over a remark­ably sta­ble gov­ern­ment and has man­aged, at least for now, to pre­serve the euro. Her dex­trous han­dling of the break­down of the Greek, Ital­ian, Span­ish, Cypri­ot and Por­tuguese economies – she essen­tial­ly allowed the Euro­pean Cen­tral Bank to extend Germany’s good cred­it to their banks and gov­ern­ments with­out los­ing the sup­port of the Ger­man peo­ple – is pre­cise­ly the sort of leg­erde­main Ukraine needs to weath­er its eco­nom­ic crisis.

She con­trasts nice­ly with Pres­i­dent Oba­ma, whose ver­bal bel­li­cos­i­ty has con­sis­tent­ly proven inef­fec­tu­al and with­out cred­i­bil­i­ty. His hasty dec­la­ra­tion Fri­day evening that there will be “costs for any mil­i­tary inter­ven­tion in Ukraine” was no doubt greet­ed with chuck­les at the Krem­lin, which already had seized Crimea. What sorts of “costs” does he mean to make the Rus­sians pay?

The President’s deci­sion to send his blus­ter­ing Sec­re­tary of State to Ukraine to meet with Euro­pean for­eign min­is­ters is unfor­tu­nate. Kerry’s com­ments so far have been unhelp­ful. On Sun­day, he declared, “The peo­ple of Ukraine will not sit still for this. They know how to fight.”

The dan­ger is that the Kiev gov­ern­ment will take these remarks at face val­ue.  They amount to offi­cial US encour­age­ment to engage the Rus­sians mil­i­tar­i­ly, with the assump­tion that if they do, the US will have their backs. We won’t.  Ask the pro-West­ern Syr­i­an rebels (if there are any left), who mis­tak­en­ly believed that Pres­i­dent Oba­ma would fol­low through on his threat to engage in mis­sile strikes against Assad. If the Ukraini­ans choose war with Rus­sia, they will have to go it alone.

Instead of talk­ing up war, Merkel is pur­su­ing peace. Unlike Pres­i­dent Oba­ma, she had a pro­duc­tive con­ver­sa­tion with Putin, although the two sides dif­fer over whether Rus­sia actu­al­ly agreed to autho­riz­ing an inter­na­tion­al fact-find­ing mis­sion in Ukraine or mere­ly to “con­tin­ue con­sul­ta­tions … in order to pro­mote the nor­mal­iza­tion of the socio-polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion in Ukraine.”  It is, in any event, the only promis­ing sign in an increas­ing­ly omi­nous set of circumstances.

Putin wants to dri­ve a wedge between the skill­ful Merkel and our far less skill­ful Pres­i­dent, as he man­aged to do last month when he released a sur­rep­ti­tious­ly record­ed con­ver­sa­tion in which our Ambas­sador to the EU said to our Ambas­sador to Ukraine, “F*ck the EU.”

Our bungling envoys imag­ined at the time that they could resolve ris­ing ten­sions in Ukraine with­out defer­ring to Euro­pean lead­ers. We see how that worked out. This time, the Pres­i­dent should fol­low the EU’s lead and, in par­tic­u­lar, that of Merkel, who will be the key fig­ure behind the nego­ti­a­tions. He should do as she tells him and say what she tells him to say. He should not devi­ate from her script.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the Pres­i­dent seems, for the moment at least, to be bent on mak­ing his own way, begin­ning as he typ­i­cal­ly does (think Syr­ia) with bold pro­nounce­ments and emp­ty threats. These will soon enough give way to backpedal­ing and equiv­o­ca­tion, once Putin makes clear that he has no inten­tion of back­ing down.

Nego­ti­at­ing with Putin is no job for ama­teurs. He is a thug, and a very capa­ble one. Pres­i­dent Oba­ma is no match for him. Putin last Sep­tem­ber embar­rassed the Pres­i­dent with a con­de­scend­ing New York Times op-ed that lec­tured him for threat­en­ing to inter­vene in Syr­ia with­out inter­na­tion­al back­ing.  Ulti­mate­ly, the Pres­i­dent capit­u­lat­ed to Putin, legit­imiz­ing Assad’s rule by call­ing for chem­i­cal weapons inspec­tions.  The Pres­i­den­t’s actions divid­ed the Syr­i­an oppo­si­tion between mod­er­ates and jihadists and assured that Putin’s man in Syr­ia would remain in pow­er over Washington’s futile objections.

The result of Pres­i­dent Obama’s for­eign pol­i­cy – and per­haps its unspo­ken aim – has been to reduce Amer­i­can influ­ence wher­ev­er it once held sway. Our ad hoc with­drawals have not brought peace, but con­flict and insta­bil­i­ty. It appears that Amer­i­ca was not the root cause of hatred and hos­til­i­ty after all. Iran’s ascen­dance as the pre­dom­i­nant pow­er in the Mid­dle East has pro­duced tyran­ny and atroc­i­ty in Syr­ia, repres­sion and may­hem in Iraq, and will in time pro­voke unpleas­ant respons­es from Israel and the Saud­is. They will do what they must to survive.

The world today is on the whole more dan­ger­ous and volatile than the one Pres­i­dent Oba­ma found when he took office, as Putin, Kim Jong-un, Ali Khamei­ni, Xi Jin­ping, the Egypt­ian gen­er­als, and oth­ers con­tem­plate a world that pos­es few­er obsta­cles to their ambi­tions and dark designs.

The Pres­i­dent seems a bit flum­moxed by it all, unsure why his pat­tern of lead­ing with bel­li­cose rhetoric and grad­u­al­ly retreat­ing to acqui­es­cence nev­er seems to work.  He yet remains serene­ly con­fi­dent that the tur­moil will resolve into a new sta­bil­i­ty, a pax post-Amer­i­cana. In the mean­time, our descent into irrel­e­van­cy has brought the world’s worst ele­ments into ascen­dan­cy. Per­haps Putin, his ter­ri­to­r­i­al appetites sat­ed, will one day mel­low into a benign force. So too the aya­tol­lahs, the Tal­iban and Kim. But that can­not be left to chance. Some­one must lead.

The President’s peo­ple have char­ac­ter­ized his for­eign pol­i­cy as “lead­ing from behind,” anoth­er way of say­ing that he fol­lows. To this point, he has cho­sen to fol­low the wrong peo­ple, Putin and Egypt­ian mil­i­tary lead­ers among them. As he dimin­ish­es US influ­ence in the world, he has an oblig­a­tion to assure that those will­ing to con­front new chal­lenges are com­pe­tent peo­ple whose aims are peaceful.

In the Ukraine cri­sis, he can do no bet­ter than to fol­low Angela Merkel.