President Obama promised to transform America and he has kept this promise.

With the de facto capitulation of President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry over Syria, and with Russian President Putin now very much in control and humiliating the United States in the pages of the New York Times, the towering peril to the world is now the re-invigorated Russian support of Iran. Equally, the Iranian mullahs support Syria financially, militarily and with Iranian boots on the ground. And behind Iran and Syria is the ever protective Russian veto in the UN Security Council.

Then, too, there is the Russian plan to pipe oil from Iran through its Syrian client to the Eastern Mediterranean or through Turkey. The stench of Middle Eastern oil permeates much of the political maneuvering that afflicts the world. Alas, Obama and Kerry have allowed Russia to reassert itself in the Middle East, which it had not been able to accomplish since the Arab aggression against Israel during the Yom Kippur War in 1973.

Putin has followed up on his diplomatic coup against the United States by offering to provide the Iranian mullahs the S-300 missile, which will drastically alter the balance of military power in the Middle East and imperil Israeli or U.S. aircraft should an attempt be made to end Iran’s aggressive nuclear weapons program. Also, there are reports that prior to John Kerry’s meeting with Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, the Obama Administration had begun removing some of the financial and economic measures that had been in place against the Iranian regime. There is, no doubt, much rejoicing in Teheran over the Syrian debacle.

Remember, during his first tour to the Middle East – after making the astonishing claim that the US was one of the foremost Muslim countries in the world – Barack Hussein Obama bowed low to Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah and then went on to apologize to an assorted gathering of Arab sheiks, emirs, princes, dictators and tyrants for America’s past defense of freedom and liberty around the world. Obama said the US had been “arrogant, derisive and divisive” and would no longer be an exceptional nation under his watch.

Remember, too, that Obama cancelled the American missile shield in eastern Europe to the dismay of Poland and other eastern European allies which needed the shield for their protection from Russian and Iranian threats. Obama was also over heard on a hot microphone assuring Russian leader Medvedev that he would be “flexible” in missile defense negotiations once he was re-elected. Well he has been most flexible, as the Syrian fiasco has proven.

America’s traditional allies have had to re-adjust their foreign policies because they now know that Obama does not say what he means or mean what he says. Our enemies are emboldened because they already know it. The North Koreans are re-starting their nuclear reactors and Iran is speeding up its nuclear program with Russia’s help knowing full well they have nothing to fear from Obama, nor Hillary Clinton if, heaven forbid, she succeeds him.

The proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) as in the case of the estimated 1,000 tons of Sarin nerve gas, biological and other outlawed weapons in the hands of Syria’s al-Assad, or the potential transfer of such hideous armaments to the Muslim Brotherhood, Al Qaeda or Hezbollah, transforms dangerous threats into hideous and actual nightmares. It encourages Iran’s genocidal ambitions and pursuit of nuclear bombs and it poses a mortal threat not only to Israel but to Jordan, Saudi Arabia and what few oil producing Arab countries remain relatively free from Islamic and jihadist influence.

The so-called Arab Spring, which was never to be about democracy in the Islamic world, has now morphed into an increasingly anti-US, violent jihadist Islamic triumphalism. Islam, after all, means submission to the will of Allah not, as in a democracy, to the will of the people. And those in the West who endlessly call for democracy in the Arab world should read the Koran and finally be disabused from uttering such foolish and naïve statements.

President Obama, true to his ambition to “fundamentally transform America” has made the U.S. appear weak and unwilling to support its allies around the world. As a result, many erstwhile allies of the U.S. have felt alienated, used and abused by the American president and have withdrawn their support – especially Britain and NATO – over the Syrian situation.

All this could be construed as the utter incompetence of the Obama administration but I fear it may well be one more deliberate step in President Barack Obama’s promise to “fundamentally transform America” to that of a weak European style nation state like Belgium and destroy irrevocably America’s exceptionalism and power to keep the peace in what is fast becoming an increasingly perilous world.

Both Hilary Clinton and her successor, John Kerry, were firmly convinced that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was a reformer and a man of his word. Indeed Kerry flew frequently to Damascus, dined with Assad, whom he called his friend, and was sure that Bashar Assad was a true partner in peace.

But Secretary Kerry appears to possess a naïve vision of the Middle East, arguably the worst neighborhood on the face of the planet. He seems unable to grasp the grim reality of an ever more powerful explosion of radical Islamist triumphalism threatening to sweep over Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and then to inexorably threaten what the jihadists call the “Dar al-Harb – the House of War,” namely what they insultingly refer to as the infidel world of Israel, Europe, Britain, America and the entire non-Muslim Free World.

We, in the West, are in peril when even John Brennan, the CIA Director who advises President Obama on international terrorism, himself does not recognize the existence of Islamic or Jihadist terrorism. Then there is James Clapper, our Director of National Intelligence, who two years ago called Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood a “largely secular” organization. This breathtaking leap into unreality is by the same James Clapper who many believe is now utilizing the NSA to spy on Americans.

And the Obama Administration itself has ruled out the use of the word Islam in any references to terrorism against America. After all, it was the Obama Administration which insisted upon calling the massacre of unarmed American soldiers at Fort Hood by the Islamist, Major Nidal Hassan, not terrorism but an act of “workplace violence.” When a government refuses to even name its enemy, it has almost lost the war for civilization.

This piece first appeared on Renew America. He is an author, musician and expert on the Middle East.