Remember when Ronald the Great rescued us from our post-Vietnam funk of the defeated by invading Grenada to save the world for mediocre med students? The full force of our daunting Navy surrounding a tiny dot on the map, a country with no military worth mentioning? And we beat them, by god. And Ronnie declared we were once again "walking tall." (Ron did have a little trouble distinguishing the reality in which he found himself from various movies.)
Poor Mr Putin, smarting, no doubt, from the breakup of the Soviet Union of which he was a contributing member, and from the post-breakup descendency into relative powerlessness. So he pulls a Ronnie. Invades a country from which there'd be virtually no resistance expected, having chosen a region traditionally allied with Russia from its genes on up. Reaganesque, no? Not to mention Bushy.
This article, I'd say, gives more credence to the idea as well.
All of which is another way of saying: it had nothing to do with perceived American weakness, or lack thereof. But we knew that anyway, didn't we? If by "we" is meant people capable of stopping to think for half a second.
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