A regular contributor to CNN.com, Ambassador-in-Residence Michael Oren writes that in both Syria and Iran, Russia has played its relatively weak strategic hand exceedingly well and is threatening to outmaneuver the United States in the Middle East. Meanwhile, the United States has paused its effots to forge an Israeli-Palestinian peace in order to generate pressure on the Kremlin for its actions in Ukraine.

Oren argues that Russian expansionism can only be checked by the “reassertion of American preeminence.”