'Putin is punching way above his weight class': Donald Rumsfeld weighs in on Ukraine

Sarah D. | 5:28 PM on March 04, 2014

The former defense secretary may have formally left the political arena, but he’s still paying attention to what the White House is doing — and the mistakes it’s making:

Putin is punching way above his weight class and the United States is punching way below ours. http://t.co/HEwT7jo5h7 #Ukraine

— Donald Rumsfeld (@RumsfeldOffice) March 4, 2014

From a recent interview with Greta Van Susteren:

At this stage, near term options are few. It seems to me the central problem is bigger and critically important. America and that is America’s weakness, specifically the U.S. is behaving in a way that tells the world we’re in decline, that we’re in withdrawal. We have created a leadership vacuum in the world, and it is filled by the Putins in the world, by people without our values or our interest.

And it’s to the detriment of the United States and our friends and allies around the world. It is the United States that’s injected that instability into the world equation.

Things have certainly changed over the past several years, and not for the better.