Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin offered warm praise for U.S. President Barack Obama at a September 6 meeting in Sochi, Russia. The Russian prime minister’s favorable tone marks a significant shift in his stance toward the American leader and provides a sobering indicator of the direction of U.S. foreign policy.

Only last year, Putin harshly berated Obama for Washington’s “adversarial” policies, but now he says the U.S. president is a “deep, profound person” and that his “sincerity is not in question.”

Putin also said that he and President Obama have a “similar perspective on global problems.”

Why such fondness and warm words from the traditionally anti-West Russian leader? Why such a turn-around from a man who, in 2007, compared the administration of George W. Bush to Nazi Germany?

The answer is simple.

President Obama has capitulated to every demand Moscow has made. The Obama administration has scrapped plans for a missile defense shield in Eastern Europe, supported Russian accession to the World Trade Organization (despite Moscow’s unapologetic opposition to core wto principles), undergone a very lopsided U.S.-Russian nuclear arms reduction plan and, most recently, withheld criticism of Russia’s completion of an Iranian nuclear reactor.

Since Obama has kowtowed to all of the Kremlin’s demands, the Russian prime minister no longer perceives Washington as a threat to Russian ascendancy, which is why Putin’s tone toward Obama has warmed.

There are certain leaders that an American president should receive scorn from, and happily so.

Although Putin may be more statesmanlike than such despots as Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, North Korea’s Kim Jong-Il, and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, he is still tyrant and an enemy of the West. Putin’s ideologies are in opposition to Western principles, and praise from him is another in a long list of indications that the U.S.’s superpower days have come to an end. Flatteries like those Putin offered up to Obama will further weaken U.S. resolve, and diminish its ability to recognize threats even when they are glaringly obvious.

“Praise from enemies is suspicious,” Napoleon Bonaparte wrote. The praise Putin has lavished upon Obama is an indicator of deep-rooted flaws in U.S. foreign policy, and should prompt great suspicion. But the core problem isn’t as much with President Obama as it is with the upside-down nation that elected him.

In the January 2010 issue of the Philadelphia Trumpet, executive editor Stephen Flurry wrote:

The reality is that, while this radical administration is helping to accelerate America’s demise as a world power, the United States has been on this course for some time now—long before President Obama moved into the White House.

In the months ahead, fissures in U.S. foreign policy will continue to expand contributing to an eventual collapse of the nation. To understand the inspiring and beautiful hope of what comes after this collapse, read The Wonderful World Tomorrow—What It Will Be Like by Herbert W. Armstrong.