In struggling for my own metaphor, I had thought that Barrack Obama is a Digital guy dealing with a digital universe and Putin, the Tea Party, and so on analog guys dealing with Reality as an analog creation. This is where current plans to downsize the force, cut weapons systems, avoid troops on the ground and use Special Ops for everything bumps into the base reality, the pre-analog reality. Mind over matter, you don't mind, it don't matter. In Putin world, what we can do doesn't matter.