It's not just Obama who looks weak. The United States looks weak because our president keeps "warning" people about doing or not doing something and then showing absolutely no follow through. Remember the "red line" in Syria that Putin exploited?

There are a couple of points raised in the link I posted that I'll quote so you don't need to click any links.

Meanwhile, politically, the US ends up looking weaker and weaker, and getting less and less respect internationally. The US-Russia confrontation is taking place under the critical gaze of the leaders of Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran, Syria, Turkey and Hizballah in Lebanon.

They are seeing the following:

President Obama is now seen backing off a commitment to US allies for the second time in eight months. They remember his U-turn last August on US military intervention for the removal of Syrian President Bashar Assad for using chemical weapons. They also see Washington shying off from Russia's clear and present use of military force and therefore concluding that Washington is not a reliable partner for safeguarding their national security.

The Middle East governments and groups which opted to cooperate recently with Vladimir Putin – Damascus, Tehran, Hizballah and Egypt – are ending up on the strong side of the regional equation. Others such as Turkey and Qatar are squirming.

American weakness on the global front has strengthened the Iranian-Syrian bloc and its ties with Hizballah. Assad is going nowhere.

Putin standing behind Iran is a serious obstacle to a negotiated and acceptable comprehensive agreement with Iran, just as the international EU- and US-led bid for a political resolution of the Syrian conflict foundered last month, and now is unlikely to ever be revisited.
To add to this perceived weakness, the Kremlin has said that if the US sanctions Russia over The Ukraine, Russia will drop the USD as their reserve currency and refuse to payback any US banks that have made loans to Russia.

Have you ever sat and wondered what the shock that collapses the US system might be? I wonder how cozy Russia and China are right now.....