The-one-minute-guide-to-obama-foreign-policy

[SolomonVII]

http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2015/10/the-one-minute-guide-to-obama-foreign-policy

We who follow U.S. foreign policy, and especially the Middle East, sometimes get asked whether Barack Obama is a community organizing naïf way out of his depth or a brilliant ideologue who knows exactly what he is doing? Is he inept or purposeful? Does he see his foreign policy as a failure or a success? My reply:

Not one or the other but a bit of both. He is a leftist who sees the imperialism, militarism, and corporate greed of the United States as a menace to the outside world. He conceives of his role being to reach out to enemies, reduce America's cowboy ways, make it one of the pack, and render the world a safer place.

But he is also the president on whose watch we find not security but anarchy and despotism. Reduced America's influence has lead to revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, renewed civil wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, conflagrations in Libya, Yemen, and Syria, Russian military intervention, and unfathomable future troubles from a nuclear Iran.

Best one minute summary that I have seen on the subject.

 

[SolomonVII]

...certainly the Obama administration’s openness to dialogue with nations led by autocrats was a striking departure from diplomatic norms of the past; similarly, Obama’s decision to swap positions of military strength in Iraq and Afghanistan for a role bordering on irrelevance runs against established strategic doctrines. Pursuing non-confrontational relationships with Russia (the “reset”) and China as well as the opening relations with Cuba appear to demonstrate Obama’s strong personal desire to significantly alter the trajectory of American foreign policy. By all appearance, he aimed to reverse the course set by Theodore Roosevelt at the beginning of the American Century and return the nation to a more “normal” role in the world. In this way, he would secure his legacy in the foreign-policy realm. The strength of his interest in legacy is in evidence with the recent nuclear-arms deal with Iran, wherein he deemed a bad deal better than no deal at all...

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/artic...e-obamas-foreign-policy?target=topic&tid=3263

 

[classicalhero]

ONly one minute? It can be summed up like this. It's America's fault.

 

[MoonlessNight]

ONly one minute? It can be summed up like this. It's America's fault.

That's a bit unfair. I would classify it instead like this:

America abusing its status as a world power to oppress the rest of the globe is a very real threat and steps must be taken immediately to avoid this.

It is possible that other nations might pose a threat, but only hypothetically and in the future. Therefore there does not need to be any serious action taken against those threats. They are of purely secondary concern.

 

[SolomonVII]

ONly one minute? It can be summed up like this. It's America's fault.

silly argument.

 

[classicalhero]

silly argument.

Well that is what I believe the President thinks.

 

[SolomonVII]

Well that is what I believe the President thinks.

Okay.
That makes sense.
That IS Obama's guiding principle in foreign affairs.

 

[Fantine]

I imagine that most people who get their news from Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, conservative bloggers and other unreliable news sources believe the same thing....

But their beliefs, like the "news" disseminated from the above "sources," have no basis in fact.

 

[MoonlessNight]

I imagine that most people who get their news from Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, conservative bloggers and other unreliable news sources believe the same thing....

But their beliefs, like the "news" disseminated from the above "sources," have no basis in fact.

Have you ever saw someone dissent from liberal opinion without claiming that they only did so because they were brainwashed by Fox News et al? This must be at least the twentieth time that I have seen make this exact allegation. You never address anything which is said, you just repeat liberal talking points and insist that your opponents have been misled by the evil Rush Limbaugh and friends.

But I suppose that when all of your arguments amount to unquestioningly repeating the talking points from your own favorite websites, the only reason that you can imagine someone disagreeing with you is if they are reading propaganda from a different source than your propaganda.

 

[SolomonVII]

I think that the one minute guide is a fair assessment of what a leftist wants to bring into the halls of American power.
The evils of imperialism, militarism and corporate greed are things that leftists have overtly campaigned against, and have openly criticized American policy as being based on precisely these things.
I think that these are the things that Obama, who is from the left, believes in and these are the things that he has worked against in his WH years.

I think that in his Cairo speech and his 'leading from behind policy' this is what Obama has been overtly bringing about in his foreign policies.

I don't really see that analysis as being propaganda or in any way an unfair assessment of what leftist have been saying, what Obama has been saying, or of the policy that Obama has been following.
.............

The question is, is whether or not leftists and liberals and the people who are on Obama's side are happy with the results, when it comes to the ME?

For Obama, I think he was hoping for more. He was hoping for more respect from the people he was reaching out to, from Russia and Iran, for examples. Likely he was not expecting the ME to be up in flames like it has been since the failure of the Arab Spring. He was expecting those he allied himself with, the MB, to bring democracy to Egypt, and everywhere in the ME. He was expecting that if America stopped propping up dictators, the result would be Islamic democracy coming to the fore.

But for the most part, success or failure, I don't think that the American left, or American libertarians for that matter, really much care either way.

They just want out. They just want to be Canada.

 

[classicalhero]

I imagine that most people who get their news from Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, conservative bloggers and other unreliable news sources believe the same thing....

But their beliefs, like the "news" disseminated from the above "sources," have no basis in fact.

Even John Bolton said that was President Obama view.
http://www.breitbart.com/national-s...n-bolton-israeli-general-spar-israels-future/

Bolton pointed out that he believes Obama “views Israel as just as much a problem as the United States” and is attempting to “constrain” both nations in order to weaken them strategically on the world scale.

He said that has pushed America’s other allies in the region to “hedge their bets” by deepening their relations with the Russians and the Chinese.

“I’ve had Arab foreign minister say to me, we’ve watched the way the United States has treated Israel. We’ve watched how they treated the Mubarak regime in Egypt. What happens when our time of trouble comes? If that’s the way you treat your best allies, how are you going to treat us? It’s a very hard question to answer,” Bolton said.

You can see how he has reacted to world problems to see that is exactly how he feels.

 

[SolomonVII]

Even John Bolton said that was President Obama view.
http://www.breitbart.com/national-s...n-bolton-israeli-general-spar-israels-future/
You can see how he has reacted to world problems to see that is exactly how he feels.

Since the Palestinians have proven themselves to be impossible partners for peace, maybe the partners for peace for Israel will have to be Egypt and Jordan assuming more administrative control of these impossible tracts of land. I imagine they would be happy to wash their hands of those kinds of problems, but as the problem of Islamists violence and imperialism continues to grow, and America withdraws into its domestic shell, the best course for these two countries is to form some kind of alliance with Israel in order to contain the Islamist nihilists that threatens all three states.