The Gift of Obama’s Foreign Policy

[JohnSmith2007 353]

The Gift of Obama’s Foreign Policy

As the antithesis of Bush is learning, foreign dictators are likely to bite the hand that strokes them.

October 6, 2010 4:00 A.M.

The Obama reset foreign policy has, in an unintended way, brought clarity to America’s traditional role in the world. After 2004, “blame Bush” proved an easy way for Europeans and American liberals to delude themselves into thinking the world’s problems neither predated nor transcended George W. Bush: Tensions arose, America was at fault, Bush was the culprit, presto! Remove Bush, elect his antithesis, and a natural state of calm would return.

But suddenly Barack Obama’s brief tenure has reminded us that, in fact, almost all the world’s crises arose before the Bush presidency and continued during and after it. Examine current American foreign policy toward every region, and one of three general patterns emerges: Either things are no better since the end of 2008, or they are much worse, or the Obama administration has reverted to the Bush way of doing things — despite constant assurances to the world that Bush was at fault, American foreign policy was now reset, and global animosity arose out of past misunderstanding, insensitivity, and American hubris.

Take first our most vocal and overt enemies. Fidel Castro, after a few mixed messages, is still recycling his 1960s anti-American boilerplate. Syria’s Bashar al-Assad is cementing relations with Iran and Hezbollah, and doing nothing to help matters either in Iraq or in the Mideast generally, despite being assured by Obama that he can do business with someone who is not “smoke ’em out” George Bush.

North Korea’s unhinged rhetoric and occasional missile or torpedo shots escalate. Hugo Chávez is becoming more authoritarian and more anti-American the more he need no longer call Bush a devil. Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told the world at the United Nations that the United States might well have planned to kill the 3,000 of its own citizens who died on Sept. 11, 2001; apparently the tired American apologies for the removal of Mossadeq nearly sixty years ago still do not register.

Note that in each of these instances, appeasement — failing to support the Iranian freedom protestors, ignoring the abuses of the Cuban and Syrian totalitarian regimes, and keeping silent about the destruction of democracy in Venezuela — has resulted in even more animus, just as appeasement of the unhinged and dictatorial always does. One might almost conclude that dictatorships hate American freedom, the global stature and power of the United States, and our propensity to oppose aggrandizement, and that they do not much care who happens in any given year to be in the White House.

Then there are the big four. China is more confident today in confronting the Japanese and its other neighbors in the Pacific. It sees no obstacle to being the new ascendant power, flexing its growing muscles as Japan did in the 1920s, and imperial Germany at the turn of the 20th century (and we know how all that ended up). Turkey wishes to become the new Ottoman Empire, and it sees the United States as largely indifferent to its ambitions, and perhaps even quietly sympathetic. Relations with India are no better than they were under Bush, and perhaps less friendly. Russia, in contrast, seems to be quite fond of the Obama administration — to the degree it is given concessions in return for empty promises. It weighs the downside of having a nuclear Islamic Iran in its neighborhood against the upside of having such a rogue state, which, at least in the short term, is more a problem for America than for Russia. Chaos in the Middle East, Putin knows well, is always good for the oil business.

Pressuring Israel did not bring any Middle Eastern breakthrough. To the extent that there has not been another intifada, it is largely a result of a mini economic boom on the West Bank, which continues despite, rather than because of, American negotiating.

Are our other allies — like Japan, South Korea, and Europe — suddenly much more friendly owing to Obama’s hope-and-change proclamations? Not really. All, for the first time in 60 years, have some suspicion that just maybe the sort of liberal American administration that they have so longed for might not be as ready as past administrations to come to their aid in the next crisis. Certainly, we have spent far more effort in winning over Putin than emphasizing our old alliances with Germany, France, and Britain. Japan and South Korea are starting to sense that their respective Communist rivals, China and North Korea, will soon become more their own problems than ours.

The situations in Iraq and Afghanistan are now simply evolutions of the policies that George Bush had established when he left office. The “bad” war in Iraq that Obama campaigned against has become a better war than the “good” one in Afghanistan that he had hoped was over by virtue of NATO and U.N. approval.

Despite Obama’s interview with Al Arabiya, his Cairo speech, and his editorializing about the Ground Zero mosque, there has been no letup in radical Islamists’ efforts to kill us at home, as we saw in the cases of Major Hasan, Abdulmutallab, and the would-be Times Square bomber. What good Obama has achieved by resonating more effectively with the Middle East’s tired and poor is offset perhaps by the impression, fair or not, among would-be terrorists that he would not quite be as unpredictable and dangerous as past presidents, should there be another 9/11-like attack. As far as Muslim sensitivities go, serially promising to close Guantanamo Bay seems no better than quietly keeping it open.

Why, then, is the Obama reset policy a positive development?

Obama’s efforts, and the global reactions to them, are reminding the world that global tensions still arise out of perceptions of self-interest, regardless of who is in the White House.

When nations act contrary to American interests, they can be finessed somewhat by empathetic American officials, but they remain largely unaffected by apologies, bowing, promulgations of pseudo-history, and therapeutic mythologizing. Leaders like Putin, Assad, and Ahmadinejad act in their own perceived self-interests, calibrating to what degree a constant desire to maximize influence, stature, and wealth at someone else’s expense is balanced by the risk of any confrontations that might ensue and the possibility that they might lose — all such calculations being more likely when the players are, like these three, autocratic in nature.

In the end, Obama’s Carteresque sermonizing over the past two years has achieved the opposite of its intended result. The preaching, confessionals, and outreach, from the ridiculous bowing to Saudi princes to the supposedly sublime Cairo mythmaking, have reminded the world that anti-Americanism transcends alike the unfair caricatures of George Bush and the hokey apotheosis of Barack Obama. If we can avoid the wages of this naïveté — and not suffer another annus horribilis in the fashion of 1979 — then Obama’s inadvertent primer on unchanging human nature will have been worth it.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/248883/gift-obama%E2%80%99s-foreign-policy-victor-davis-hanson

[Rye Rye 3]

This was all you needed to write "Obama’s efforts, and the global reactions to them, are reminding the world that global tensions still arise out of perceptions of self-interest, regardless of who is in the White House." That's it, instead you go off on a premise no one thought to begin with in that all the worlds problems was because of Bush. That obviously wasn't the case, the problem with Bush was that he was a complete idiot led by evil people like Karl Rove and ####### Cheney. The fear being that these guys lead the most powerful country in the world and they knew how to manipulate the masses to do whatever they wished. The main problem other countries have with america are the policies we have in place that restrict other countries and try to prohibit others from challenging our power.

[luckytxn 2,264]

Wow. Obama the Socialist is even more pathetic than I thought.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

And yet nowhere does the author detail exactly what foreign policies are at fault, or what exactly the administration should be doing.

All this article does is make a few non specific generalisations and then claim failure of foreign policy without actually discussing foreign policy.

Perhaps obamas foreign policies have made things demonstrable worse, but this article doesn't deliver the goods. Applauding it is therefore nothing more than an exercise in partisan ####### stroking.

[JohnSmith2007 353]

And yet nowhere does the author detail exactly what foreign policies are at fault, or what exactly the administration should be doing.

All this article does is make a few non specific generalisations and then claim failure of foreign policy without actually discussing foreign policy.

Perhaps obamas foreign policies have made things demonstrable worse, but this article doesn't deliver the goods. Applauding it is therefore nothing more than an exercise in partisan ####### stroking.

I don't think it was trying to address what the specific foreign policies were at fault. It was showing that the rest of the world at one time "Blamed Bush" for most of the reasons why we were hated. It was recalling the polls in europe and asia showing how low Bush's approval was and how high Obama's was. Now that Obama has had 2 years to shape foreign policy he is making the case that things are the same or worse. The point is that it wasn't Bush's fault but policies that have been in place for decades. It isn't so much of a bashing of Obama but of a sort of vindication of Bush. The title in Realclearpolitics.com where I ran across this story was "Is the world missing Bush yet?". This was of course over the top and I didn't use it. I don't miss Bush and I doubt if the world does as well.

Edited October 6, 2010 by JohnSmith2007

[alienlovechild 75]

And yet nowhere does the author detail exactly what foreign policies are at fault, or what exactly the administration should be doing.

All this article does is make a few non specific generalisations and then claim failure of foreign policy without actually discussing foreign policy.

Perhaps obamas foreign policies have made things demonstrable worse, but this article doesn't deliver the goods. Applauding it is therefore nothing more than an exercise in partisan ####### stroking.

If you couldn't find any specifics on Obama's foreign policy in the article, I condensed it for you. It names names but it doesn't provide solutions. The point of the article is to show that most of America's problems abroad had little to do with animosity for Bush but that nations have their own agendas. Not quite earthshaking except to Obama supporters who thought they'd clean up their act for Obama. For example, still remember how many VJ posters actually thought Obama's Cairo speech was going make some positive impact of some sort.

"North Korea’s unhinged rhetoric and occasional missile or torpedo shots escalate. Hugo Chávez is becoming more authoritarian and more anti-American the more he need no longer call Bush a devil. Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told the world at the United Nations that the United States might well have planned to kill the 3,000 of its own citizens who died on Sept. 11, 2001; apparently the tired American apologies for the removal of Mossadeq nearly sixty years ago still do not register.

Note that in each of these instances, appeasement — failing to support the Iranian freedom protestors, ignoring the abuses of the Cuban and Syrian totalitarian regimes, and keeping silent about the destruction of democracy in Venezuela — has resulted in even more animus, just as appeasement of the unhinged and dictatorial always does.

Then there are the big four. China is more confident today in confronting the Japanese and its other neighbors in the Pacific. It sees no obstacle to being the new ascendant power, flexing its growing muscles as Japan did in the 1920s, and imperial Germany at the turn of the 20th century (and we know how all that ended up). Turkey wishes to become the new Ottoman Empire, and it sees the United States as largely indifferent to its ambitions, and perhaps even quietly sympathetic.

Despite Obama’s interview with Al Arabiya, his Cairo speech, and his editorializing about the Ground Zero mosque, there has been no letup in radical Islamists’ efforts to kill us at home, as we saw in the cases of Major Hasan, Abdulmutallab, and the would-be Times Square bomber. As far as Muslim sensitivities go, serially promising to close Guantanamo Bay seems no better than quietly keeping it open.

Obama’s efforts, and the global reactions to them, are reminding the world that global tensions still arise out of perceptions of self-interest, regardless of who is in the White House."

You can go back to stroking your naughty bits.

[alienlovechild 75]

I don't think it was trying to address what the specific foreign policies were at fault. It was showing that the rest of the world at one time "Blamed Bush" for most of the reasons why we were hated. It was recalling the polls in europe and asia showing how low Bush's approval was and how high Obama's was. Now that Obama has had 2 years to shape foreign policy he is making the case that things are the same or worse. The point is that it wasn't Bush's fault but policies that have been in place for decades. It isn't so much of a bashing of Obama but of a sort of vindication of Bush.

Obama still gets ridiculously high marks in Europe which goes a long way to proving they have no idea what was happening in America under Bush or now under Obama.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

If you couldn't find any specifics on Obama's foreign policy in the article, I condensed it for you. It names names but it doesn't provide solutions. The point of the article is to show that most of America's problems abroad had little to do with animosity for Bush but that nations have their own agendas. Not quite earthshaking except to Obama supporters who thought they'd clean up their act for Obama. For example, still remember how many VJ posters actually thought Obama's Cairo speech was going make some positive impact of some sort.

"North Korea’s unhinged rhetoric and occasional missile or torpedo shots escalate. Hugo Chávez is becoming more authoritarian and more anti-American the more he need no longer call Bush a devil. Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told the world at the United Nations that the United States might well have planned to kill the 3,000 of its own citizens who died on Sept. 11, 2001; apparently the tired American apologies for the removal of Mossadeq nearly sixty years ago still do not register.

Note that in each of these instances, appeasement — failing to support the Iranian freedom protestors, ignoring the abuses of the Cuban and Syrian totalitarian regimes, and keeping silent about the destruction of democracy in Venezuela — has resulted in even more animus, just as appeasement of the unhinged and dictatorial always does.

Then there are the big four. China is more confident today in confronting the Japanese and its other neighbors in the Pacific. It sees no obstacle to being the new ascendant power, flexing its growing muscles as Japan did in the 1920s, and imperial Germany at the turn of the 20th century (and we know how all that ended up). Turkey wishes to become the new Ottoman Empire, and it sees the United States as largely indifferent to its ambitions, and perhaps even quietly sympathetic.

Despite Obama’s interview with Al Arabiya, his Cairo speech, and his editorializing about the Ground Zero mosque, there has been no letup in radical Islamists’ efforts to kill us at home, as we saw in the cases of Major Hasan, Abdulmutallab, and the would-be Times Square bomber. As far as Muslim sensitivities go, serially promising to close Guantanamo Bay seems no better than quietly keeping it open.

Obama’s efforts, and the global reactions to them, are reminding the world that global tensions still arise out of perceptions of self-interest, regardless of who is in the White House."

You can go back to stroking your naughty bits.

Dave, you might believe that Obama's foreign policy is an unmitigated failure - that's fine. But this article doesn't make a very convincing argument to support it's central premise.

I don't know many people who expected Obama to somehow magically fix the world's problems. Curiously enough, there are quite a few people who are realistic about these things and have very little time for tepid idealism when it comes to supporting the election of politician X or trying to defend/besmirch their record.

Find tangible specifics that relate to actual policies (not silly tut-tutting headlines about the President bowing to foreign leaders) - then there can be a discussion.

I don't see why you need to defend the author of a poorly written article.

[Eli the Barrowboy 16]

[iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told the world at the United Nations that the United States might well have planned to kill the 3,000 of its own citizens who died on Sept. 11, 2001

For Christ's sake you can watch 1,234 documentaries by American filmmakers saying the exact same thing ... also made by nut jobs like Ahmadinejad.

Obama's fault too?

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

I don't think it was trying to address what the specific foreign policies were at fault. It was showing that the rest of the world at one time "Blamed Bush" for most of the reasons why we were hated. It was recalling the polls in europe and asia showing how low Bush's approval was and how high Obama's was. Now that Obama has had 2 years to shape foreign policy he is making the case that things are the same or worse. The point is that it wasn't Bush's fault but policies that have been in place for decades. It isn't so much of a bashing of Obama but of a sort of vindication of Bush. The title in Realclearpolitics.com where I ran across this story was "Is the world missing Bush yet?". This was of course over the top and I didn't use it. I don't miss Bush and I doubt if the world does as well.

To be honest with you, I find it rather sad that legitimate criticism of the last administration can be glossed over by making out that somehow everyone wanted to blame Bush for everything.

That's an infantile argument - this article is equally infantile.

[Eli the Barrowboy 16]

Applauding it is therefore nothing more than an exercise in partisan ####### stroking.

Come on Ron, we both know they got to the first triple syllable word and glazed over ...

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

You know, it's not that people in the US don't talk about serious things in a serious way, it's that the media always seems to lower itself to the lowest common denominator - so that even the guy who says "Obama is a bad President because he is a poopyhead" doesn't feel somehow that he is being excluded.

[alienlovechild 75]

Dave, you might believe that Obama's foreign policy is an unmitigated failure - that's fine. But this article doesn't make a very convincing argument to support it's central premise.

I don't know many people who expected Obama to somehow magically fix the world's problems. Curiously enough, there are quite a few people who are realistic about these things and have very little time for tepid idealism when it comes to supporting the election of politician X or trying to defend/besmirch their record.

Find tangible specifics that relate to actual policies (not silly tut-tutting headlines about the President bowing to foreign leaders) - then there can be a discussion.

The central premise of the article wasn't that Obama's foreign policy is an unmitigated failure.

"Obama’s efforts, and the global reactions to them, are reminding the world that global tensions still arise out of perceptions of self-interest, regardless of who is in the White House."

The realpolitik people you are referring to still haven't learned their lesson judging by the rave reviews Obama still gets abroad in polls. I noticed you didn't offer any counter-examples of Obama's foreign policy success so you're not that impressed with him.

I didn't highlight bowing to foreign leaders but it is obvious the powers of the bully pulpit done have nothing to "unclench fists" as the president put it.

[Heracles 417]

This was all you needed to write "Obama’s efforts, and the global reactions to them, are reminding the world that global tensions still arise out of perceptions of self-interest, regardless of who is in the White House." That's it, instead you go off on a premise no one thought to begin with in that all the worlds problems was because of Bush. That obviously wasn't the case, the problem with Bush was that he was a complete idiot led by evil people like Karl Rove and ####### Cheney. The fear being that these guys lead the most powerful country in the world and they knew how to manipulate the masses to do whatever they wished. The main problem other countries have with america are the policies we have in place that restrict other countries and try to prohibit others from challenging our power.

The truth also is not everyone wants US style democracy, so why waste time and resources trying to ram it down other people's throats? After all, the last people to accept differing ways of doing things are Americans.

The US has it's own fiscal and social problems and needs to stop playing world police. It has brought it nothing but hatred over the last few decades.

[Nagishkaw 510]

Edited October 7, 2010 by Nagishkaw