August 14, 2014
Obama's Foreign Policy Record: TBD
The establishment media has declared U.S. President Barack Obama a failure in foreign policy. He is worse than George W. Bush, say some journalists; he is worse than Jimmy Carter, say others. In much of this criticism there is a phenomenon operating in the background that goes unmentioned: The opinion pages of the large circulation dailies in New York and Washington are either liberal internationalist or neoconservative, meaning they all have a bias for action, for doing dramatic things to make the world a better place. Realism, which has a sturdier pedigree -- going all the way back to Thucydides' "The History of the Peloponnesian War" -- encapsulates how most people in government and business actually think, but it has relatively few followers in the major media. And realism counsels caution, because a bias for action can often lead to disaster. Because Obama has had until this recent Iraq crisis the opposite -- a bias for inaction -- the major media simply hate him.
So let's see how he is doing.
Though the defense budget has been cut rather dramatically, the United States under Obama still deploys its Navy and Air Force in the four corners of the world, protecting sea lines of communication as well as the balance of power in the major geographical theaters. This is doing something on an imperial scale. Nevertheless, passively accepting America's worldwide military armature is a far cry from trying to shape events, which a president is expected to do and which Obama is not doing. You can shape events without military intervention, but Obama is not even doing that.
More from CNAS
-
Loren DeJonge Schulman on The Smell of Victory Podcast
Podcast
On The Smell of Victory Podcast, Bob Hein and Phil Walter sat down with Loren DeJonge Schulman of the Center for a New American Security to discuss the draft. Listen to the f...
By Loren DeJonge Schulman
-
Trump Gets NATO Backwards
Commentary
Returning from the World War I armistice commemoration in Paris, President Trump reemphasized his view of America’s European allies. “We pay for large portions of other countr...
By Richard Fontaine
-
Amb. Nuland on N. Korea: The U.S. 'needs to get back into real diplomacy'
Video
Amb. Victoria Nuland, CEO of the Center for a New American Security and former Assistant Secretary of State, joins Ali Velshi to discuss reports that North Korea is moving ahe...
By Victoria Nuland
-
US midterm elections 2018: Democrats abroad in the Indo-Pacific
Commentary
A partial "blue wave" crested over the US House of Representatives this week, ushering in a Democratic majority there for the first time in eight years. With Republicans stren...
By Richard Fontaine
