Our first post-American president does not have the inner toughness or world vision to confront our enemies abroad. He is still after all merely a community organizer who is now operating on a larger more important stage. His actions in the lat 12 months have confirmed my worst fears about him, his naiveté, his ideological dogma, and his almost complete lack of knowledge about World history (particularly 20th century diplomacy and military strategy). Sooner rather then later some nation (North Korea, Iran, China, Russia, Pakistan – is going to spit in his eye and most likely he will say that it is raining. I cannot imagine how disastrous the West would have found itself if Obama were president during the Cold War years and had to confront someone such as Leonid Brezhnev. John Bolton rightly points out that Obama is not interested in world problems that preceded his presidency (he feels that he “inherited them” and that is not fair!). On another note, the fact that George W. Bush did not fight the way he should have in order to have Bolton confirmed as U.N. ambassador was a disgrace.
by John Bolton
Where is Barack Obama’s foreign policy headed? In answering, one must accept a measure of humility. Predicting American policy makes more fools than sages. That goes double for foreign policy, as analysts must anticipate not only the actions of the United States but of foreign provocateurs as well.
In the case of Barack Obama, there is an additional caveat: the high-profile concerns that have monopolized his efforts abroad are seen by the president himself as little more than Bush-era loose ends, not the defining transactions of his own foreign policy. All new presidents encounter irritating constraints on their aspirations, but Obama is more irritated than most at having to endure any sense of continuity with his predecessor. His criticism of Bush continues unabated even as he fares no better in the same stubborn terrain.
Obama is not looking to build his foreign-policy legacy on top of disputes that predate his arrival. He is working to move past these, toward the day when he can implement his own foreign policy and national-security agendas. Accordingly, the best way to predict Obama’s foreign policy in the next three years lies not in examining how he deals with the accumulated baggage of Iraq, Afghanistan, Middle East peace, and the Iranian and North Korean nuclear programs. Important as those are, they constitute what Obama has had to confront. We should ask instead what he will attempt to establish once he has become less encumbered by the inherited issues. Here, the record shows three critical characteristics.
First, Obama has no particular interest in foreign and national-security policy. That is not what he has spent his professional and political career, such as it is, doing, and it is not where his passions lie. There can be no question that the challenges of remaking America’s health-care, financial, and energy-production systems claim the bulk of Obama’s attention.
Second, Obama does not see the rest of the world as dangerous or threatening to America. He has made it clear by his actions as president that he does not want to engage in a “global war against terrorism.” The rising power of other nations, creeds, and ideologies, however unsavory, pose no grievous challenge to which the United States must rise. We are not at a Dean Acheson–style, post–World War II “present at the creation” moment. Therefore, Obama reasons, why behave in reactive, outmoded ways when there are many more interesting and pressing domestic projects to nurture?
Obama’s America need only be restrained, patient, and deferential.
