A fantastic piece in ‘The
Atlantic’:
After nearly eight years in office, the President appears to
have gotten wiser:
“Obama generally
believes that the Washington foreign-policy establishment, which he secretly
disdains, makes a fetish of “credibility”—particularly the sort of credibility
purchased with force. The preservation of credibility, he says, led to Vietnam.
Within the White House, Obama would argue that “dropping bombs on someone to
prove that you’re willing to drop bombs on someone is just about the worst
reason to use force.”…
Though he has a
reputation for prudence, he has also been eager to question some of the
long-standing assumptions undergirding traditional U.S. foreign-policy
thinking. To a remarkable degree, he is willing to question why America’s
enemies are its enemies, or why some of its friends are its friends. He
overthrew half a century of bipartisan consensus in order to reestablish ties
with Cuba. He questioned why the U.S. should avoid sending its forces into
Pakistan to kill al-Qaeda leaders, and he privately questions why Pakistan,
which he believes is a disastrously dysfunctional country, should be considered
an ally of the U.S. at all. According to Leon Panetta, he has questioned why
the U.S. should maintain Israel’s so-called qualitative military edge, which
grants it access to more sophisticated weapons systems than America’s Arab
allies receive; but he has also questioned, often harshly, the role that
America’s Sunni Arab allies play in fomenting anti-American terrorism. He is
clearly irritated that foreign-policy orthodoxy compels him to treat Saudi
Arabia as an ally. And of course he decided early on, in the face of great
criticism, that he wanted to reach out to America’s most ardent Middle Eastern
foe, Iran. The nuclear deal he struck with Iran proves, if nothing else, that
Obama is not risk-averse. He has bet global security and his own legacy that
one of the world’s leading state sponsors of terrorism will adhere to an
agreement to curtail its nuclear program.”
Sadly, it will probably take the next president another eight years to reach the same conclusions.
Sadly, it will probably take the next president another eight years to reach the same conclusions.