It being the end of the year and the Obama presidency is drawing to a close, there are all sorts of retrospectives being performed. Many of them are retrospectives of President Obama’s foreign policy.
Since there doesn’t seem to be any consensus on what that foreign policy accomplished, what President Obama wanted to accomplish, or what he should have wanted to accomplish, I think that most of these retrospectives are in vain or, at the very least, incomplete.
How should President Obama’s foreign policy be judged and using that yardstick how is it to be evaluated?
I think there’s one thing on which all of us should agree. If the yardstick is “don’t do stupid sh*t”, his foreign policy was a failure and in all likelihood all past presidents’ have been and any future president’s foreign policy will be. They each do their own stupid sh*t.
We might be more charitable towards presidents if we took that into account.
I believe foreign policy,(involving foreigners, that is) should be based on U.S. interests. If we need to have relations with any nation, their domestic policy can be considered, but by no means should we try to impose our system on them. It should be conditional of nothing. If china executes drug dealers, if Saudi Arabia executes Gays while supporting “boy play” that’s none of our policy business.
What I mean is we should feel free to laugh out loud at them and their seventh century ways, but should not intervene as if we have a moral obligation to police the world.
We as Americans should hold ourselves to that high standard, and lead by example, if we can.
Libya was a mistake, though not a major one – they were headed for civil war anyway, and at least we took out the Lockerbie murderer. Syria was not a mistake, we mostly stayed out and I tend to think the line from the movie War Games applies: “The only winning move is not to play.” The Afghanistan build-up could go either way, depending on whether you want to calculate for domestic political requirements. The Iraq drawdown, despite the fact-free whines from neocons, was unavoidable, and thus the right move.
Obama leaves us with a 4.6% unemployment rate, half what he inherited. The deficit is back to what it was running before the recession. The dollar is absurdly strong. (When I lived in Italy we were paying $1.60 for a Euro. Today’s rate: $1.04. And the GBP is at $1.22!) International opinion is wildly in favor of Obama – he scores 4 times higher in Germany than Bush. Domestically Gallup has Obama 56% favorable, much higher than Bush at this point, and higher than the incoming president who is underwater by 4.5 points. US oil imports are down, gas prices are down, inflation is minimal, the Fed is finally starting to raise interest rates, the stock market has soared, 20 million more Americans have health insurance, and guess what? Detroit still makes cars.
Enter now the wrecking crew. Trump puts on his kneepads whenever he hears his Russian master’s name, blurts out Twitter imbecilities, aims to take health coverage away from the poor dumb slobs who voted for him, is literally incapable of reading a briefing paper let alone a book. He is a man without the capacity for empathy; cruel, vulgar, insecure, immature – a psychopath and not one of those brilliant movie psychopaths. He’s a dumb, illiterate, uneducable psychopath, who has surrounded himself with mediocrities, which may or may not be preferable to a smart psychopath, depending on whether you find stupidity more or less likely to be destructive than evil would be.
Not since Lincoln was replaced by the vile Andrew Johnson has the presidency seen such a dramatic drop in quality. But what the hell, I’ve got enough to be able to get a residency visa pretty much anywhere, and in the two years left of my daughter’s high school I can survive quite nicely in Trump-free California. Pity about the idiot 46%, but fools and their fate, as the saying goes.
Obama was blessed by coming after W Bush’s abysmal failure in Iraq.
He is opportunistically criticised by neocons and even Trumpists for pulling out of Iraq and opening the door to ISIS. This is baloney. Obama pressured Maliki for a SOFA agreement and was rejected.
However he surged in Afghanistan to more quagmire and is let off the hook even by liberals. Said liberals virtually completely ignore his
cooperating in the funding and training of jihadis to overthrow Assad (research Hersh’s work on this) and his complicity in assassinating Khaddafi, turning Syria and Libya into anarchial lawlessness.
Further Putin baled his ass out of going into Syria.
Liberals also ignore his reckless drone bombing across the Muslim world. Thankfully Tulsi Gabbard has exposed Obama’s complicity in Saudi Arabia’s humongous war crimes in Yemen.
Obama is popular in guilt-laden Germany which has a president who has turned it over to militant Islam? Who cares?
Obama is very unpopular in Russia-and it must be said for increasingly right wing Germans, they chant “Putin to Berlin/Merkel to Siberia” so I doubt whether they much like Obama.
You did not ask about Obama’s economics nor for an attack on Trump so I will spare you a refutation of the propaganda unrelated to your request.
Yes, but Ken, Obama is personally popular making the notion that Americans are feeling optimistic completely unsupported by the facts. I heard it from some commenter on this blog.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-27/u-s-consumer-confidence-index-increased-to-113-7-in-december
When did Obama pressure Maliki for an extension of the SOFA agreement?
That’s news to me, as the obama administrastion literally was disengaged with Iraq, using the lack of renegotiating the SOFA as his excuse to go against all his national security advisors in what forces should remain to hold together what stability had been achieved by his predecessor. Nonetheless, Biden was crowing that Iraq was going to be part of Obama’s shinning legacy until it all went south, after the pull-out, at which time Iraq was once again put into Bush’s column of failures.
As for who was inclined to use kneepads to accommodate Putin, I would say Obama had a double pair ordered for double duty. First he complied with Russia’s wishes to remove a missile defense system. Then there was the foolish Clinton reset moment, followed later by turning a blind eye to Ukraine’s invasion. Oh yes, he facilitated Russian embedding itself more securely in Syria. And, Turkey is presently looking to a stronger ally in Russia, versus the U.S.
Basically, Obama is turning over a vastly more unstable, turbulent world to the next president, having more acts of terrorism breaking out in Europe, failed states in the ME, and allies who view the US as a weakened super power.
And, regarding that UE number…..it doesn’t take into account the labor participation rate, which has been pathically dismal during most of Obama’s term in office, along with an equally pathetic GDP. Of course, there is a matter of that 20 T debt figure, with a deficit rising after it fell some following the sequestration event, first hatched up by Obama as a lever to use against the R’s budgetary objections, and then lobbied against as it became apparent the R’s weren’t falling for the bait.
Right, the all-important labor participation rate which has been in decline since long before Obama but about which we heard nothing until it was time for Republicans to try and explain away Mr. Obama’s success.
It’s just like the stock market which is terribly, terribly important when it rises under a Republican, but utterly irrelevant when it rose under Obama.
New Gallup poll yesterday: 56% to 40%. That’s Obama’s number. Latest poll on Trump? 45% favorable, 51% unfavorable. So that’s Obama 16% positive, Trumpolini 6% negative. Or you could look at it as 56 to 45, Obama over Trump. Any way you slice it it is quite clear Obama would beat your idiot man-baby.
I disagree Michael. Other polling has Trump @ 51% favorability. But, this is cited only as an alternative to your number, rather than to crow about any particular polling numbers. IMO, poll numbers are more subjectively derived than necessarily reflecting what is grounded in real public opinion. Remember that prior to the election Trump’s chances of winning were given a paltry 5%, which is why the true believers on the left were so shocked and now adrift in bitterness and denial.
As for the stock market’s strength during the era of Obama, much was due to the fed’s interference, paralyzing the currency with low interest rates throughout his term in office. Thus, people shoved assets into stocks. Note, though, the economy didn’t grow, but merely idled under Obama’s economical policies, with the GDP being on respirators, rather than achieving anything close to a 3% growth rate.
Also note that the Fed finally raised the rate after it was known the Dems would be out of office, come January ’17. But, even though the stock market usually fell on only rumors of a rate raise being imminent, it has soared with the shifting of another more business friendly party coming to power next year. Recently a list of the most business friendly countries was published, and the US, which used to be at the top, has gone down to being #23. This has an opportunity to be changed now, with less burdensome government policies being contrived and pushed onto business – some new 25 regulations, alone, have been created as a departing gift from our almost ex president, along with a few more EOs and a stab in Israel’s back. What a guy!!!
Here’s an amazingly accurate retrospective by none other than Megan McArdle.
So jan wanted to go to war over Ukraine and Syria. This is why we need to keep neocons out of power.
Steve
Never said that Steve. However, it’s mostly a commonly felt retrospective regret that the Syrian genocide (some 4-5 hundred thousand killed) wasn’t addressed earlier (before it got out of hand), and with the steady hand of a leader who seriously followed through on “red” lines, rather than simply issuing empty threats.
Follow through being war in Syria. What you feel is only common among neocons. We already tried it in Iraq and it didn’t work out so well. Not so great in Afghanistan either.
Red lines and empty threats? They actually got rid of their chemical weapons. We got what we wanted. You didn’t since you wanted another war. Bummer!
Steve
The CIA and the “fuck Europe” Nuland crusade destabilized both Ukraine and Syria-that is all on Obama, Clinton and America’s
sin list and the Euro crisis immigration thereof. Russophobic fax right wing Jan should recognize-the Euro right parties from LePen to Austria to Germany’s “Alternative”…..all favor a pro-Russian policy which is also completely detached from the “bull in a China shop” policy, as Lavrov put it, of America.
http://world.time.com/2011/10/21/iraq-not-obama-called-time-on-the-u-s-troop-presence/
How about some truth, Jan?
By the way, for context, I am for the purported non-interventionist Russophile Trump, even support his promised protectionist economic program.
I will even overlook his fawnings over Israeli settlements, as One State is the only answer now-and it should not be a One State with rabbinical law.
This is on the premise giving Russia a free hand will also give Hezbollah and Iran a free hand to pressure Israel into an ultimately
fair settlement–by any means they choose.