by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
Tribune Media Services<\/p>\n
Not being George W. Bush while apologizing for America’s purported sins is not a foreign policy.<\/p>\n
Ronald Reagan came into office with the idea of rolling back the Soviet Union. Reagan hoped that such an evil empire might collapse from its inability to match a newly confident United States.<\/p>\n
George H.W. Bush sought to oversee a peaceful dissolution of the Soviet empire, the reunification of Germany, and a new Western-led world order that thugs such as Manuel Noriega or Saddam Hussein could not disrupt.<\/p>\n
Bill Clinton pushed Western-inspired liberal globalization to lift the Third World out of poverty.<\/p>\n
After 9\/11, George W. Bush sought to keep America safe from another round of Islamic terrorism while promoting Middle East constitutional government as a way of weakening Islamic terrorism.<\/p>\n
But what exactly does Barack Obama wish to accomplish abroad?<\/p>\n
In interviews and speeches, Obama emphasizes his nontraditional background and his father’s Islamic heritage. Apparently, he hopes that by reminding the world that he is not George W. Bush, America will be better liked.<\/p>\n
But without a strategic vision, “Bush did it” leads nowhere \u2014 given that most of the world’s problems predated and transcend Bush. Obama doesn’t seem to understand than wanting people to like America is only a means to an end, not a policy in itself \u2014 and an especially dubious means, given the character of many nations in the world today.<\/p>\n
Nor does Obama comprehend that global tensions often reflect fundamentally different views of the human condition, rather than simple miscommunication or clumsy diplomacy \u2014 and so can’t be solved by serial apologies.<\/p>\n
Last I heard, the Chinese communist government has not said a word about the killing of millions of its own, or about past fighting with many of its neighbors. Russia does not apologize for its bloodletting in Chechnya \u2014 or for any of the other countries it has invaded and crushed.<\/p>\n
Only Obama’s America offers atonement, as if apologies will singularly achieve our new goal of being liked above all else. Yet when there is no upside for a country being democratic or pro-American, and not much downside for being dictatorial and anti-American, global confusion follows over the proper path that civilization should follow.<\/p>\n
So after 16 months of the Obama presidency, we are starting to see the sort of chaos that results from America’s lack of strategic vision or advocacy of its own values.<\/p>\n
Suddenly, allies such as democratic Colombia, Israel and India cannot count on our support in their rivalries with aggressive neighbors, while overt enemies such as Iran, Hamas and North Korea wonder whether a brief window has opened for aggrandizement without repercussions.<\/p>\n
In the Middle East, Israel is being tested as never before by Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria and now Turkey \u2014 under the cloud of a soon-to-be-nuclear Iran. Apparently, they all think that suddenly the U.S. is no longer Israel’s protector, and the opportunity for upping the ante should not be missed.<\/p>\n
North Korea warns that Seoul might be “a sea of flame,” while jittery Japan cannot seem to stabilize its government. Turkey is starting to sound more like the old Ottoman sultanate eager for a showdown with the West than a NATO ally.<\/p>\n
Along with Brazil and Russia, Turkey is seeking to water down American efforts to stop Iranian nuclear proliferation. Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez now insults an obsequious Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as much as he once did a tough-talking George W. Bush. In fact, the more we reached out in 2009 to Iran, Russia, Syria, Turkey and Venezuela, the more they all now seem hostile \u2014 suggesting magnanimity is often seen by such governments as appeasement that in turn encourages aggression.<\/p>\n
A cash-flush China in turn wonders why it should finance record U.S. borrowing for entitlements it cannot afford for its own people. We seem to gratuitously offend our oldest and best ally, the British, in novel ways each week. The European Union is in a meltdown, and many of its key members suspect that America no longer sees itself as a leader of shared Western interests. Or that if it does, it is now too broke to do much anyway.<\/p>\n
In all these crises, trashing George W. Bush, reaching out to enemies and taking friends for granted is not proving to be a coherent foreign policy. Instead, it is a prescription for a disaster not seen since 1979, when another messianic American president thought he could charm the world by making our enemies like us.<\/p>\n
And we all know how that ended.<\/p>\n
\u00a92010 Tribune Media Services<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Not being George W. 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Had a Democrat tried that, he would have been branded a Commie appeaser. To this day, liberals cannot conceive that during the two world wars, progressives like Woodrow Wilson, Earl Warren, and Franklin Delano\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Foreign Policy"","block_context":{"text":"Foreign Policy","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/foreign-policy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1115,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-george-w-bush-fixation\/","url_meta":{"origin":1540,"position":2},"title":"The George W. Bush Fixation","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 22, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Barack Obama remains fixated by George W. Bush. 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Apparently, they believed that most of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "November 2010"","block_context":{"text":"November 2010","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2010\/november-2010\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5911,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-obama-borg\/","url_meta":{"origin":1540,"position":3},"title":"The Obama Borg","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 30, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"How \"man-caused disasters\" replaced Islamist terrorism in the Obama lexicon. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online In\u00a0Star Trek\u00a0lore, the Borg\u00a0was a collective of servile drone operatives that sought to assimilate other species into\u00a0its \u201chive mind.\u201d Something akin to that creepy groupthink arose when the Obama administration took power and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Terrorism"","block_context":{"text":"Terrorism","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/war-on-terror\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4652,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/a-reagan-for-everybody\/","url_meta":{"origin":1540,"position":4},"title":"A Reagan for Everybody","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 25, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Who exactly was Ronald Reagan? by Victor Davis Hanson Private Papers One of the strangest developments following the recent funeral of Ronald Reagan was the emergence of all sorts of \"authentic\" \u2014 and irreconcilable\u2014Reagans. Die-hard conservatives assured us that the California governor who signed the most liberal abortion legislation of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "June 2004"","block_context":{"text":"June 2004","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2004\/june-2004\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5336,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/reagans-second-act\/","url_meta":{"origin":1540,"position":5},"title":"Reagan’s Second Act","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 12, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Media concedes simple truth, not simpleton by Bruce S. Thornton Private Papers Ronald Reagan's death in the midst of a hotly contested presidential election has occasioned all manner of oddities. There was John Kerry, the absolute antithesis of Ronald Reagan, making the pilgrimage to Simi Valley and monitoring his remarks\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. 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