Does Barack Obama have a strategy? He is often criticized for being adrift.<\/p>\n Nonetheless, while Obama has never articulated strategic aims in the manner of Ronald Reagan or the two Bushes, it is not therefore true that there is no \u201cObama Doctrine.\u201d Indeed, now that he has been in office five years, we can see an overarching common objective in otherwise baffling foreign-policy misadventures.<\/p>\n Collate the following: large defense cuts, the president\u2019s suspicions that he is being gamed by the military, the pullout from the anti-missile defense pact in Eastern Europe, the pressure on Israel to give new concessions to its neighbors, the sudden warming up with an increasingly Islamist Turkey, the failed reset with Russia, radical nuclear-arms-reduction talks, the abject withdrawal of all U.S. peacekeeping forces in Iraq, the timetable withdrawals in Afghanistan, the new worries of our Asian and Middle Eastern allies, the constant euphemisms on the war on terror, the stepped-up drone attacks, the lead-from-behind removal of Moammar Qaddafi, the pullaway from Mubarak in Egypt, the support for Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood, the pink lines in Syria, the Iranian missile deal, the declaration that al-Qaeda was on the run and the war on terror essentially ending, the Benghazi coverup, and on and on.<\/p>\n Does such American behavior display any consistent strategic coherence?<\/p>\n I think it most certainly does.<\/p>\n The Obama administration believes that past administrations\u2019 strategic objectives and the methods of achieving them not only were flawed, but led to the sort of world that is not in our interests as defined by the Obama team. The contemporary world landscape is an unfair place. \u201cHave\u201d nations exploit the \u201chave-nots,\u201d in large part because of the rigged postwar system of free-market commerce, alliances, and politics that the United States created. While it would be dangerous and indeed impossible to abruptly disown our responsibilities \u2014 we can still hunt down bin Laden, kill terrorists with drones, and jawbone rogue dictators \u2014 we can begin to withdraw our sponsorship from the mess that, in a variety of ways, we were responsible for.<\/p>\n Our past and most secure alliances \u2014 the special relationships with Britain and Israel especially \u2014 are now seen as having alienated more people than they encouraged. Islamist movements in Turkey and Egypt were either inevitable or justified, given historical grievances against the West and the fact that they reflect grass-roots indigenous support.<\/p>\n Arbitrary American axioms \u2014 an enemy Iran was going to get the bomb to threaten the Middle East; a good Israel was a force for democracy and prosperity in an otherwise unhinged Middle East; the Persian Gulf monarchies were corrupt and anti-American, but not as corrupt and anti-American as the likely alternatives to them \u2014 were simplistic and outdated.<\/p>\n China and Russia were needlessly estranged, given that they both sought reform, only to be gratuitously alienated by the bullying United States. Anti-Americanism was fed not by envy or the fact that the nation\u2019s superpower responsibilities were easily caricatured, but rather by our often haughty behavior and a long history of global misdeeds. Obama in his Cairo speech, in his apology tour, and through his subordinates was not shy about voicing these reappraisals of the American past.<\/p>\n Most Americans are proud that we won the Cold War; Obama wonders whether we had to fight it as we did. Most Americans believe Islamists hate us for who we are and what we represent. Obama believes that we may have earned such enmity. Most Americans believe that the world outside the U.S. can be a pretty wretched place; Obama believes either that it is not so wretched, or that its wretchedness is mostly due to the American omnipresence.<\/p>\n What were the president\u2019s methods of achieving this repositioning of the United States?<\/p>\n Obama sought to assure the world that he would restrict the use of the American military. In practical fact that meant he would not use it unless the target was so weak as to nearly capitulate upon contact, or the target was at odds with a revolutionary uprising (Iran\u2019s theocracy excepted).<\/p>\n Obama\u2019s drone assassinations have been more than four times the Bush total, but they have been largely stealthy and unreported, and they came at no cost in American life. Libya was a misadventure, but American led Britain and France only from behind. We never had any intention of using force in Syria; the miscalculation lay in Obama\u2019s blustering that he might use force and that his pseudo red lines, like his deadlines with Iran, were real.<\/p>\n Summed up, the Obama Doctrine is a gradual retreat of the American presence worldwide \u2014 on the theory that our absence will lead to a vacuum better occupied by regional powers that know how to manage their neighborhood\u2019s affairs and have greater legitimacy in their own spheres of influence. Any damage that might occur with the loss of the American omnipresence does not approximate the harm already done by American intrusiveness. The current global maladies \u2014 Islamist terrorism, Middle Eastern tensions, Chinese muscle-flexing, Russian obstructionism, resurgence of Communist autocracy in Latin America \u2014 will fade once the United States lowers its profile and keeps out of other nations\u2019 business.<\/p>\n The methods to achieve this recessional are tricky \u2014 as they are for any aging sheriff, guns drawn, who hobbles slowly out of a crowded saloon on his last day on the job. American withdrawal must be facilitated by the semblance of power. That is, rhetoric, loud deadlines and red lines, and drones can for now approximate the old U.S. presence, as America insidiously abandons its 70-year role as architect of a global system that brought the world unprecedented security and prosperity. \u201cNo option is off the table\u201d tells most foreign leaders that very probably no option ever was on it.<\/p>\n Finally, what is the ideology that fuels the Obama doctrine \u2014 both its objectives and its methods?<\/p>\n For Obama, America abroad is analogous to the 1 percent at home. We need not squabble over the reasons why the wealthiest Americans enjoy unequal access to the things money can buy, or why America, of all nations, finds itself with unmatched global clout and influence. The concern is only that such privilege exists; that it is unfair; that it has led to injustice for the majority; and that it must be changed.<\/p>\n Obama, of course, cannot issue a global tax aimed at the United States. He cannot easily expand U.S. foreign aid as a sort of reparations. And he cannot craft the international equivalent of Obamacare. But he does seek the same sort of redistributive readjustment to America\u2019s presence abroad that he does to some Americans at home \u2014 in the interests of fairness, equality, and social justice.<\/p>\n Just as the United States would be a lot better place if a few million were not so rich, so too the world would be better off if the United States \u2014 and to a lesser extent Europe \u2014 were not so powerful and interventionist.<\/p>\n For every foreign concern, there is a greater domestic concern. Each Marine posted abroad, each GPS-guided bomb, each new frigate does not add to our deterrence and thus help keep the peace. Instead, such investments only raise the likelihood that unnecessary tensions will follow \u2014 and, meanwhile, precious dollars are diverted from far more important domestic constituencies who rightly object that a cruise missile means hundreds of new food-stamp applicants denied.<\/p>\n That the American public is supposedly exhausted after two wars and a variety of interventions, and that it is struggling with $17 trillion in debt and expanding entitlements, suggest that the Obama Doctrine, for all its radicalism, will not necessarily be seen as such by the public \u2014 any more than Depression-era American isolationism, after the disappointment with the aftermath of World War I, was considered unwise in an ever more dangerous world.<\/p>\n In short, Obama has a strategy. He has found a means of advancing it. He believes in the ideological basis for seeing it succeed. And he assumes that the public, for a variety of reasons, is quite supportive of it.<\/p>\n NRO\u00a0contributor<\/em>\u00a0Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the\u00a0Hoover Institution<\/a>\u00a0and the author, most recently, of\u00a0<\/em>The Savior Generals<\/a><\/span>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There is nothing accidental about the president’s apparent foreign-policy blunders. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0National Review Online\u00a0 Does Barack Obama have a strategy? He is often criticized for being adrift. Nonetheless, while Obama has never articulated strategic aims in the manner of Ronald Reagan or the two Bushes, it is not therefore true that there […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[146,846,196],"tags":[12,1063,181,345,1049,916,1021,1074,1016,552],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-1NH","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":7254,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/foreign-policy-from-bad-to-none\/","url_meta":{"origin":6925,"position":0},"title":"Foreign Policy: From Bad to None","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 29, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Our enemies are gloating, and our allies are grimly deciding where to go from here. by Victor Davis Hanson Barack Obama had a foreign policy for about five years, and now he has none. The first-term foreign policy\u2019s assumptions went something like this. Obama was to assure the world that\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":7521,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/our-future-is-1979\/","url_meta":{"origin":6925,"position":1},"title":"Our Future Is 1979","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 4, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Obama\u2019s foreign-policy weakness encourages our enemies and disheartens our allies.\u00a0 by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Online The final acts of the Obama foreign policy will play out in the next two years. Unfortunately, bad things happen when the world concludes that the American president has become weakened, distracted,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The World"","block_context":{"text":"The World","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Photo of Jimmy Carter holding cabinet meeting 1977 photo by US National Archives","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/375px-Jimmy_Carter_convenes_a_cabinet_meeting_-_NARA_-_175123.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":6735,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/americas-wilderness-years\/","url_meta":{"origin":6925,"position":2},"title":"America’s Wilderness Years","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 12, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0PJ Media\u00a0 Most two-term presidents leave some sort of legacy. Ronald Reagan won the Cold War. George W. Bush prevented another 9\/11, and constructed an anti-terrorism protocol that even his critical successor embraced and often expanded. Even our one-term presidents have achieved something. JFK got Soviet\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Punditry"","block_context":{"text":"Punditry","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/opinion\/punditry\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2808,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/dr-jekyll-and-mr-president\/","url_meta":{"origin":6925,"position":3},"title":"Dr. Jekyll and Mr. President","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 4, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services In matters of foreign policy during the president's first 100 days, we have seen two Barack Obamas. Consider \"Obama I.\" After taking office, the president gave his first interview to the Dubai-based al-Arabiya TV station, and listed various sins of America while praising\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "May 2009"","block_context":{"text":"May 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/may-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2180,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/truman-and-the-principles-of-u-s-foreign-policy\/","url_meta":{"origin":6925,"position":4},"title":"Truman and the Principles of U.S. Foreign Policy","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 31, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Wall Street Journal Jimmy Carter rejected the postwar consensus. President Obama appears to be following a similar path. Upon entering office, Barack Obama knew little about foreign policy. But then neither did Vice President Harry S. Truman when Franklin Delano Roosevelt died suddenly on April 12,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "October 2009"","block_context":{"text":"October 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/october-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7920,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/small-and-petty-from-small-and-petty\/","url_meta":{"origin":6925,"position":5},"title":"\u2018Small and Petty\u2019 from Small and Petty","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 14, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ NRO- The Corner Deconstruct former Obama flack Bill Burton\u2019s hit on Leon Panetta: On Secretary Panetta, he is a guy who has had a long and storied career in Washington and has really served his country well. And it is kind of sad that in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Opinion"","block_context":{"text":"Opinion","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/opinion\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6925"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6925"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6925\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6927,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6925\/revisions\/6927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"cmccain202dc](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/10727599973_8417df2b5e.jpg?resize=300%2C199&ssl=1\")