by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
Barack Obama had a foreign policy for about five years, and now he has none.<\/p>\n
![\"3115968002_be17a06f55\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/3115968002_be17a06f55.jpg?resize=196%2C259&ssl=1\")
The first-term foreign policy\u2019s assumptions went something like this. Obama was to assure the world that he was not George W. Bush. Whatever the latter was for, Obama was mostly against. Given that Bush had left office with polls similar to Harry Truman\u2019s final numbers, this seemed to Obama a wise political approach.<\/p>\n
If Bush wanted garrison troops left in Iraq to secure the victory of the surge, Obama would pull them out. If Bush had opened Guantanamo, used drones, relied on renditions, reestablished military tribunals, and approved preventive detention, Obama would profess to dismantle that war on terror \u2014 even to the point where the Bush-era use of the word \u201cterrorism\u201d and any associations between it and radical Islam would disappear.<\/p>\n
If Bush had contemplated establishing an anti-missile system in concert with the Poles and Czechs, then it must have been unwise and unnecessary. If Bush had unabashedly supported Israel and become estranged from Turkey, Obama would predictably reverse both courses.<\/p>\n
Second, policy per se would be secondary to Obama\u2019s personal narrative and iconic status. Obama, by virtue of his nontraditional name, his mixed-race ancestry, and his unmistakably leftist politics, would win over America\u2019s critics to the point where most disagreements \u2014 themselves largely provoked by prior traditional and blinkered administrations \u2014 would dissipate. Rhetoric and symbolism would trump Obama\u2019s complete absence of foreign-policy experience.<\/p>\n
Many apparently shared Obama\u2019s view that disagreements abroad were not so much over substantive issues as they were caused by race, class, or gender fissures, or were the fallout from the prior insensitivity of Europe and the United States \u2014 as evidenced by a Nobel Prize awarded to Obama on the basis of his stated good intentions.<\/p>\n
Third, Obama had a clever recipe for concocting a new disengagement. He would mesh the increasing American weariness with intervention abroad and fears over a shaky economy with his own worldview about the dubious past role of the United States. The result might be that both libertarians and liberals, for differing reasons, would agree that we should stay out of problems abroad, that a struggling lower class and middle class would agree that money spent overseas was money that could be better spent at home, and that critiques of America\u2019s past would seem not so much effusions of \u00a0leftist ideology as practical reasons why the United States should disengage abroad.<\/p>\n
Finally, to the degree that any problems still persisted, Obama could either contextualize them (given his legal training and community-organizing experience), or talk loudly and threaten. For example, by referencing past American sins, by an occasional ceremonial bow or apology, by a bit of psychoanalysis about \u201cmacho shtick\u201d or the schoolboy Putin cutting up in the back of the room, an exalted Obama would show the world that he understood anti-social behavior and could ameliorate it as a counselor does with his emotional client. The world in turn would appreciate his patience and understanding with lesser folk, and react accordingly. Again, in place of policy would be the towering personality of Barack Obama. And if all that did not work, a peeved Obama could issue deadlines, red lines, and step-over lines to aggressors \u2014 and reissue them when they were ignored.<\/p>\n
Note what was not so integral to the Obama foreign policy. There was little sense of history and geography that might explain why crises transcend personalities. There was scant awareness that sometimes states act selfishly and immaturely. And just as individuals do, nations can interpret magnanimity as weakness to be exploited rather than as beneficence to be appreciated.<\/p>\n
There was little appreciation of the postwar system created by the United States over the last 70 years, which had created vast global wealth and security, primarily because of the unique role of the United States in suppressing local and regional challenges to the international order. Obama had little apparent awareness that the U.S. picked friends and enemies not on the shallow basis that the former were wholly good and the latter abjectly evil, but rather on the basis that in an imperfect world some nations shared some of our ideas about politics, the market, and the need for an international system, and others did not, to the point of using violence.<\/p>\n
And so we got \u201creset\u201d with Russia, following on the idea that Bush had unduly alienated Putin, that Putin would appreciate that Obama marked a new frontier in the American presidency, and that Russia could see Obama was empathizing with Putin\u2019s post\u2013Cold War dilemmas. Who cared that reset, in fact, was negating a reasonable response to Putin\u2019s aggression in Georgia, or that Russian territorial aims historically transcended ideology, or that Russia had not always played a positive role in the postwar order?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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 he was not George W. […]<\/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":[196,136],"tags":[12,912,74,1036,1021,175],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-1T0","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1115,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-george-w-bush-fixation\/","url_meta":{"origin":7254,"position":0},"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. For nearly two years, President Obama and his team have prefaced their explanations for the tough economy, tough finances and tough situation abroad with a \"Bush did it\" chorus. 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":2941,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-audacity-of-irony\/","url_meta":{"origin":7254,"position":1},"title":"The Audacity of Irony","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 17, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"\"Hope and change\" meet reality. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online We have seen irony before, when the moralist Jimmy Carter chastised us with sermons about our paranoid, inordinate fear of Communism and our amoral unconcern with human rights, even as the dividends of his policies were the Soviets\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "February 2009"","block_context":{"text":"February 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/february-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1045,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-perils-of-obamas-foreign-policy\/","url_meta":{"origin":7254,"position":2},"title":"The Perils of Obama’s Foreign Policy","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 28, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online The mystery remaining about the Obama administration\u2019s foreign policy is not whether it has worked, but whether its failures will matter all that much. That is no rhetorical question, given that it is hard to permanently damage, in just three years, the position\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":1217,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-gift-of-obamas-foreign-policy\/","url_meta":{"origin":7254,"position":3},"title":"The Gift of Obama’s Foreign Policy","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 8, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online The Obama reset foreign policy has, in an unintended way, brought clarity to America\u2019s traditional role in the world. After 2004, \u201cblame Bush\u201d proved an easy way for Europeans and American liberals to delude themselves into thinking the world\u2019s problems neither predated nor\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "October 2010"","block_context":{"text":"October 2010","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2010\/october-2010\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1778,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/our-reset-reset-foreign-policy\/","url_meta":{"origin":7254,"position":4},"title":"Our Reset Reset Foreign Policy","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 15, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Almost every element of Barack Obama's once-heralded new \"reset\" foreign policy of a year ago has either been reset or likely soon will be. Consider Obama's approach to the 8-year-old war on terror. Plans made more than a year ago to shut down\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "March 2010"","block_context":{"text":"March 2010","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2010\/march-2010\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1720,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-war-on-terror-bush-without-the-stetson\/","url_meta":{"origin":7254,"position":5},"title":"The War on Terror–Bush Without the Stetson","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 13, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's\u00a0The Corner There is much to criticize about President Obama on foreign policy, but increasingly, despite all the \u201creset button\u201d rhetoric and the obligatory nods to the Left, his anti-terrorism policies are becoming near identical extensions (if in cynical fashion) of George Bush\u2019s.\u00a0 I can\u2019t think\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "April 2010"","block_context":{"text":"April 2010","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2010\/april-2010\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7254"}],"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=7254"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7254\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7257,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7254\/revisions\/7257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}