July 13, 2011

Obama's Foreign Policy: Dithering or Stealth Postnationalist?

By Richard Butrick
Does President Obama have a foreign policy vision?  According to Charles Krauthammer, writing for WaPo (4/11), there are "no discernible [ideas] that make sense of Obama foreign policy." To be precise, leading from behind is a style, not a doctrine. Doctrines involve ideas, but since there are no discernible ones that make sense of Obama foreign policy - Lizza's painstaking two-year chronicle shows it to be as ad hoc, erratic and confused as it appears - this will have to do.  And it surely is an accurate description, from President Obama's shocking passivity during Iran's 2009 Green Revolution to his dithering on Libya, acting at the very last moment, then handing off to a bickering coalition, yielding the current bloody stalemate. It's been a foreign policy of hesitation, delay and indecision, marked by plaintive appeals to the (fictional) "international community" to do what only America can.  But that is not the way Stanley Kurtz , the political analyst for...(Read Full Article)