September 20, 2013

Failure of Obama Foreign Policy

There is no question that the US foreign policy over the past five years has been an unqualified disaster. Obama is a typical product of the academic left, viewing the US involvement in the world as an unequivocally detrimental to the rest of the world. It would have been illusory to expect any coherent, realistic or even pragmatic idea of a US foreign policy to come from him. Hilary used her position as the Secretary of State as a placeholder for her 2016 campaign, and was hell bent on not creating any international "crisis." And now we have a duo of arguably most incompetent pair of Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense in living memory: John Kerry and Chuck Hagel. I believe that the US adversaries are viewing this Syria crisis as the test case of the capabilities and resolve of the US world leadership. The way things stand right now the US will fail miserably. I believe that will only embolden our enemies, and I expect the problems and the crises only to escalate in the years ahead.

I've also mentioned recently that for the first time in my life I agree with the president of Russia more often than the president of the United States. Of course, there is no doubt in my mind that this is all mostly empty posturing on the part of Putin, but the fact that he is even able to do this and come across as the more reasonable person of the two is quite damning. Yes, he is a skillful political operative, but I don't think he is any different than most Russian autocrat over the centuries. He uses force at home and opportunism abroad to further his own goals. The fact that he's seems to be getting increasingly successful with this approach internationally is, in my opinion, an indictment of the failing moral, political, economic and military leadership in the West. I fear that this is a harbinger of even bigger disasters to come.