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What’s Obama’s Biggest Foreign Policy Mistake, and Why?
There’s no lack of options. Off the top my head, we have:
- The “Reset” with Russia, leading to the Ukraine crisis;
- Failing to stand up for the Green movement in Iran, followed by the hopelessly naive policy of negotiating with the regime;
- Blustering that Assad’s use of chemical weapons would cross a “red line,” followed by inaction;
- Prematurely withdrawing from Iraq, precipitating the rise of ISIS–and then barely responding to it .
That I can’t bring myself to include Libya and Afghanistan among the worst mistakes only emphasizes how bad things have been.
The Iranian problem is probably the most serious issue, given the more-than-even odds that they’re crazy enough to use a nuclear weapon, and the regional arms race that will ensue even if they aren’t. (Sen. Tom Cotton’s comments to Jay and Mona very much changed my mind on that latter point). But the president never had any good options there.
Depending how things pan out in the next few months, I might bump the rise of the Islamic State to the top slot. It’s definitely moving in that direction. But there’s blame to spread around there.
For now, my vote is with his “red line” comments. First, the consequences were very serious. The president unambiguously threatened to use force against a foreign state if a specific event took place. It took place, and there were no consequences. The importance of showing the world that your threats aren’t empty isn’t even Statecraft 101. It’s grade-school.
Moreover, it was an entirely unforced error. The leftist narrative is that George W. Bush “rushed us into war,” but in fact his administration undertook months of effort to persuade the American people, Congress, and a host of allies that if Saddam refused to come clean about his weapons programs, we would be obliged to act. Obama committed the United States to an unpopular new conflict–one in which we’d previously had no stake–and made no attempt to persuade anyone that we should be involved.
What do you think?
Published in General
Pretty much a description of an addictive personality type. Here is a tongue in cheek article I was just reading on Arutz Sheva.
Op-Ed: Liberals Anonymous
“My name is Heshy, I am a liberal-holic.”
A little over the top but funnny!
Regards,
Jim
Other than Russia, the other three are highly interrelated, so I’ll just say that Obama’s biggest blunder has been his ham-handed policy re: Iran. This has many facets, including failing to obtain a status of forces agreement in Iraq (which created a power vacuum quickly filled by Iran), failing to support the Green revolution, allowing the Iranians to make Assad their client, the egregious appeasement in the nuclear talks (thus setting off a Gulf nuclear race), etc, etc, ad nauseum.
Sadly, these failures have the potential to kill people and to quickly spiral out of control.
Obama has made America, Israel, the Middle East (heck, the whole world) far less secure.
No joking . . . ALL of the above. Everything the guy has done foreign-policy-wise has been a disaster.
He could have been one of the original “Not Ready for Prime Time Players” on SNL. OTOH, I suspect a lot of what he has done is not due to rookie mistakes – it’s deliberate . . .
4.
No question.
My feelings are so strong about what the loss of Iraq means for the present and future that I can’t put them together quickly for a comment. So I’ll just vote for now.
This was devastating and will affect us and the entire world long into the future.
The worst of it is that we look weak and stupid.
#4 leaving Iraq, closely follows by #2 Iran.
He isn’t finished yet, I pick #6.
Is encouraging young Central Americans to sneak into the U.S. a foreign or domestic blunder?
There is turmoil worldwide, the news will never fail to find Ebola with children. I think “reasonable” people still think nuking Japan was wrong. Was creating Pakistan a mistake? Except for the red line thing, I think in 50 years it will be tough to point to any of these as a “mistake”. Are we confident that the green revolution wouldn’t have taken a dramatic path to a major regional upheaval?
For perspective, what are Bush’s 3 biggest foreign policy mistakes? I do not consider the Iraq war a mistake and I want more water-boarding so I am obviously quite naive.
Obama’s biggest mistake is believing his hype. Not realizing his limitations, he only hires staff dumber than him. They weren’t afraid to tell him how to pronounce corpsman, they didn’t know either.
I’d say #3 as that was the point where it became obvious to the world that the isolationists had won, at least for the time being. I think that, even more than the so-called reset, is the catalyst for Russia’s claim on Crimea, China’s claim on Senkaku, and the rise of ISIS.
The problem with #2 is that there was no good option. The protests were the result of an election in which the losing party (whose name escapes me) was just as much of a mullah endorsed line-toer as Ahmadinejad. Iranian “elections” are rigged from the beginning; the mullahs have to approve all candidates before the ballot is even announced. Even if the protestors had their way, the mullahs would still be there.
All of Bush’s blunders stem from one big mistake: Believing that democracy leads to liberalism rather than the other way around. The invasion of Iraq was not a mistake, I agree, but the rebuilding of Iraq was bungled by Bush’s failure to recognize that while the Sunnis did want freedom for themselves, they weren’t ready to accept freedom for the Shiites and the Kurds, and the same was true for the Shiites. (The Kurds, to their credit, seemed to just want to be left alone.)
The same thing happened in Egypt and Palestine, and this mistake is not unique to Bush. Too many people see free and fair elections as the first step in building a liberal democracy when they should be the end goal.
UF,
I don’t mean to be quarrelsome but once the old regime fell whichever group took over would be much more beholden to the Green Movement protesters who were young, educated, and secular. Of course, if we had played an obvious role, which is the point, they would have been much more beholden to us also.
To do nothing here is just nonsense. You roll the dice. Whatever came up is bound to have been better than what we have now.
Regards,
Jim
Libya – because it’s destabilised the whole of the Maghreb and parts of West Africa, and because it was so utterly avoidable.
Also, it’s hard to see how the US could have helped the Green Movement in Iran. Political support from the US, hard as this may be to believe, is the kiss of death in Iran (and many other countries). That’s often unfair, but there you go.
Z,
On this we agree, incredibly stupid in its own right. Qaddafi was not only not a problem but a good source of intelligence. Every principle that Obama ever championed was broken in Libya.
A most ridiculous waste that we are paying for still.
Regards,
Jim
Z,
I think you should go back and watch the videos of the Greens in the streets. They are 30 year olds with education. They want to be an emergent economy like India and China. You can practically read it on their lips.
We missed an opportunity. If Obama had 1/10 the saavy that his lap dogs claim he has he would have taken advantage and made himself a real symbol of freedom rather than a symbol of narcissistic triviality.
Regards,
Jim
They are all these things, Jim. Most of them would probably love a Green Card if it was offered to them. But there’s a difference between wanting to come to America and wanting America to come to your country. They’re ambivalent about American power, because of their country’s history with America (pre-dating the Islamic Revolution). Acknowledging that isn’t slamming anybody, just looking at things with a colder eye.
Btw, have you listened to the interview with the Iranian dissident on the main feed? I thought it was fascinating.
Z,
What American power are you talking about? They were already in the street in mass under their own power. All they wanted was a little help and pressure from Obama. It really wouldn’t have taken much. Maybe an evil empire speech alone would have done it. Obama couldn’t even deliver that. Remember they had endured almost 30 years of the gentle rule of the mullahs. They wanted out from under that plenty. We had nothing to do with it. Like Yeltsin standing on the tank it was time for a change.
Regards,
Jim
My point was that the “old regime” would not have fallen. The ayatollahs would still be in power and any token reform effort would be a fig leaf approved by the ayatollahs. You don’t really think the ayatollahs would give a flying rat’s nostril what a bunch of yuppies thought of them, do you?
UF,
We will never know because Obama didn’t even try. To have sat there and just watched the Greens go down the drain for 10 months and then later go mad in Libya to no good end, suggests a cluelessness of the highest order.
When the Soviet Union was collapsing you could have made the exact same argument to convince Ronald Reagan to prop them up and back off. He kept the pressure on and things changed. In fact, now that Obama has taken the pressure off Russia is reverting.
Clueless.
Regards,
Jim
As you say the movement was indigenous and popular (though, it turned out, not quite popular enough). The worst thing for a people’s movement South or East of the Mediterranean is loud vocal support from the US. Imho it would have caused them to lose credibility (unfairly) with their own people.
Boy it’s hard to choose. They were all disastrous. You didn’t even include the Libya fiasco. Or supporting the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Or the failure to consolidate a win in Afghanistan. I don’t know which to choose. Perhaps the withdrawal from Iraq sticks in my throat the most. One might argue the others presented ambiguity (except for the red line comment). Staying in Iraq was a no brainer and withdrawal came purely from his ideology.
Z,
It is always a judgement call when dealing with the sensitivities of other cultures. My point is that in specific situations the die is cast not by us but by them. The Russians were sick of the tyranny of Communism. Reagan spoke not in criticism of the Russian people or culture but in criticism of the evil fraud of Marxism. This bouyed the already existent opposition and made the old guard second guess everything. Communism finally fell because the Russian people knocked it down.
IMHO Iran was ready to do the same thing and enter the new league of emergent economic countries. They were ready to knock the Mullahs down themselves.
Regards,
Jim
America’s abandonment of a war that had been won will go down in history as an even greater blunder than Hitler’s blunder in permitting the evacuation of the Allied troops from Dunkirk.
By 2008 Iraq post-surge was the equivalent of South Korea in 1953 post-armistice. With protection and guidance from the United States, there is reason to believe that Iraq could have established a successful secular democratic government that would serve as a beachhead of democracy in the Middle East. It’s possible that Iraq was better positioned to succeed than South Korea, given Iraq’s vast oil wealth.
If the Obama presidency ended today, #4 would be its enduring legacy. Granted, by the time his presidency ends, he might have green-lighted Iran’s nuclear weapons program – which will lead Saudi Arabia to go nuclear, and perhaps Egypt, Qatar, UAE, and FIFA to go nuclear. When all of those entities have nuclear weapons, what is the likelihood that none of them uses such weapons?
::shudder::