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NY Analysis

Explaining Obama’s foreign policy

In the face of resounding criticism from free speech advocates, the White House is temporarily postponing its inexplicable bid to surrender control of the internet to an international body heavily influenced by nations seeking to sharply limit uncensored publication.

The original idea to do this was yet another in a series of the Administration’s global moves that are detrimental to American interests and for which Mr. Obama has utterly failed to provide any logical rationale for.

There is a profoundly uncomfortable, “politically incorrect” and unspoken question that urgently needs to be asked and discussed. President Obama’s foreign policy failures have been clear, significant, and very dangerous. Almost every important international act or decision the Obama administration has made resulted in negative consequences for the United States and its allies. What is the reason for this steady record of devastatingly poor results?

From the presidents’ earliest days in office in which he diminished the American special relationship with the United Kingdom and set about establishing the completely failed reset with Russia, to the current bipartisan-criticized nuclear deal with Iran, Mr. Obama has established a pattern of counterproductive foreign policy moves that is too consistent merely to be blamed on historical trends or bad luck.

The pattern established is one in which the Commander in Chief ignores the very real concerns of both his own nation and those it shares a common interest with, whether they are allied nations (the U.K., Poland, Israel, Ukraine, Philippines, Japan, for example) or groups (Cuban dissidents, Christians in the Middle East, women throughout the Islamic world, Kurds in their fight against ISIS, etc.) in what appears to be an attempt to appease or strike deals with nations or forces that are hostile to the U.S.

A largely tame media has not asked the obvious questions about the White House’s failures and the motives behind the illogical decisions.

  • Why, when the President was seeking to reduce the U.S. military presence in the Middle East, did it get involved in overthrowing Muammar Gaddafi, who no longer posed any problem for the west and was opposing al Qaeda?
  • Why has there been no response to the Benghazi attack?
  • Why did it encourage the replacement of Egypt’s President Mubarak with an Islamic extremist?
  • Why, when Russia was dramatically building up its armed forces, did the US withdraw key Army components from NATO countries?
  • Why was the response against the invasion of the Ukraine so trivial?
  • Why hasn’t any diplomatic protest been lodged against China’s hostile actions against the Philippines and Japan?
  • Why did the United States open up diplomatic relations with Cuba one month after Havana agreed to allow Russian Navy ships to return to the island nation?
  • Why has nothing been said about the growing Russian, Chinese and Iranian influence in Latin America?
  • Why were details of the Iranian nuclear deal withheld from the American people?
  • Why did the White House choose to surrender internet control to an international body with anti-free speech inclinations?
  • Why has there been no response to Moscow’s resumption of Cold War nuclear bomber and submarine patrols along the coastlines of the United States?

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The substantially criticized Iran nuclear deal has brought these questions into focus. The President’s act of going to the U.N. with it before coming to terms with Congress has also merited widespread dissent.

Mr. Obama has not been forthcoming with any explanation of his actions, and the White House press corps has not been particularly inquisitive.  It is, then, necessary to speculate on why the Administration has so substantially broken with the basics of a foreign policy that has prevented a major war since the end of World War 2, brought about unprecedented international prosperity, resulted in the downfall of the Soviet Union, and most importantly, kept America relatively secure from onslaught by other nations.

There are two most probable explanations.

The first is that the President, as a politician, may believe that the interests of his core constituency are different from those of his predecessors. As an example, his Administration, (which has done very little for Christians, who have been oppressed throughout the Islamic world and China and very little to oppose the anti-Semitic tenor at the United Nations) recently convened a significant U.N. Security Council hearing on gay rights.  While protecting LGBT’s is not outside the parameters of the American belief in individual rights, the fact that a greater emphasis has been placed on this issue than on protecting oppressed Christians and Jews is telling. The President may believe that his core constituency is simply uninterested in national security and traditional values, and has chosen what he believes to be a more politically rewarding path of ignoring those areas as substantially as possible, with the exception of “politically correct” issues such as LGBT rights.

The second possibility is substantially related to the first. The Obama Administration has obviously concentrated on an ambitious and expensive policy of “fundamentally transforming” the national character of the United States. That transformation is heavily dependent on costly government programs, including the 40% increase in food stamp enrollment, and the implementation of Obamacare.  The dollars have to come from somewhere, and raising taxes higher than they have already been hiked would be politically unpopular. Freeing up funds from defense spending, which currently accounts for less than one-fifth of the federal budget, can only be feasibly done if commitments abroad are downgraded and threats ignored. This appears to be the course the White House has chosen.

The problem, of course, is that while this may prove a politically expedient strategy to solidify the left-wing base of Democrat-inclined voters, it comes with an enormous burden. The very real challenge of Russian, Chinese, Iranian, terrorist, and North Korean belligerence can be ignored for only so long. Very real and very substantial threats will grow as America’s defense base continues to shrink from budget cuts and the loss of key personnel, and as allies drift away after viewing the U.S. as an unreliable partner.  When, as is inevitable, this reaches a crisis stage, the United States will have neither the defense capability nor the alliances necessary to respond successfully.

The Obama Administration is apparently gambling that this will occur after it leaves office.