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Foreign Policy's David Rothkopf questions the wisdom of Mr. Obama's first several months:
Russia undercuts our efforts to rein in Iran's nuclear program. Our response: dismantle the missile shield we had contemplated for Eastern Europe.
Hamid Karzai diddles the elections, abuses his people, and is openly corrupt. Our response: let's discuss how many more troops we want to send in to Afghanistan to help strengthen his power base and while we're at it, let's spend billions on doing work building his nation.
Pakistan limits our ability to go after the Taliban and al Qaeda within their borders, limits our ability to gain credit for aid flows to the country while promoting the interests of radical muslim donors and we open the spigots wider.
North Korea pushes forward with weapons programs and rattles its saber regularly and we seek new channels to discuss ways we can deepen our relationship after each calculated taunt.
Myanmar extends the prison term of Aung San Suu Kyi on trumped up charges and we send a high level emissary.
Iran crushes legitimate opposition, the regime steals and election, it lies for decades about its nuclear program, it strengthens its military capability and calls for destruction of Israel and we announce further talks despite their insistence none of the issues most important for us to discuss are open to discussion. Push us harder through arms collaboration with Russia and we remove the threat of that missile defense.
Meanwhile, our one dependable ally in the Middle East, Israel, faces an unprecedented squeeze, our most dependable ally on Venezuela's border, Colombia, can't get even a modest trade deal finalized, the Poles and the Czechs get the rug pulled out from under them, and so on. We need China more than ever to help with Iran after Russia has gone on the record as seeking a divergent outcome ... not to mention needing movement from them on issues like climate and global economic cooperation ... and what do we do? Slap them with unnecessary, hard-to-defend duties on imported tires.
It's the same here at home. No one fears crossing the Obama administration because the two most likely outcomes are either no retaliation or rewards. (Ask Senator Grassley, who gets concessions by the boatload but still refuses to play along, to name just one.)
I'm in agreement that the decisions made so far are presenting perverse incentives to our rivals, while punishing those who have shown loyalty. If an AI were acting like this in Civ, people would be losing their **** over the "buggy AI".
I'm not really an Obama loyalist though, so I'm interested in hearing any defenses of his record so far. Does this list represent a bunch of cherry picked incidents that ignore a broadly defensible record? Or are these honest mistakes made by a guy who's just new at his job?
Russia undercuts our efforts to rein in Iran's nuclear program. Our response: dismantle the missile shield we had contemplated for Eastern Europe.
Hamid Karzai diddles the elections, abuses his people, and is openly corrupt. Our response: let's discuss how many more troops we want to send in to Afghanistan to help strengthen his power base and while we're at it, let's spend billions on doing work building his nation.
Pakistan limits our ability to go after the Taliban and al Qaeda within their borders, limits our ability to gain credit for aid flows to the country while promoting the interests of radical muslim donors and we open the spigots wider.
North Korea pushes forward with weapons programs and rattles its saber regularly and we seek new channels to discuss ways we can deepen our relationship after each calculated taunt.
Myanmar extends the prison term of Aung San Suu Kyi on trumped up charges and we send a high level emissary.
Iran crushes legitimate opposition, the regime steals and election, it lies for decades about its nuclear program, it strengthens its military capability and calls for destruction of Israel and we announce further talks despite their insistence none of the issues most important for us to discuss are open to discussion. Push us harder through arms collaboration with Russia and we remove the threat of that missile defense.
Meanwhile, our one dependable ally in the Middle East, Israel, faces an unprecedented squeeze, our most dependable ally on Venezuela's border, Colombia, can't get even a modest trade deal finalized, the Poles and the Czechs get the rug pulled out from under them, and so on. We need China more than ever to help with Iran after Russia has gone on the record as seeking a divergent outcome ... not to mention needing movement from them on issues like climate and global economic cooperation ... and what do we do? Slap them with unnecessary, hard-to-defend duties on imported tires.
It's the same here at home. No one fears crossing the Obama administration because the two most likely outcomes are either no retaliation or rewards. (Ask Senator Grassley, who gets concessions by the boatload but still refuses to play along, to name just one.)
I'm in agreement that the decisions made so far are presenting perverse incentives to our rivals, while punishing those who have shown loyalty. If an AI were acting like this in Civ, people would be losing their **** over the "buggy AI".
I'm not really an Obama loyalist though, so I'm interested in hearing any defenses of his record so far. Does this list represent a bunch of cherry picked incidents that ignore a broadly defensible record? Or are these honest mistakes made by a guy who's just new at his job?
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