The overseas reviews for President Obama’s foreign policy are starting to pour in — and they’re not favorable. Bob Ainsworth, the British defense secretary, has blamed Obama for the decline in British public support for the war in Afghanistan. According to the Telegraph:
Mr. Ainsworth took the unprecedented step of publicly criticizing the U.S. President and his delays in sending more troops to bolster the mission against the Taliban. A “period of hiatus” in Washington — and a lack of clear direction — had made it harder for ministers to persuade the British public to go on backing the Afghan mission in the face of a rising death toll, he said. Senior British Government sources have become increasingly frustrated with Mr. Obama’s “dithering” on Afghanistan, the Daily Telegraph disclosed earlier this month, with several former British defense chiefs echoing the concerns.
The President is “Obama the Impotent,” according to Steven Hill of the Guardian. The Economist calls Obama the “Pacific (and pussyfooting) president.” The Financial Times refers to “relations between the U.S. and Europe, which started the year of talks as allies, near breakdown.” The German magazine Der Spiegel accuses the president of being “dishonest with Europe” on the subject of climate change. Another withering piece in Der Spiegel, titled “Obama’s Nice Guy Act Gets Him Nowhere on the World Stage,” lists the instances in which Obama is being rolled. The Jerusalem Post puts it this way: “Everybody is saying no to the American president these days. And it’s not just that they’re saying no, it’s also the way they’re saying no.” “He talks too much,” a Saudi academic who had once been smitten with Barack Obama tells the Middle East scholar Fouad Ajami. The Saudi “has wearied of Mr. Obama and now does not bother with the Obama oratory,” according to Ajami. But “he is hardly alone, this academic. In the endless chatter of this region, and in the commentaries offered by the press, the theme is one of disappointment. In the Arab-Islamic world, Barack Obama has come down to earth.”
Indeed he has — and only Obama and his increasingly clueless administration seem unaware of this.
On almost every front, progress is nonexistent. In many instances, things are getting worse rather than better. The enormous goodwill that Obama’s election was met with hasn’t been leveraged into anything useful and tangible. Rather, our allies are now questioning America’s will, while our adversaries are becoming increasingly emboldened. The United States looks weak and uncertain. It’s “amateur hour at the White House,” according to Leslie Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations and a former official in the Carter administration. “Not only are things not getting fixed, they may be getting more broken,” according to Michael Hirsh at Newsweek. When even such strong Obama supporters as Gelb and Hirsh reach these conclusions, you know things must be unraveling.
It’s no mystery as to why. President Obama’s approach to international relations is simplistic and misguided. It is premised on the belief that American concessions to our adversaries will beget goodwill and concessions in return; that American self-abasement is justified; that the American decline is inevitable (and in some respects welcome); and that diplomacy and multilateralism are ends rather than means to an end.
Right now the overwhelming issue on the public’s mind is the economy, where Obama is also having serious problems. But national-security issues matter a great deal, and they remain the unique responsibility of the president. With every passing month, Barack Obama looks more and more like his Democratic predecessor Jimmy Carter: irresolute, unsteady, and overmatched. The president and members of his own party will find out soon enough, though, that Obama the Impotent isn’t what they had in mind when they elected him. We are witnessing the unmasking, and perhaps the unmaking, of Barack Obama.
Clausewitz observed that the guy who proposes to defend himself against attack can always be accused by the attacker of being at fault for the war. The attacker wants only peace; if the attacked would just give in, he would have it.
So it is with NYT, WaPo, etc, and the militarization of space. US policy is to defend our assets in space, and defend ourselves, and our interests and assets, against attacks launched from or through space. We intend explicitly to prevent any other earthly power from denying space to unfettered, peaceful use by all. The threat of this concern is there, and has been, from both the former USSR and China. As one would expect of our prominent Western news organs, Russia and China, who have developed the capabilities we want to defend against, get a pass from US editorialists.
For your bookmarking pleasure, the following:
http://www.nautilus.org/~rmit/forum-reports/0714s-ball/ — A superb 2007 summary by the always excellent Australian, Desmond Ball, of the history of Russian, Chinese, and US antisatellite programs.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/space/library/policy/national/us-space-policy_060831.htm — Bush’s 2006 National Space Policy
http://www.state.gov/t/us/rm/78679.htm — 2007 remarks by DOS official Robert Joseph (a good friend of John Bolton) on the 2006 National Space Policy
To an unschooled observer such as myself, the given reason for our missile shot was completely acceptable. God knows what the leftist would have said if the toxic fuel had actually done any harm to anyone, worse still if it was a poor person, a minority or a female.
But the secondary purpose was admirable and necessary. If the Chinese are spending money like water on their military, certainly they should see with their own eyes what we’re capable of, before they get reckless on some assumption or other.
Dave – I too think our missile shot was a reasonable action, but your assertion that China is “spending money like water on their military” is a bit over the top. Based on a quick find on google China appears to be spending something like twice what Japan spends, tow or three times what India spends and about the same amount as Russia. Given that the three countries I’ve named surround China and are bulwarked by considerable US military assets in the region the relative spending amounts don’t seem to support your assertion.
China is a coming power, assuming it weathers the internal political issues it will face as the population becomes more urban and more educated, but I think some folks have gone over the top concerning its potential.
Sully,
What I said about the Chinese military spending was not an assertion. It was a premise for a conclusion. The word “if” began it, as in “if this premise is valid then it leads to this conclusion”.
The premise was based on my having read the Chinese were increasing their military budget more than 20% year on year in 2008.
This was a news story and I cannot link it, but I’m fairly sure that’s what I read.
If there are other news stories which assert that such spending increases are not fit for similes such as “like water”, I have not read them.
I realize they are in the midst of a sort of economic boom over there and in light of that, then 20% expansion might not be such a big deal. But on the surface, it seems so.
I do not believe the Chinese are at present deployed in a full scale war effort, and as it is peacetime for them, I think 20% expansions of the military are worth a few exaggerations for effect.
Encirclement by the allies of a potential future enemy is defensible as a reason for spending more on military matters (though whether this is excessive is open to the sort of debate you’ve introduced), but that is not actually pertinent to my conclusion– that it is good for us that they saw what we can do, in order to avoid future false assumptions to the contrary on their part.
And this, I’m sure, was the actual primary intention of the missile shot.
“Star Wars”, indeed. Thank you Ronaldus Magnus.