Foreign Policy Exposure

Joe Klein writes in The Natural, a book published in 2003 an interesting anecdote told him by Anthony Lake, a former speechwriter for President Clinton. In preparing for a speech on foreign policy, Clinton insisted that foreign policy is still domestic policy with the underlying premise being that our global entanglements affected the United States just as purely domestic issues did. Clinton once opined that he had not been lucky enough to have major foreign issues so as to add them to his legacy. President Obama should be so lucky.

President Obama has sought to handle foreign policy as he handles domestic policy but with strikingly different results. In the United States, the President often has a willing audience and media. Any resistance by the Republicans is brushed aside as at best, partisan politics, and at worst, racially motivated tendencies by his detractors. These gambits do not play well overseas and President Obama has come up a distant second in Libya, Syria, and Iran. This has resulted in a pulling back, or possibly another version of “leading from behind” by the Obama administration.

If you abandon the field you will not be embarrassed, but you will also not have any influence on the outcome. George Freidman of STRATOR speculates that the United States is simply realigning the agreements and support for a number of Mideast countries, mainly Iran, so that no one country is able to manipulate the outcome in the region. But doing this isolates Israel and Freidman explains that Israel must come to grips with a changing situation. (See full article here). We also have just learned that the Obama administration is making overtures to Hezbollah through the British. The suggested thought behind this is that Hezbollah is allied with Iran so if we lessen our scruples concerning Hezbollah, a designated terrorist organization, then we become more attractive to the mullahs in Iran (here). What must Israel think when they consider this move by Obama? And of course the latest is the Chinese effort to increase their control over the China Sea and some disputed islands by establishing an Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) over the areas. This requires routine airline flights to seek permission or to divert in lieu of being intercepted by Chinese jet fighters. At this point President Obama appears to be on the path to just let the Chinese do what they will. I’m sure Japan and South Korea appreciates that stance. Unlike Clinton, President Obama will have plenty of foreign exposure to adorn his legacy.