Saturday, May 3, 2014

Wishing this were true.........................................

Obama’s restraint, including his decision not to intervene militarily in Syria, should not be mistaken for weakness. America’s image in the world has improved under Obama, and U.S. leadership is more welcome.
-G. John Ikenberry, as excerpted from this essay on the strategic wisdom of Obama's foreign policy

Only the passage of about fifty years will tell, but the history major in me thinks that George W. Bush's decision to invade Iraq will come to be seen as one of the greatest errors of judgment in American foreign policy history.  Ikenberry paints a rosy picture of Obama's "pragmatic internationalist" "long view" to world affairs.  Hope he is correct, although from the cheap seats  it certainly looks more like ill-conceived ad hocery.  The world is, and has been forever, a bit messy and dangerous.  Grand strategies scare me.  Just once I'd like a leader to come out and say, "You know, we really don't have a clue about ................."

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