This has hardly been a stellar year for the projection of American global power. Weakness, rather than strength, has been the hallmark of US foreign policy under Barack Obama, from the Iranian nuclear crisis to dithering over the war in Afghanistan. Instead of strong American leadership, the White House has all too often offered humiliating apologies for America’s past and embarrassing gaffes.
Obama has been a disaster on the foreign stage
Here is a list of the ten biggest foreign policy follies of Barack Obama’s first year in office. I’ve tried to make the list inclusive of all corners of the world, ranging from Tehran to Tokyo to Khartoum, and frankly could easily have expanded it to a top 20 or even top 30 list. There are plenty to choose from, including some of the most cringe worthy moments in modern American history.
1. Surrendering to Russia over Missile Defence
The White House’s betrayal of US allies in eastern and central Europe by reneging on the deal to establish Third Site missile defences sent a clear signal that Washington was more concerned about appeasing Moscow than defending its friends. It symbolized all that is wrong with Obama’s foreign policy – including the willingness to curry favour with brutal enemies while giving the boot to some of America’s closest partners.
2. Appeasing the Mullahs of Iran
If Barack Obama makes a New Year’s resolution, I hope it will be that he stops appeasing Tehran. The White House’s strategy of engagement with Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been nothing short of a spectacular failure. While Obama has been busy emulating the European Union’s dismal Common Foreign and Security Policy and sending polite video messages, the Mullahs and their puppets have been busy advancing their nuclear weapons programme, enriching uranium, supplying arms to the Taliban, capturing British sailors, test-firing long-range missiles, threatening the annihilation of Israel, and killing pro-democracy protestors.
Read More: By Nile Gardiner, UK Telegraph
Tags: Barack Obama, Blunders, Foreign policy Follies, Medvedev, Putin, RussiaTranslators were baffled by Vladimir Putin’s recent response to President Obama. Leading up to his summit in Moscow, Obama had announced that the Russian premier had one foot in the old way and one foot in the new. “We cannot stand v raskoryachku,” Putin replied in a steely voice. Everyone understands that this rarely used idiom refers to an awkward position, but not even native speakers can visualize it. For some, it evoked nonconsensual sex. For others, it suggested bowleggedness. The best translation was posted by a BBC Russian Service producer on Facebook: “one leg here, one leg there, with the bottom asking for trouble.”
The mysterious elocution came in handy for reporters wondering what to write about on the eve of Obama’s visit to Russia, as they tried to decipher the true nature of U.S.-Russian relations. While the countries gave every appearance of concordance at Monday’s meeting, the reality is that they are v raskoryachku—neither friends nor enemies. In truth, they hardly have a relationship at all.
How did we get here? Last winter, Joe Biden offered to reset relations with Russia, and it looked for a while as though, by the time Obama arrived, everything would be hunky-dory. In May, the reset agenda included cooperation on Afghanistan and Iran, addressing piracy in Somalia, and Russia’s expedited entry into the WTO.
But the weeks preceding Obama’s visit where marked by one setback after another. Iran’s combustible election demonstrated how far apart Russia and the U.S. are on democracy and populist, color-themed revolutions: Russian President Dmitry Medvedev was the first world leader to receive Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad after his dubious victory. Soon thereafter, Russia did everything to soften the resolution on Iran at last month’s G8 foreign ministers’ meeting in Italy.
Temporarily setting aside differences over more contentious issues, the two leaders agreed to cut the number of each state’s deployed nuclear warheads from roughly 2,200 to between 1,500 and 1,675 over the next seven years.
Mr Obama, speaking shortly after arriving in Moscow on a two-day visit, had predicted that he and his Russian counterpart could make “extraordinary progress” towards mending a relationship that has soured markedly in recent years.
A nuclear arms deal was meant to be the vehicle that established a fresh start between the former adversaries.
However, after nearly five hours of talks, the gains made were much more modest and disappointed activists who had called on both sides to set a limit of 1,000 deployed warheads.
The word is “perezagruzka,” meaning “reset.”
Not “peregruzka,” meaning “overload.” (As in: more than eight people on this elevator will create an overload.)
The former is the word the Obama administration often invokes when describing what they would like to do regarding U.S.-Russian relations.
“I think that there has been a time over the last several years where Russian-U.S. relations were not as strong as they should be,” President Obama told ITAR-TASS/ROSSIYA TV. “What I said coming in is that I wanted to press the reset button on relations between the United States and Russia.”
But it was the latter — “peregruzka,” or “overload” — that ended up printed on a prop button that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton presented to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in March.
“We worked hard to get the right Russian word,” Clinton said. “Do you think we got it?”
“You got it wrong,” Lavrov smiled. But he said he’d put the button on his desk.
Over the weekend, the state newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta borrowed said button from the Foreign Ministry, and next to cardboard cutouts of President Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev displayed the button at a stand in Moscow’s Pushkin Square.
AFP
Comrade Obama fits right in with the Communists
Russia’s Dmitry Medvedev hailed Barack Obama as “my new comrade” Thursday after their first face-to-face talks, saying the US president “can listen” — even if little progress was made on substance.
The Russian president contrasted Obama as “totally different” to his predecessor George W. Bush, whom he blamed for the “mistake” of US missile shield plans fiercely opposed by Moscow.
Obama agreed to visit Moscow in July after his talks with Medvedev on Wednesday on the sidelines of a G20 summit in London aimed at fixing the battered world economy.
Tags: Barack Obama, Comrades, Medvedev
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