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, Russia
Hopes that Russia might be more accommodating following the Obama administration’s missile defense shift appeared premature on Tuesday, when Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton found no support at the Kremlin for tightening sanctions against Iran.
A senior U.S. official traveling with Clinton had said before her meetings that she would press Russian leaders on “what specific forms of pressure Russia would be prepared to join us and our other allies in if Iran fails to live up to its obligations” on the nuclear dispute.
But Clinton told a media briefing after talks with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov that no requests had been made.
“We did not ask for anything today,” she said. “We reviewed the situation and where it stood, which I think was the appropriate timing for what this process entails.”
Read More: By Patrick Goodenough, CNS News
Tags: Barack Obama, Concessions, Hope, Not giving in, PutinIn a slip of the tongue, U.S. President Barack Obama described Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Monday as president, echoing the widely held view that he remains Russia’s most powerful man.
Putin surrendered the presidency to protege Dmitry Medvedev last May to take the lesser post of prime minister, but most political analysts say Putin remains Russia’s ultimate decision maker.
The dual leadership has left foreign leaders to walk a difficult diplomatic tightrope. In line with protocol Obama met Medvedev ahead of talks with the lower ranking Putin.
At a news conference Obama gave a carefully worded reply about the effectiveness of the leadership tandem when a U.S. journalist bluntly asked “who is really in charge here in Russia?”
But minutes later, speaking about Medvedev’s objections to a controversial missile defense system planned for central Europe, Obama slipped:
“I suspect when I speak to President..eh.. Prime Minister Putin tomorrow, he will say the same thing.”
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.
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