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Heritage
Foundation
Five
Ways Obama's Foreign Policies Have Failed
James
Carafano
April
12, 2014
On a
Moscow train platform, two men smoke and swap rumors in the frozen
evening air.
“I
hear they’ve raised the Russian flag in Donetsk?” one says.
“I
hear Crimea, too.”
So
reports freelance journalist Noah Sneider in Slate.
As
Russian troops hoisted their flag over Crimea, President Obama’s
highly touted “reset” diplomacy crashed and burned. The Russian
reset was to have been the crown jewel of Mr. Obama’s statecraft,
the start of a new era in which Washington and Moscow worked together
to solve the world’s problems. That naïve dream burst when
Vladimir Putin ordered his tanks to roll.
But
botched relations with the Russians is just the latest and arguably
most dramatic failure of White House foreign policy. This
administration has suffered a global string of setback. Here are five
previous failures the Oval Office hopes most of us never noticed or
won’t remember.
• The
empty pivot: Mr. Obama grandly announced the U.S. was shifting its
focus to Asia. This would allow us to cope better with China’s role
as an emerging power, guiding Beijing in a constructive direction. So
where’s the beef?
In
Hong Kong, Beijing has yet to make good on is its 1997 promise of
universal suffrage. Indeed, China is actively working to postpone it
indefinitely. The U.S. is silent.
In
Taiwan, there is growing insecurity over cross-straits relations, and
the Obama administration remains largely indifferent. Its efforts at
economic engagement with Taiwan have been anemic and grudging.
Regarding security, Obama has not approved an arms transfer to Taiwan
in more than two years, violating the spirit if not the letter of the
U.S.-Taiwan Relations Act. Taiwan desperately needs hardware,
especially fighter jets and submarines. Yet, no help is on the
horizon.
• North
Africa nightmare: In battling transnational terrorism and promoting
regional stability, Morocco was a solid U.S. ally. But Washington has
so bungled the relationship the countries are now barely on speaking
terms.
And
everyone remembers “Benghazi,” but few are paying attention to
what’s happening in Libya now. It has devolved into a completely
failed state, worse than Somalia.
• Middle
East Meltdown: Countries in the Gulf Cooperation Council once stood
as a reliable firebreak against the expansion of Iranian meddling.
Now, the GCC is in the middle of a de facto civil war; Qatar is
funding the Muslim Brotherhood to destabilize Bahrain and Saudi
Arabia. Iraq is worse off than when Obama took office. A once
dependably pro-Western Jordan overwhelmed with refugees from Syria,
is now teetering. And through it all, the administration wastes time
“negotiating” with Tehran and brokering a non-existent
Palestinian-Israeli peace accord.
• Latin
America Civil War: Latin America is in turmoil, too, as socialist
states square off against nascent free-market democracies. Venezuela
is approaching failed state status. And the administration has been
worse than useless. Its top initiative seeks to force Columbia to
negotiate with the FARC, a narco-terrorist group that almost
destroyed the country and is now moving to fill the power vacuum in
Venezuela.
• Antarctic
Antics: At the bottom of the world, China is establishing a presence
that will allow it to make a grab for that continent’s resources.
Fighting over Antarctica’s abundance is still decades off, but
ignoring Beijing’s icy “battleground preparations” makes no
sense.
Each
one of these developments is unfortunate. Taken together, they are
tragic–and overwhelming proof of the failure of the Obama Doctrine.
That doctrine assumed that all foreign relations problems could be
fixed with “smart power.” They can’t.
Read
this and other articles with photos and links at Heritage Foundation
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