For the first time in a decade, Americans are beginning to think seriously about foreign policy; But are they too late?
At some point between 2006 and 2008, the American people decided to turn their backs on the world. Between the seeming futility of the war in Iraq and the financial collapse of 2008, Americans decided they’d had enough.
In Barack Obama, they found a leader who could channel their frustration. Obama’s foreign policy, based on denying the existence of radical Islam and projecting the responsibility for Islamic aggression on the US and its allies, suited their mood just fine. If America is responsible, then America can walk away. Once it is gone, so the thinking has gone, the Muslims will forget their anger and leave America alone.
Sadly, Obama’s foreign policy assumptions are utter nonsense. America’s abandonment of global leadership has not made things better. Over the past seven years, the legions of radical Islam have expanded and grown more powerful than ever before. And now in the aftermath of the jihadist massacres in Paris and San Bernadino, the threats have grown so abundant that even Obama cannot pretend them away.
As a consequence, for the first time in a decade, Americans are beginning to think seriously about foreign policy. But are they too late? Can the next president repair the damage Obama has caused? The Democrats give no cause for optimism. Led by former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential hopefuls stubbornly insist that there is nothing wrong with Obama’s foreign policy. If they are elected to succeed him, they pledge to follow in his footsteps.
On the Republican side, things are more encouraging, but also more complicated.
Republican presidential hopefuls are united in their rejection of Obama’s policy of ignoring the Islamic supremacist nature of the enemy. All reject the failed assumptions of Obama’s foreign policy.
All have pledged to abandon them on their first day in office. Yet for all their unity in rejecting Obama’s positions, Republicans are deeply divided over what alternative foreign policy they would adopt.
This divide has been seething under the surface throughout the Obama presidency. It burst into the open at the Republican presidential debate Wednesday night.
The importance of the dispute cannot be overstated.
Given the Democrats’ allegiance to Obama’s disastrous policies, the only hope for a restoration of American leadership is that a Republican wins the next election. But if Republicans nominate a candidate who fails to reconcile with the realities of the world as it is, then the chance for a reassertion of American leadership will diminish significantly.
To understand just how high the stakes are, you need to look no further than two events that occurred just before the Wednesday’s Republican presidential debate.
On Tuesday, the International Atomic Energy Agency voted to close its investigation of Iran’s nuclear program. As far as the UN’s nuclear watchdog is concerned, Iran is good to go.
The move is a scandal. Its consequences will be disastrous.
The IAEA acknowledges that Iran continued to advance its illicit military nuclear program at least until 2009. Tehran refuses to divulge its nuclear activities to IAEA investigators as it is required to do under binding UN Security Council resolutions.
Iran refuses to allow IAEA inspectors access to its illicit nuclear sites. As a consequence, the IAEA lacks a clear understanding of what Iran’s nuclear status is today and therefore has no capacity to prevent it from maintaining or expanding its nuclear capabilities. This means that the inspection regime Iran supposedly accepted under Obama’s nuclear deal is worthless.
The IAEA also accepts that since Iran concluded its nuclear accord with the world powers, it has conducted two tests of ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear weapons, despite the fact that it is barred from doing so under binding Security Council resolutions.
But really, who cares? Certainly the Obama administration doesn’t. The sighs of relief emanating from the White House and the State Department after the IAEA decision were audible from Jerusalem to Tehran.
The IAEA’s decision has two direct consequences.
First, as Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said Wednesday, it paves the way for the cancellation of the UN’s economic sanctions against Iran within the month.
Second, with the IAEA’s decision, the last obstacle impeding Iran’s completion of its nuclear weapons program has been removed. Inspections are a thing of the past. Iran is in the clear.
As Iran struts across the nuclear finish line, the Sunni jihadists are closing their ranks.
Hours after the IAEA vote, Turkey and Qatar announced that Turkey is setting up a permanent military base in the Persian Gulf emirate for the first time since the fall of the Ottoman Empire a century ago. Their announcement indicates that the informal partnership between Turkey and Qatar on the one side, and Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic State on the other hand, which first came to the fore last year during Operation Protective Edge, is now becoming a more formal alliance.
Just as the Obama administration has no problem with Iran going nuclear, so it has no problem with this new jihadist alliance.
During Operation Protective Edge, the administration supported this jihadist alliance against the Israeli-Egyptian partnership. Throughout Hamas’s war against Israel, Obama demanded that Israel and Egypt accept Hamas’s cease-fire terms, as they were presented by Turkey and Qatar.
Since Operation Protective Edge, the Americans have continued to insist that Israel and Egypt bow to Hamas’s demands and open Gaza’s international borders. The Americans have kept up their pressure on Israel and Egypt despite Hamas’s open alliance with ISIS in the Sinai Peninsula.
So, too, the Americans have kept Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi at arm’s length, and continue to insist that the Muslim Brotherhood is a legitimate political force despite Sisi’s war against ISIS. Washington continues to embrace Qatar as a “moderate” force despite the emirate’s open support for the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas and ISIS.
As for Turkey, it appears there is nothing Ankara can do that will dispel the US notion that it is a credible partner in the war on terror. Since 2011, Turkey has served as Hamas’s chief state sponsor, and as ISIS’s chief sponsor. It is waging war against the Kurds – the US’s strongest ally in its campaign against ISIS.
In other words, with the US’s blessing, the forces of both Shi’ite and Sunni jihad are on the march.
And the next president will have no grace period for repairing the damage.
Although the Republican debate Wednesday night was focused mainly on the war in Syria, its significance is far greater than one specific battlefield.
And while there were nine candidates on the stage, there were only two participants in this critical discussion.
Sens. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz faced off after weeks of rising contention between their campaigns.
In so doing, they brought the dispute that has been seething through their party since the Bush presidency into the open.
Rubio argued that in Syria, the US needs to both defeat ISIS and overthrow President Bashar Assad.
Cruz countered that the US should ignore Assad and concentrate on utterly destroying ISIS. America’s national interest, he said, is not advanced by overthrowing Assad, because in all likelihood, Assad will be replaced by ISIS.
Cruz added that America’s experience in overthrowing Middle Eastern leaders has shown that it is a mistake to overthrow dictators. Things only got worse after America overthrew Saddam Hussein and supported the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi and Hosni Mubarak.
For his part, Rubio explained that since Assad is Iran’s puppet, leaving him in power empowers Iran. The longer he remains in power, the more control Iran will wield over Syria and Lebanon.
The two candidates’ dispute is far greater than the question of who rules Syria. Their disagreement on Syria isn’t a tactical argument. It goes to the core question of what is the proper role of American foreign policy.
Rubio’s commitment to overthrowing Assad is one component of a wider strategic commitment to fostering democratic governance in Syria. By embracing the cause of democratization through regime change, Rubio has become the standard bearer of George W. Bush’s foreign policy.
Bush’s foreign policy had two seemingly contradictory anchors – a belief that liberal values are universal, and cultural meekness.
Bush’s belief that open elections would serve as a panacea for the pathologies of the Islamic world was not supported by empirical data. Survey after survey showed that if left to their own devices, the people of Muslim world would choose to be led by Islamic supremacists. But Bush rejected the data and embraced the fantasy that free elections lead a society to embrace liberal norms of peace and human rights.
As to cultural meekness, since the end of the Cold War and with the rise of political correctness, the notion that America could call for other people to adopt American values fell into disrepute. For American foreign policy practitioners, the idea that American values and norms are superior to Islamic supremacist values smacked of cultural chauvinism.
Consequently, rather than urge the Islamic world to abandon Islamic supremacism in favor of liberal democracy, in their public diplomacy efforts, Americans sufficed with vapid pronouncements of love and respect for Islam.
Islamic supremacists, for their part stepped into the ideological void without hesitation. In Iraq, the Iranian regime spent hundreds of millions of dollars training Iranian-controlled militias, building Iranian-controlled political parties and publishing pro-Iranian newspapers as the US did nothing to support pro-American Iraqis.
Although many Republicans opposed Bush’s policies, few dared make their disagreement with the head of their party public. As a result, for many, Wednesday’s debate was the first time the foundations of Bush’s foreign policy were coherently and forcefully rejected before a national audience.
If Rubio is the heir to Bush, Cruz is the spokesman for Bush’s until now silent opposition. In their longheld view, democratization is not a proper aim of American foreign policy. Defeating America’s enemies is the proper aim of American foreign policy.
Rubio’s people claim that carpet bombing ISIS is not a strategy. They are right. There are parts missing from in Cruz’s position on Syria.
But then again, although still not comprehensive, Cruz’s foreign policy trajectory has much to recommend it. First and foremost, it is based on the world as it is, rather than a vision of how the world should be. It makes a clear distinction between America’s allies and America’s enemies and calls for the US to side with the former and fight the latter.
It is far from clear which side will win this fight for the heart of the Republican Party. And it is impossible to know who the next US president will be.
But whatever happens, the fact that after their seven-year vacation, the Americans are returning the real world is a cause for cautious celebration.
@ Bear Klein:
To avoid child support fees.
@ honeybee:
Male Panda’s eat their offspring if hungry.
Bear Klein Said:
Bears are evil: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-12-21/leonardo-dicaprio-in-bear-attack-scene/7046654
@ Bear Klein:
I won’t worry.
@ honeybee:
More evil people than Bears I suspect.
Polls are a snapshot in time. What is important in polls is the trend. The trend currently is Hillary beating Trump. Could this change over the next 11 months to change this for sure.
Latinos not going to the polls in Florida and Colorado would help. Get your Trump friends on election day to get them all to go to party and hope they do not vote by absentee ballot. That would help.
German Jews were more German than the Germans, more American than Americans, more Polish than the Poles, more Catholic than the pope, more liberal than liberals, more communist than Marx, more antisemitic than the non-Jewish antisemites. It goes on and on and on. Something terribly wrong happens when Jews become part of the diaspora! Ignorance of history is BLISS and frequently FATAL. Six Millions paid for it not long ago.
@ bernard ross:
BR, I agree with your findings and sentiments. But reality tells me — and should tell you — that Clinton will not be indicted, either during her presidential campaign or even after the national election next November.
Concentrate on what is, and forget about what ought to be but isn’t.
By the way. I really do not trust the political judgement of just about 90-95 percent of the American Jews. Not only their liberalism, which I find explainable but insufferable, but from my observation that they never learn anything that contradicts their ingrained emotions and biases.
Arnold Harris, Outspeaker
@ Bear Klein:
Regarding Grizzly Bears in Israel: Would a Rabbi fare better.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFD34aUpeyM
@ Bear Klein:
BK, none of the polls are very reliable in purporting to prove which potential Republican candidates can beat Clinton in the general presidential election 11 months from now.
During coming months, all but the top handful of Republican candidates will fold up their campaigns for lack of buyer interest. As that process unfolds, the likeliest outcome is that Trump will continue to beat Cruz, Rubio, and Carson. Even increasingly-pathetic Jeb Bush, regardless of this TV advertising campaign, pulls only about 5-6 percent of the Republican vote.
Concurrent with the above political maneuvering described above, there is strong likelihood that more ISIS-provoked suicide terrorism events will take place in the USA,, along with credible threats of such terrorism designed to shut down public school systems, airline flights, large-scale public events of all kinds, and much else.
In the face of all that, Trump is beginning to be regarded in all parts of the country as an admittedly nasty fellow whose tough-minded solutions for US border control and exclusion from US entry of Moslems until some certain means are found for the government to determine which Moslems are likely to involve themselves in terrorism. Thus, ISIS itself may be the instrument that will help Trump beat Clinton in the general election.
In any case, most people most Americans neither believe in nor trust Clinton, and these people now include most or all of the Bernie Sanders backers. And all this in contrast to Trump’s success in building political support among blue-collar people who have mostly voted Democrat in various elections.
So stay tuned. It isn’t over until it’s over.
Arnold Harris, Outspeaker
I dont see much point to electing the establishment republicans as they have not dented Obama one bit and appear to ok everything he wants with their budget…. plus they and he voted together for the TPP which will only further the economic decline of the average american citizen while even further enriching the corporate elite at the top. I think that obama and the establishment republicans are puppeted by the same crew. One you remove ideological rhetoric from the 2 we can see that the major legislation on immigration, exporting of US economy, muslims, is promoted by both together. the TPP collusion was slipped through while americans watched Iran and the muslims. I think the gop happily sold everything in return for this law which is their only real interest.
Trump is not a team corporate elite player, he is unpredictable to their interests, whereas Hillary and the establishment gop will give them everything they want so to them it makes no difference which party is elected as long as its one of their puppets. They dont want a dent in importing cheap foreign labor and firing americans, or in the business of selling their foreign goods in the US while growing the economy of communists china’s centrally planned economy at 10% per year, or in protecting through the TPP their corporate designs to capture the chinese consumption market which they built on the backs of the american consumption engine….. Hillary or the repubs is the same shite.
Getting Hillary indicted should be the real goal.
Bear Klein Said:
true, but what you failed to notice when I first posted that link above was that only last month the same poll from fox showed Trump with a 5 point lead over hillary and that the figures are regularly changing. Also, the graph on the same page shows clinton Trump traveling closely together for 3 months.
see the link I posted here, you just quoted from the same link
All six polls from various pollsters shown below on realclearpolitics.com have Clinton beating Trump: See link to verify.
Ignorance is BLISS but can be FATAL.
The immense majority of American DO NOT know that PC was created by the USSR for the ONLY purpose of SILENCING people.
The American Socialo-communists have adopted and used very effectively this weapon to subjugate the 1st amendment.
Fox News including O’ Reilly is abiding by PC when it comes to the Islam-ism problem. The rot is everywhere in the western world. This is like collective suicide from the “elite”. With no code of Ethics there is nothing to defend or fight for.
one thing is absolutely certain: none of the experts predicted Trumps meteoric rise in such a short time… they have no idea how many blue collar democrats would cross the line to vote for trump. Also, independents always decide the election, and they are not factored in.
as recently as one month ago(see link) fox news had Trump 5 points ahead of hillary. It changes each time. Plus Fox is part owned by the saudi prince who made a deal with Murdoch, who just severely criticised trump as a racist and has already proven to have meddled in the fox news stories which paint muslims in a negative light. He has a vested interest in destroying Trump as do the the republican establishment whose elite prefer Hillary to Trump
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/us/general_election_trump_vs_clinton-5491.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xj1-tVh1Pl4
@ watsa46:Attorney General would need to charge Hillary Clinton. That is Obama’s person -not happening! FBI director is independent but Attorney General – not at all.
The Dir. of the FBI may have the last word or last move!!!
@ babushka:
But neither Rubio & Cruz, Will Farrell’s “Miami law firm”, can stop Donald Trump from winning most of the Republican primary elections around the country starting in February. New Hampshire more or less for certain, and Iowa is a toss-up. Most of the other late winter/early spring primaries are in Trump country.
The Rasmussen polling group says it’s too little/too late for the Republican leadership and the various wannabe candidates to derail Trump. Only the voters can do that. But I’m sure they won’t. So it will be Trump and Clinton next November. Unless Clinton is indicted for whatever/whenever, which is unlikely as long as Obama controls the US Department of Justice.
Arnold Harris, Outspeaker
Cruz is a conservative. Rubio is a functionary for Corporate America supported by the despicable weasels who just rubber stamped the entire leftist Obama agenda. Cruz will support Israel come hell or high water. Rubio will support Israel until the Chamber of Commerce orders him to do otherwise. Cruz is a treasure. Rubio is a charlatan.