Technically I think he’s complaining about how Israeli-Arab wars draw the US into hot conflicts, which in the last 60 years has been not true eight times and true exactly zero times. But whatever. As an illustration of Obama’s sullen annoyance with this messy “foreign policy” thing, which keeps getting in his way and distracting him from his project of transforming America into a statist utopia – elegant:
On the plus side he might not have that problem much longer. In just the three weeks he’s alienated India, had an alliance-threatening spat with Karzai, shown “sneering contempt” for Britain, and – part and parcel of his disregard for Europe in general – is said to have built “a wall” between the US and Germany. And of course there’s there’s the whole Israel thing.
This administration pays lip-service to “multilateralism,” but it is a multilateralism of accommodating autocratic rivals, not of solidifying relations with longtime democratic allies. Rather than strengthening the democratic foundation of the new “international architecture” — the G-20 world — the administration’s posture is increasingly one of neutrality, at best, between allies and adversaries, and between democrats and autocrats. Israel is not the only unhappy ally, therefore; it’s just the most vulnerable.
Difficult to understand how the international community’s menagerie of evil clowns and genocidal nutjobs got the impression that America “is there to be tested and defied.”
References and related after the jump…
References:
* Genocidal Maniacs And Useful Idiots Agree: James Baker Is Awesome [Mere Rhetoric]
* America’s Wounded Ally [Newsweek]
* President Obama needs to rethink the chill in Afghan relations [WaPo]
* Barack Obama treats Israel and Britain with sneering contempt [Telegraph]
* A Wall Separates Merkel and the Land of Her Dreams [Spiegel]
* Obama Wrecking US Diplomatic Credibility, Squandering Diplomatic Capital In The Middle East [Mere Rhetoric]
* Allies everywhere feeling snubbed by President Obama [Kagan / WaPo]
* Barack Obama: a question of respect [Telegraph]
Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* Diplomacy
* Democratic Politics
* Military News
