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The Obama

Foreign Policy
The Obama Foreign Policy
by Walter Rhett
Actually it's pretty clear and easy to review (the Obama foreign
policy):
1. Punish terrorism. Do so by focusing on leadership targets,
intelligence, and small scale, quick strike actions. It has quietly
decimated much of al-Qaeda's leadership.
2. Allow citizens within states to determine the choices for governance
without setting up or backing satellite proxies, the old Western and
Soviet model. Messy, and chaotic, it has meant the US has stayed
hands-off (and military out) across North Africa, Central Africa,
Eastern Europe, and Western Asia. This has been the main focus of
his political opposition, at home and abroad--called weak and
ineffective by domestic critics; accused of hiding conspiracies by
foreign groups using America's former actions to further their goals.
3. Build coalitions under international authority engaging regional and
Western partners to meet specific humanitarian challenges, esp.
military threats. From Afghanistan to Libya, Syria, and Iran, Obama
has used NATO and the UN to block terrorist expansion, civilian
massacres, the use of chemical weapons against civilians, the
refinement of weapons grade uranium, with varying degrees of
success. He prefers sanctions to military force, and has been consistent,
if low key, in their use.
You may see these policy tools and strategies as failures or short
comings, but they are present, predictive, and on the table, visible. It's
is wrong to say these efforts, whatever you think, are not "clear."
Global systems don't change easily. Winners and losers invest deeply
in their maintenance, positions, and spoils. The style of play will not
change without new, well defined rewards.
Only China, among the global powers, offered new rewards and
created a foreign policy that served the scope of its interest--rather
than the transforming global vision of Obama. Before defining foreign
policy, the President needed to define American policy first, with clear
specifics about international conflicts and mutual economic
development with key regional countries important for stability and
future prosperity.
Note China has not engaged in any of the key Western and
African issues of terrorism, governance, weaponry, energy, and has
sought to build a coalition of partners with strategic resources in
commodities, services, or capital markets. In our own hemisphere, last
June, China arranged agreements with Costa Rica for coffee, oxhide,
and timber, becoming Costa Rica's second largest trading partner; and
deals with Trinidad-Tobago for trade agreements on bauxite in return
for help in expanding island-wide healthcare services. This took place
in our backyard.
The issue is not Obama's approach, but the lack of public-private
sector partnerships that advance a strategy of political economy within
foreign policy. China invests in railroads in Angola, mutually vital to
both infrastructures; we do not. Guess who will see global success?

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