It’s obvious (at least to me), and doesn’t need to be said, except it does need to be said: Our foreign policy is a disaster. Look at the world today:
- Russia has taken territory from another country by force, i.e., Crimea from Ukraine, and nobody seems to care anymore.
- There is a war in Europe, with Russia actively supporting rebels who are fighting Ukraine. [Update: The U.S. has just said Russia is firing artillery from Russia into Ukraine. That is war.]
- A civilian airliner with almost 300 people on it was shot down as part of this war, almost certainly by Russian-supported rebels using Russian-supplied weapons, and it is unclear how much anybody cares, at least in terms of doing anything substantive.
- There is a war in the Middle East between Israel and the Hamas government in Gaza. Lots of people are dying in Gaza, and, if Hamas had its way, lots of people would be dying in Israel, too.
- The critical talks to control Iran’s nuclear capability didn’t get finished on time and the deadline has been put off for four months.
- France is getting ready to sell a warship to Russia in October that will allow Russia to more easily invade any nearby country with a coastline. (Just what we need: Russia being able to invade other countries more easily.)
- German relations with the U.S. are at about the lowest point they have been since April of 1945.
- Afghanistan only avoided collapsing into near-civil war among the good guys because John Kerry went there personally and had enough of a personal relationship with the various people to get a compromise agreed to.
- The ISIS extremists/terrorists in Iraq are, to the best of my knowledge, still out there, but any news of what is going on in Iraq is no longer in the papers – and not because it has gotten better but because there are so many other things going on.
- Ditto for the war in Syria.
Meanwhile, the President is spending his time flying to fund-raising dinners, even though he has said that he can tell the truth because he is not running for office any more. Josh Earnest, the President’s Press Secretary, said the White House doesn’t like to change the President’s schedule, for things like the shooting down of the Malaysian airliner, because he doesn’t want to "unduly alarm[] the American people or creat[e] a false sense of crisis". [See UPDATE below.]
The fact is there is a crisis. Lots of them. And John Kerry only has so much time, so the President needs to get involved, too. But he not only needs to get more involved. He also needs to do something more than issue threats. Look at one crisis: Ukraine.
The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this week that President Obama and Chancellor Merkel are not attacking Vladimir Putin personally because they want to keep channels of communication open and to avoid backing him into a corner. Huh? President Putin’s invading countries and passing out weapons to shoot down airliners, and we’re worried about backing him in a corner? President Obama never seems to worry about keeping the channels of communication open to Republicans in Congress. Why does he care about Vladimir Putin?
Russia/Putin needs to be stopped, and being nice isn’t working. We need to try tough. The problem is that President Obama has been accommodating so long that tough is going to be hard to pull off. President Obama is going to have to be tougher now, than if he had been firm the whole time. President Obama has to overcome the impression that President Putin has of him, i.e., that he doesn’t follow through on threats, before he can get President Putin to take him seriously.
This is true with our allies, too. If we are going to get them to do things that are hard for them to do, we are going to have to do things that are hard for us, too. How can we expect the French to cancel their warship sale to Russia, when we won’t increase our own defense spending? How can we expect Germany to put their natural gas supplies at risk, when we won’t approve the Keystone XL pipeline? It’s hard to get people to follow you, when you don’t follow through on red lines and when you talk about leading from behind.
It’s a lot like President Putin. Given our recent track record, getting our allies to follow us is going to be harder than if we had been consistently leading and following through. Some of them are going to think: Why should we believe the U.S. now? It’s not going to be easy, but we need to start. And we need to give them reasons to believe us and follow us.
The world – and we – have a problem. Lots of them. U.S. leadership, in action, not just talk, is what we – and the world – need. That’s going to take a change. And since can’t change our president for another 2½ years, we have to hope our president changes. We need it. The world needs it.
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UPDATE (7/25/14 1:15 pm): This quote was by Jennifer Palmieri, White House Communications Director; it was not by Josh Earnest. I apologize for the error.
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