Another Obama Straw Man

A False Foreign Policy Alternative, part of "What Obama Got Wrong in the State of the Union," Daily Signal, January 12, 2016. "President Obama offered his usual false alternative between occupying and rebuilding “every country that falls into crisis” (an option that literally no one is proposing), or agreeing with his foreign policy. Putting it that way is a cheat, not a choice. But let’s take the president at his word, which is that he wants the U.S. to “help remake” the international system that the U.S. built after 1945. Even he doesn’t seem sure about this, because a few lines later, he suggests instead that we should be seeking to strengthen that order, not remake it. And a president more grounded in history might wonder if it’s wise to want to remake the order: from 1815 to 1918 to 1945 to 1991, the system has been at its most flexible after the world has been exhausted by a major war, which isn’t what any of us want. Nor did the president suggest a single measure that would genuinely re-make the world order: from fighting terrorism to complaining about ungoverned spaces to lecturing Russia to talking about trade deals, his proposals (or rather, his applause lines) were all old hat. But yet, if his goal really is to remake the order, he’s actually doing a good job of it. That order was grounded on U.S. pre-eminence – but from Ukraine, to Syria, to Iran, it’s American weakness, not its strength or its leadership, that’s on display. A world order without American leadership would indeed be a new one. But it’s not one that most Americans, or most people around the world, would like."