Sunday, January 8, 2017

President Obama Has Not Presided Over A ‘Retrenchment’ In U.S. Foreign And War Policy

President Barack Obama is photographed through the window as he speaks in the Oval Office during a conference call at the White House in Washington, June 2, 2014.

Daniel Larison, The American Conservative: Obama Hasn’t Presided Over ‘Retrenchment’

Kori Schake tries to keep the myth of “retreat” and “retrenchment” under Obama alive:

Once in office, Obama made it clear that his commitment to retrenchment extended much further. Time and again, he sought to limit or reduce U.S. involvement in conflicts overseas, even when circumstances changed in ways that led many—including some of his closest national security advisers—to advocate a more robust use of force.

When we review Obama’s record in detail, we see that he was usually unwilling to involve the U.S. as deeply in new conflicts and crises as hawks would have liked, but that isn’t what retrenchment means. He doesn’t have a “commitment to retrenchment,” and hasn’t presided over retrenchment. If he had, we could then debate whether that was appropriate and successful, but it never happened. I suspect hawks have to rail against the imaginary version of Obama’s foreign policy, because his real one consists of doing many of the things that they wanted him to do. If Obama’s foreign policy record is not very good, it is because he wrongly listened to the advice of interventionists too often rather than too little, and so we are treated to a fictional story about how “retrenchment” produced the failures that have actually come from intervention and meddling.

Read more ....

WNU Editor: When President Obama took the oath of the Presidency in 2008, the major U.S. wars were in Iraq and Afghanistan (and they were tempering down), and U.S. foreign military advisers were involved in only a handful of conflicts (i.e. Colombia, the Philippines, etc.). Today .... the Middle East has exploded with U.S. forces involved in numerous situations, the Afghan war is going badly, and U.S advisers are currently involved in over 30 conflicts and disputes (and growing). And while many of these conflicts have nothing to do with the U.S. .... the U.S. decision to get involved was done by President Obama .... and it is now his legacy. Will a President Trump pursue the same policy .... or a policy of retrenchment .... I do not know. President-elect rump's campaign rhetoric was always signalling a desire to reverse this trend .... I can only hope that he sticks to his better angels.

1 comment:

Caecus said...

12 days to go