U.S. Foreign Policy Cannot Be Built By Executive Orders

Official White House Photo by Pete Souza

Eliot A. Cohen. The Atlantic: A Reckoning for Obama's Foreign-Policy Legacy

Veterans of the last administration are learning a hard lesson: Policies constructed by executive order and executive agreement are just as easily blown up by them.

Embedded in any policy is some theory of victory—some explanation, no matter how inchoate or ill-considered, that explains why this might work. So too with President Trump’s decision to walk away from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the agreement with Iran so ungainly that even the acronym JCPOA seems elegant by comparison. The nominal theory of victory here is preposterous: that Iran will come to heel, retreat from its nefarious activities in the Middle East, end ancillary programs such as its ballistic-missile work that support the nuclear program, and permanently renounce its nuclear program in word and deed. Such behavior would be inconsistent with anything Iran has done in the past and would be a crushing humiliation that would jeopardize the very survival of the regime.

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WNU Editor: The Obama administration expected Hillary Clinton to win the Presidency .... and once sworn in to continue with President Obama's foreign policy. Hence the executive orders when it came to agreements like the Iran nuclear deal .... and the avoidance of gaining the approval of Congress for these actions. As we all now know .... this strategy has not not work, and the entire legacy of President Obama's foreign policy efforts are now gone. The above author hopes that since many of President Obama's foreign policy experts are young .... they will in time get back into power, and act to reverse what President Trump has done. I say good luck to that. The reason why President Obama avoided bringing his foreign policy initiatives to Congress is because he knew there was little support for it .... and even less in the American public. A new administration .... doing the same mistakes .... will only guarantee the same result.