Obama is being criticised for mishandling and failing on foreign policy issues such as Syria and now the Ukraine debacle. However, how do we define failure? Neither Afghanistan nor Iraq can be called great unqualified successes by any criteria at all.
For Obama it appears as though it has been Russia to get her way while the US has fumbled and lost. And yet, outright war through international intervention in Syria was avoided even though the brink had been reached. Is that a failure in itself? And was it not quite a feat of sleight of hand if you like for Obama to wriggle out of his “red line” over the use of chemical weapons?
Now again in the Ukraine. For all the posturing and propaganda taking place it appears again that war will be avoided. Even though here Obama has been using strong language and threats against Russia, the threats have been confined to economic sanctions (which would probably be just as bad for Europe as for Russia). Also NATO will convene to discuss situation, but no military action even hinted at. Is that a failure?
It does appear that Obama wants to avoid war and foreign interventions, of the kind that have destroyed American prestige and made a mess of the American economy. However, he does have to contend with the “looney right” (to paraphrase the old “looney left” designation).
A lot of the rhetoric is quite appalling in that how can you defend Israel’s right to defend itself, or the Turkish invasion of Cyprus to protect Turkish Cypriots and yet condemn Russian intervention to protect Russian citizens in the Crimea? Another untenable aspect is that here we do have a coup d’etat, against an elected President where the new government (usurpers?) verge on the extreme right even Nazi disposition and kick off with banning Russian, where a very large part of the population is Russian.
Can Obama be that whacky? G.W. Bush was indeed that whacky and worse. But not Obama. I believe his main goal is to reverse the whole gung ho let’s intervene policy of the US and to do this he is doing the reverse of “Speak softly and Carry a big stick”, in order to achieve this goal. He has to carry or pander to the “looney right” while at the same time take action totally different from that expected or even demanded by a large section of public opinion. It is not easy and he will be criticised, but if he manages to turn this around and avoid war, it will have been a great success, though perhaps one not as obvious as the benefits will undoubtedly be.
Afternote: Let us not forget Colin Powell’s excellent retort to Madeleine Albright’s criticism. This was when Colin Powell was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Albright Foreign Secretary. She upbraided him saying, what is the use of having the biggest and best army in the world if you are not going to use it? And he answered, wisely, So you don’t have to use it.
What happened thereafter in American foreign policy has proved how wise and prescient he was.