The ObamaForeign Policy

The Obama Foreign Policyby Walter Rhett

Actually it's pretty clear and easy to review (the Obama foreign policy):

1. Punish terrorism. Do so by focusing on leadership targets, intelligence, and small scale, quick strike actions. It has quietly decimated much of al-Qaeda's leadership.

2. Allow citizens within states to determine the choices for governancewithout setting up or backing satellite proxies, the old Western and Soviet model. Messy, and chaotic, it has meant the US has stayed

hands-off (and military out) across North Africa, Central Africa, Eastern Europe, and Western Asia. This has been the main focus of his political opposition, at home and abroad--called weak and ineffective by domestic critics; accused of hiding conspiracies by foreign groups using America's former actions to further their goals.

3. Build coalitions under international authority engaging regional and Western partners to meet specific humanitarian challenges, esp. military threats. From Afghanistan to Libya, Syria, and Iran, Obama has used NATO and the UN to block terrorist expansion, civilian massacres, the use of chemical weapons against civilians, the refinement of weapons grade uranium, with varying degrees of success. He prefers sanctions to military force, and has been consistent,if low key, in their use.

You may see these policy tools and strategies as failures or short comings, but they are present, predictive, and on the table, visible. It's is wrong to say these efforts, whatever you think, are not "clear."

Global systems don't change easily. Winners and losers invest deeply in their maintenance, positions, and spoils. The style of play will not change without new, well defined rewards.

Only China, among the global powers, offered new rewards and created a foreign policy that served the scope of its interest--rather than the transforming global vision of Obama. Before defining foreign policy, the President needed to define American policy first, with clearspecifics about international conflicts and mutual economic development with key regional countries important for stability and future prosperity.

Note China has not engaged in any of the key Western andAfrican issues of terrorism, governance, weaponry, energy, and has sought to build a coalition of partners with strategic resources in commodities, services, or capital markets. In our own hemisphere, last June, China arranged agreements with Costa Rica for coffee, oxhide, and timber, becoming Costa Rica's second largest trading partner; and deals with Trinidad-Tobago for trade agreements on bauxite in return for help in expanding island-wide healthcare services. This took place in our backyard.

The issue is not Obama's approach, but the lack of public-private sector partnerships that advance a strategy of political economy withinforeign policy. China invests in railroads in Angola, mutually vital to both infrastructures; we do not. Guess who will see global success?