Every world leader’s foreign policy goals comprise what the press and historians label his “doctrine.” What is the Obama Doctrine?
At the end of the recent nuclear summit, Obama spoke of nuclear proliferation and the Middle East, saying, “It is a vital national security interest of the United States to reduce these conflicts because, whether we like it or not, we remain a dominant military superpower. And when conflicts break out, one way or another, we get pulled into them.”
The Obama Doctrine seeks to avoid the burden of the latter by reducing America from the former.
Obama’s utopian goal is a world without nuclear weapons. And though U.S. lives are being spent to defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan, Obama said last year that the war in Afghanistan isn’t about victory:
Monday: Weakening America starts with emasculating intelligence agencies
Tuesday: Inside the Obama Doctrine for American decline
Wednesday: Putting on blinders about the future
Thursday: Obama’s dance with missile defense and American security
Friday: A critical failure of leadership
Charm offensive isn’t working
As he proved in his Cairo speech last June, Obama’s foreign policy toward nations that sponsor terrorism limits us to relying on his charm to end that practice.
He declared Iraq a “war of choice,” and distinguished it from Afghanistan, a “war of necessity” which America would fight and then leave. He praised democracy but said no nation should impose a system of government on another, effectively quashing the idea that America would stand with those who want freedom from Middle Eastern despotisms just as we did the with Polish people in the 1980s.
Directed to Iran, Obama said, “I understand those who protest that some countries have weapons that others do not. No single nation should pick and choose which nations hold nuclear weapons.” In effect, he was saying America had no right to deny Iran those weapons.
The war terror-sponsoring nations wage against us is partly kinetic and partly ideological. We cannot win without defeating the ideology that is behind every Islamic terrorist from Osama bin Laden to U.S. Army Major Malik Nadal Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter. But Obama is in the process of surrendering in the ideological war.
According to news reports, Obama’s new National Security Strategy will remove all terms that could refer to Islam such as “jihad” and the word “Islam” itself. Why? According to a Fox News report, it’s only business.
“Do you want to think about the U.S. as the nation that fights terrorism or the nation you want to do business with?,” asked National Security Council staffer Pradeep Ramamurthy.
Why isn’t the former an incentive to the latter?
– Jed Babbin
“I’m always worried about using the word ‘victory’ because, you know, it invokes this notion of Emperor Hirohito coming down and signing a surrender to MacArthur.” (Hirohito didn’t walk the deck of the USS Missouri, his ministers did.)
Obama acts in disregard of historical fact and fails to pursue America’s best interests. In too many instances, he has chosen to cower, in others contravening every principle America has stood for since July 4, 1776.
Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have agreed to the Islamic states’ position that, until Israelis and Palestinians are at peace, there can be no peace anywhere else in the Middle East. Obama now hopes that, if he can force Israel to agree to the creation of a Palestinian state, an Arab coalition will help him pressure Iran to give up its nuclear program.
But with the exceptions of Jordan under King Hussein and Egypt under Sadat, the Arab states have never recognized Israel’s right to exist. The fact that the Palestinians have never renounced terrorism and continue to insist that Israel has no right to exist makes peace impossible until they do.
Nevertheless, Obama seeks to force Israel to cease settlements in Jerusalem and the West Bank and agree to an independent Palestinian state. When Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu visited the White House in March, he was treated as if he were a rebellious teenager.
When Netanyahu tried to explain why he wouldn’t agree to a cessation of settlements, Obama walked out on Netanyahu to eat dinner, telling him to advise Obama if he had changed his mind. Netanyahu left without having been accorded the diplomatic courtesies Obama grants America’s enemies.
If Obama wanted to generate an Israeli-Palestinian agreement, he would insist that the Arabs and the Palestinians recognize Israel’s right to exist as a precondition to negotiations. But he won’t, because he has decided Israel is the obstacle to peace.
Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai is no Thomas Jefferson, and Obama is no Henry Kissinger. Kissinger used back-channel private communications to considerable success. Obama is a public scold.
At the outset of the Afghanistan troop surge, Obama set a date for the beginning of the end of the counterinsurgency in Afghanistan: July 2011. Obama must know his political deadline is unattainable, but he continues to insist on it.
When Obama visited Karzai in March, he ripped the Afghan president for corruption and for failing to match America’s military effort with rapid political progress. And then leaked all of that to the press.
Nationalist Karzai replied in belligerent speeches, condemning the foreign presence in Afghanistan, even threatening at one point to join the Taliban.
Last March, in violation of his nation’s constitution, Honduran President Manuel Zelaya scheduled a referendum to to allow him to remain in office permanently. The Honduran Supreme Court held the referendum illegal and ordered Zelaya’s arrest. The military subsequently exiled Zelaya in what the Obama administration labeled a coup d’etat.
Siding with Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez and Cuba’s Castro regime, Obama tried to mediate Zelaya’s return. Obama’s policy told the world that it can no longer count on America to defend freedom.
This season is Obama’s “nuclear spring.” He has signed a new disarmament treaty with Russia, revised America’s nuclear strategy, and convened a nuclear summit.
In none of the three, has he accomplished anything with regard to the nuclear threats of Iran and North Korea or nuclear proliferation.
The new treaty came at the time of Obama’s new nuclear posture statement which promised America won’t perform nuclear tests or build new nuclear weapons. The treaty may face stiff opposition in the Senate because it bars modernization of our nuclear arsenal which is critical to maintaining it.
So what is the Obama doctrine? A diplomat buys and sells, trading one concession for another. An appeaser grants concessions without getting anything in return. Obama is feeding the crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.
Jed Babbin was deputy undersecretary of defense under President George H.W. Bush. He is the author of several bestselling books including “Inside the Asylum,” and “In the Words of Our Enemies.”
