The Source Of Our Foreign Policy Limits

Tom Friedman talks about our propensity to blame President Obama–

THERE has been a festival of commentary of late bemoaning the pusillanimous foreign policy of President Obama. If only we had a president who rode horses shirtless, wrestled a tiger or took a bite out of a neighboring country, we’d all feel much safer.

–but then goes on to put the blame on the president’s predecessors and the American public’s reaction to recent failed wars.

I’d argue that a lot of what makes America less active in the world today is a product first of all of our own diminished leverage because of actions taken by previous administrations. The decisions by the Bush I and Clinton teams to expand NATO laid the seeds of resentment that helped to create Putin and Putinism. The Bush II team not only presided over two unsuccessful wars, but totally broke with American tradition and cut taxes instead of raising them to pay for those wars, weakening our balance sheet. The planning for both wars was abysmal, their execution worse and too many of our “allies” proved to be corrupt or used our presence to prosecute old feuds.

Anyone who thinks that the American people didn’t notice all this, please raise your hand. . . Our biggest problem, though, is not Europe or Obama. Our biggest problem is us and our own political paralysis.

The fault lies not with our President (although he has made mistakes), but with ourselves.

By: Stuart Shapiro

Stuart is a professor and the Director of the Public Policy
program at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers
University. He teaches economics and cost-benefit analysis and studies
regulation in the United States at both the federal and state levels.
Prior to coming to Rutgers, Stuart worked for five years at the Office
of Management and Budget in Washington under Presidents Clinton and
George W. Bush.