The Collapse of Obama’s Diplomacy

You are also in a protected group so tread carefully.

Thanks Starry.

I should have said "adieu", considering. Oh well!

Or maybe, more to the point, a right-wing Israeli flavor.

They seem to be deriding the Obama administration for seeking peaceful solutions rather than taking hard-line stances.

here we are able to discuss them without the thought police tasering us.

We shouldn't have to preface every post with "we voted for Obama but ...". That is understood. Critique of policy is allowed, and it is especially allowed in this group.

this is just the French version. It is not typically a hawkish magazine unless I've missed something.

This summary leads me to believe they are critiquing Obama vs. previous administrations. Definitely critical in the area of foreign policy and terror - and I am wondering if they are simply seeing him not as strong in negotiating as a Bill Clinton for example:

"It is also true that the Obama administration has taken an opposite course to the mistakes and the adventures of George W. Bush in Iraq and Afghanistan, while continuing with the same contestable methods regarding the war on terror. But by changing doctrines, Barack Obama has in passing given up the role that has belonged to the United States in world affairs for 70 years. The extent of the consequences is yet to be seen, even if they are already felt from Kiev to the China Seas."

Exactly how it reads to me.. hand wringing of attempts to engage in peaceful diplomacy rather than engaging militarily.. please, without directly saying so, it would seem the writer is bemoaning peaceful diplomacy.

I'm no apologist or cheerleader for this administration.. it must be acknowledged however that there are a million "fires" Obama is attempting to put out all at once. These efforts maybe impossible to achieve, given all of the elements he's forced to contend with.

That would be since World War II.

If the US is slowly relinquishing it's role as the world's policeman, this will create some anxiety in a lot of our so-called allies (like the French). We have the greatest military spending in the world, and it would be missed.

On the other hand, maybe diplomacy and peace would become the new normal if no one is enabling military confrontation everywhere!

But we have little Reagans prancing in the halls of Congress reminding us what we need to do.

Much more socially progressive than we are by a long shot.

But historically the US has been subsidizing and bailing them out since WW I (and even Viet Nam).

Where can we find a big dumb brother to watch out for us a while we conduct self-absorbed social experiments?

And the only thing they have ever given us in return is Anthony Bourdain.

What they did to Vietnam going back to about 1880; what they did to people on Devil's Island; what they did in North Africa, etc.

Not that I would hold us out as paragons of virtue, of course.

Anyone besides crazy ole' tin foil hat me ever wonder if the Culinary Institute of America was/is actually a CIA front? LOL! Wikipedia says it was founded in 1946.. perfect timing, n'est c'est pas?

I kid, i kid..

I have deep criticisms of our U.S. foreign policies and geopolitical machinations, but I don't see it from this writers perspective at all.





As an aside, I tried to figure who this "Watching America" organization was, impossible from it's website, claims to be "neutral" when obviously it isn't. I noticed a "Blue Republican" logo sponsor which I've never heard of before. I suspect it's a Neo-Conservative organization.. or tied to that milieu of Neo Cons tied the Foreign Relations Council etc. Could be wrong.

always find it interesting to see the stories from other countries. I thought the logo was just an ad (you'll notice a wide variety of ads on DU too if you sign out or aren't a star member) but maybe I'm mistaken and they have been formally bought out by somebody.

I think Jack had the same feeling after reading the line re Iran and their nuclear armaments. So you definitely aren't alone in your assessment.

Personally until the recent moves in Venezuela and Ukraine (and leaking re TPP) I had been ok with Obama and foreign policy. He is quieter than Bill Clinton though and that may have an impact - Bill had his photo ops with middle eastern leaders shaking hands and we haven't had that with Obama.

I also think yallerdawg's read on France was really great from a common sense perspective and likely accurate.

I'm happy to hear the variety of opinions - thanks for weighing in!

ETA - what I have found on wiki:

Watching America
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Watching America Watching America logo.gif
Web address www.watchingamerica.com
Type of site News website
Available language(s) English
Launched 2005

Watching America is a website that publishes translated foreign articles from foreign newspapers into English. It was launched in 2005 and founded by Robin Koerner. Watching America states its goal is "to reflect as accurately as possible how others perceive the richest and most powerful country in the world."

The site posts newly translated articles up on a daily basis, along with a link to the original article. The translations are done by native speakers of the relevant languages. It currently translates articles from Arabic, Armenian, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Dutch, French, German, Hebrew, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Turkish, and Urdu.

The website has been linked by Foreign Policy, The Guardian, Der Spiegel, The Christian Science Monitor as well as cited in various published popular books and academic sources as a source.

I was headed over there but as it so often happens, got distracted on other topics and didn't follow up.

It's interesting, we're hearing a lot of "voices" from outside of the U.S. (as well as internally) expressing extreme disappointment with Obama's "soft" approach to conflicts.. whether regarding Syria, to Iran, to the Crimea, Nigeria and on and on. we drone where we can get away with it, Pakistan, Yemen, Somali and elsewhere no doubt, which is absolutely unacceptable to many of us.

On the other hand Obama has so far refused to be baited into outright military interventions (vis a vis launching invasion/bombings/storm trooping) a lot of imperialistic talk, but no actual military attacks, which I applaud, but so many are salivating for him to do, here in the states and abroad.

What I think I'm reading and hearing, is a sort of bemoaning that the U.S. isn't behaving in it's traditional "exceptionalist" manner, and shame on us. it's been years since I've followed the Foreign Relations Council war hawks spouting off their policies and recommendations on anything. But as it happens, on the eve of the Crimea referendum, the sitting members of the panel on Leon Panetta's institute's conference were all practically sobbing, cued with Panetta's opening remarks "We Lost Crimea".

Hopefully I can be forgiven for any momentary lapse of open minded thought with regard to opinions which seem straight out of the mouths of William Kristol and his ilk.

Having said all that.. I DO really appreciate being made aware of an array of thought especially from out side the country.. it's important for many reasons, in seeking to further and broaden my understanding of divergence of world views.. And this is a website, I've never seen before, it appears that Noam Chomsky is featured in the archives.. so I look forward to exploring that place more..

oh yeah, regarding the "Blue Republican" logo, it does look like an ad on second view.. there's "Ending Left vs Right" meme attached. Interesting.

we want that in this group. No red baiting helps us keep the group think out, but we definitely are interested in socialist progressive ideas for the future. Happy reading