{"id":26842,"date":"2014-07-16T07:53:12","date_gmt":"2014-07-16T12:53:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=26842"},"modified":"2014-07-16T07:53:12","modified_gmt":"2014-07-16T12:53:12","slug":"consistency-in-us-foreign-policy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2014\/07\/16\/consistency-in-us-foreign-policy\/","title":{"rendered":"Consistency in US foreign policy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nick Gillespie<\/a> on why the shift from Bush-era policies in the Middle East and elsewhere to Obama-era policies wasn’t so much a shift as a continuation:<\/p>\n

Obama\u2019s foreign policy certainly hasn\u2019t lacked for the use of force. It has, however, lacked for successes, as became clear during an unintentionally hilarious yet telling State Department press conference in May. State\u2019s Jen Psaki said<\/a> that, in her view, \u201cthe president doesn\u2019t give himself enough credit for what he\u2019s done around the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCredit for what?\u201d one reporter interrupted. \u201cI\u2019m sorry, credit for what?\u201d The others in the room started laughing.<\/p>\n

Around the same time, NBC\u2019s Richard Engel, who is not known as a staunch critic for the administration, was asked to name a few countries with which relations have improved under Obama. His reply? \u201cI think you would be hard pressed to find that…I think the reason is our allies have become confused.”<\/p>\n

First under Bush and now under Obama, the one constant in American foreign policy is a lack of any conceivable constraint on whatever the president deems expedient at any moment in time. This is disastrous, especially when it comes to military and covert actions, because it precludes any serious public discussion and prioritization.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not just bad for the U.S. It\u2019s also bad for our allies, who have no framework by which to structure their own actions and expectations. The president is allowed to both declare red lines and then to ignore them when they are crossed, to dispatch troops or planes or supplies according to whim. In all of this, Obama in no way represents a break from Bush, but perfect continuity.<\/p>\n

As The Daily Beast<\/em>\u2019s Eli Lake wrote for Reason<\/em> back in 2010<\/a>, the roots of this particularly strident new sense of imperial power can be traced back to the authorization of use of military force (AUMF) signed into law just a few days after the 9\/11 attacks.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust as President Bush said the 9\/14 resolution gave him the wartime powers to detain, interrogate, capture, and kill terrorists all over the world,\u201d wrote Lake, \u201cso too does President Obama.\u201d Until recently \u2014 and because of pushback from characters such as Rand Paul, his fellow Republican Sen. Mike Lee, and Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden \u2014 Congress has been especially deferential to all aspects of executive power when it comes to foreign policy and war-making.<\/p>\n

The results are plain to see in the still-smoldering battlefields across the globe and the rapidly deteriorating situations in places as different as Ukraine, Egypt, and even the U.S. border with Mexico. When the executive branch has carte blanche<\/em> to act however it wants, it can\u2019t act effectively.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nick Gillespie on why the shift from Bush-era policies in the Middle East and elsewhere to Obama-era policies wasn’t so much a shift as a continuation: Obama\u2019s foreign policy certainly hasn\u2019t lacked for the use of force. It has, however, lacked for successes, as became clear during an unintentionally hilarious yet telling State Department press […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[84,370,13],"tags":[158,432,668,256,257],"class_list":["post-26842","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government","category-middle-east","category-usa","tag-barackobama","tag-diplomacy","tag-georgewbush","tag-september11","tag-terrorism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-6YW","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26842","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26842"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26842\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26843,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26842\/revisions\/26843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}