Thursday, April 17, 2014

Meandering Power

Robert W Merry has some interesting comments on the lack of strategic direction in American foreign policy. American presidents are blundering into situations they do not understand and making the world unsafe.

Saner heads would have understood just how dangerous this kind of activity can be. And so some questions intrude: Did anyone in the State Department inform President Obama that this was going on? If anyone had, would the president or his informant have understood the potentially incendiary nature of such diplomatic intrusiveness? Or was the president simply left in the dark, as Pfaff has suggested, while his minions engaged in activity destined to create an unnecessary crisis in U.S.-Russian relations and possibly unleash destabilizing ethnic tensions in a crucial corner of the world?

For historical perspective, it’s worth noting that we look back now with a certain disdain upon the heads of state grappling with events leading to World War I. Those events ended a century of relative stability and peace in Europe, and the men who let that grand epoch pass are seen in history as hapless, out of touch, even stupid. In fact, they weren’t stupid, but they were out of touch and that rendered them hapless in the face of events they didn’t understand.

President Obama and those around him aren’t stupid either, but they don’t seem to understand the nature of our time and the challenges posed by a fading era. They seem incapable of grappling with the kinds of broad historical questions posed by William Pfaff.

But the problem doesn’t reside only with the current administration. There seems to be a zeitgeist in play that retards the ability of our leaders and intellectuals to grasp the transformative nature of our time and hence the havoc besetting the globe. Pfaff is equally hard on George W. Bush and his father, George H. W. Bush, particularly regarding what he calls “the Muslim conflagration.” He writes: “Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Pakistan—in all of them, a President Bush, or President Obama, together with his accomplices, has passed their way, sowing annihilation."

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Several problems with ignorance in the higher echelons of the US government: 1) No one knows anything about Islam. For instance, what's the difference between a Shi'ite and a Sunni? American leaders don't know, but they put an army on the ground in Mesopotamia anyway. It's like intervening in Northern Ireland without knowing anything about Catholicism and Protestantism. Secularists don't think they need to know anything about religion because it's not important to them. 2) American Christians are utterly unconcerned about how US foreign policy affects the Church in the Middle East. I've lived there and I know. Try to tell them what effect their pet policies are having, and they'll tune you out or tear you to shreds. 3) Stupidity. Obama and the people around him actually are quite stupid. Their knowledge of basic economics would be insufficient to earn them a passing grade in my high school history class--and I'm a medievalist. Add that to their disdain for other people's religious beliefs (see Islam; see also African and Russian objections to homosexuality), and you have a serious problem. The hand on the tiller has been used mainly to pat itself on the back, and it is no longer steady.