Geee Posted September 30, 2014 Share Posted September 30, 2014 Human Events: President Obama’s speech at the United Nations last week was “an important turning point in American foreign policy — and in his presidency.” That’s the verdict of Brookings Institution scholar and former Clinton White House aide William Galston, a Democrat who has not been an unqualified admirer of this Democratic president’s foreign policy. Whether Obama’s decision to launch air strikes against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria and Khorasan terrorists is a turning point, it was at least a move in the direction of a tradition in American foreign policy that has been conspicuously lacking in his administration. That tradition was christened by Walter Russell Mead in his 2001 book, “Special Providence,” as the Jacksonian Impulse, one of four that have together shaped American foreign policy since the founding of the republic. The others, named after American leaders, are the Hamiltonian, Wilsonian and Jeffersonian traditions. Jacksonians, like their namesake, Andrew Jackson, are generally not much interested in foreign policy. But when Americans are attacked, they respond with righteous fury and a determination to utterly destroy the enemy. Franklin Roosevelt invoked that tradition when in his Pearl Harbor speech he said, in a line that drew not just applause but whoops and hollers, “The American people, in their righteous might, will win through to absolute victory.” Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Draggingtree Posted October 2, 2014 Share Posted October 2, 2014 How To Make And Keep PeaceA new book discusses why America keeps losing the peace and embroiling itself in international war. By David P. Goldman OCTOBER 2, 2014 “To Make and Keep Peace: Among Ourselves and with All Nations,” by Angelo M. Codevilla. Hoover Institution Press, 248 pages, $24.95. To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune, Lady Bracknell observed in “The Importance of Being Earnest,” but to lose both looks like carelessness. To have lost the peace three times in the past century suggests something worse than carelessness in American foreign policy. Woodrow Wilson set the stage for World War II by making the best the enemy of the good when negotiating the resolution of World War I. Franklin Roosevelt’s naïveté about the Soviet Union set the world adrift into the Cold War. And now a succession of mistakes following the fall of Communism has left America flailing. The overwhelming American majority that favored foreign interventions after 9/11 has melted, yielding isolationism unseen since the 1930s. How did it come to this? One political party or the other may blunder, but disasters on this scale can be achieved only by consensus. Angelo Codevilla contends that a self-perpetuating foreign policy elite, http://thefederalist.com/2014/10/02/how-to-make-and-keep-peace/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chickadee Posted October 2, 2014 Share Posted October 2, 2014 Very good read. Thanks, @Draggingtree. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Draggingtree Posted October 2, 2014 Share Posted October 2, 2014 Foreign Policy President Needed: Any Republicans Qualified?TeamAmerica October 2, 2014 Barack Obama seems too rigid, narrow-minded, and ideologically obsessed with transforming America to learn from his foreign policy failures. As such, I think we can assume that our enemies — China, Russia, Iran, ISIS, and North Korea — have all taken his measure and will aggressively pursue their interests via political/military aggression in the near future. If that happens, the next president will be handed a mess in foreign policy, as well as a looming debt crisis. (Hillary, recognizing this, is furiously trying to simultaneously distance herself from Obama’s disastrous policies, http://ricochet.com/foreign-policy-president-needed-any-republicans-qualified/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now