Thinking Strategically

[Valin]

Via Meadia:

Walter Russell Mead

5/27/12

 

When it comes to American foreign policy, Via Meadia roots for the home team. We want things to go well for the United States of America, and that means we wish the incumbent and his foreign policy team every success. We don’t hesitate to celebrate the Obama Administration’s foreign policy successes when they get something right, and we also don’t believe in taking nasty potshots every time something goes wrong. A perfect game is even rarer in foreign policy than it is in baseball, and to have an active, global policy like the United States does pretty much ensures that something goes wrong at least once a day.

 

This administration has been at its best in Asia where, despite the occasional and inevitable slips, a lot of progress has been made. We’ve been less sanguine about the administration’s sally into Libya, however, which though it rid us of the Great Loon, has left an arc of instability across the north of Africa and has left stockpiles of weapons unaccounted for. The overthrow of the Loon was harder and took longer than those around the President seemed to expect, and partly because of that the after party has not been a lot of fun.

 

TAI editor and newly-minted Middle East blogger Adam Garfinkle thinks the administration is going to have more problems as the consequences of its Yemen strategy (or as Garfinkle would have it, Yemen non-strategy) unfold.

 

(Snip)