The New World Disorder

[WestVirginiaRebel]

National Review Online:

John Brennan, Chuck Hagel, and John Kerry will be confirmed. The three will provide a force-multiplying effect on the Obama foreign policy of disengagement. The chameleon Brennan will be very different from David Petraeus at the CIA; Hagel is no circumspect Leon Panetta; and there was a reason why the appointment of Hillary Clinton as secretary of state was greeted with praise in a way John Kerry’s will not be. The trio is less competent than their predecessors, but also perhaps more representative of a country on its way to a $20 trillion national debt and a “lead from behind” foreign policy of managed decline.

Let us take stock of the world since 2008. Reset with Russia was an abject failure; and relations with Vladimir Putin have never been frostier — and pettier, as even the U.S. adoption of Russian orphans has now ended. Nothing is more counterproductive than to lecture a proud rival nation from a position of looming financial and military weakness.

China remains China: an enigma, as liberals wait for its new wealth to translate into political reform, while conservatives expect instead that Chinese profits will more likely lead to a powerful authoritarian military eager to challenge America. The more Obama talks of global arms reduction and a nuclear-free world, coupled with a lower U.S. profile, the more likely South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan will be to make contingency plans to go nuclear.

Not since the end of World War II has the Mediterranean world been such a mess. On the northern shore, the insolvent Spain, Italy, and Greece threaten to bring down the entire European Union. None of the three can continue to borrow as before, nor apparently can they cut back enough to remain solvent. None has a military to speak of — in a neighborhood increasingly dangerous.

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Obama muddles through into a second term.