Center-Left Critique of Obama's Foreign Policy

By the editor-in-chief emeritus of The New Republic, Martin Peretz:

Cambridge Journal: Obama's Callous, Ineffective Foreign Policy Blunders Onward

Almost no one in America cares about foreign affairs, especially not for Barack Obama's foreign affairs. For he has made of almost his entire conduct of peace and war an amateurish mess, crude, provincial, impetuous, peaceably high-minded but stupid—and full of peril to the world, to its democracies, to the United States itself. If only he had the consistency of George McGovern, we would know that Obama is not really interested in other countries and movements friendly to us and our political ideas; actually, he has some sympathies for enemy states, as the 1972 Democratic candidate for president did for both the Soviet Union and North Vietnam. This is not Obama. He believes—or at least believed—that he can change the world by earnest talk with foreign leaders who share not a single philosophical tenet of egalitarian individualism or representative constitutionalism. Of course, it was not only flabby, earnest talk that he brought to the table. It was also a certain haughty sycophancy before alien potentates and despots whom he thought persuadable through blandishments and obsequy about just how central they were to world peace. Or to whatever.