Obama's Worldview Is A Toxic Mix Of Policy Failures

December 30, 2014

Obama's Worldview Is A Toxic Mix Of Policy Failures

By JOHN BOLTON
INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY

This is typically a time to compile the "biggest news stories" of the year ending and make predictions for the one upcoming. This time, however, in foreign and defense policy, both the retrospective and prospective lists are quite short.
In fact, for the last six years, and almost certainly the next two, the biggest news is Barack Obama's systematic unwillingness to advance U.S. national-security interests around the world. His record marks him as the only president since at least Franklin Roosevelt who has not emphasized protecting America as his highest priority.
Obama's worldview is a toxic mix combining distrust of our power (especially the politico-military variety) and an appallingly wide-eyed naivete. He focuses on national security only when he has no choice, such as when presented with a clear opportunity to eliminate Osama bin Laden.
Even where Obama acts strongly, as in the surge in Afghanistan, he has signaled clearly that he was actually of two minds by simultaneously announcing the surge's end date.
Or he acts inconsistently, as with North Korea's recent hacking of Sony Pictures' computers while all but ignoring that country's ongoing nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs. Of course, Pyongyang's nuclear and cyberwarfare capabilities are not disconnected in Kim Jong Un's mind, even if they are in Obama's.
Most concretely, Obama's military budgets have fallen dramatically, nearly $1.5 trillion below Bush administration projections, even after removing the Iraq and Afghanistan war costs from the comparison.
Of these cuts, the effects of sequestration (resulting from the 2011 budget deal, a catastrophic Republican political and philosophical mistake), while only a comparatively small part, are still not yet over.
Obama boasts that he has ended conflicts where the American public has grown weary. But, in fact, our fellow citizens respond to presidential leadership in international affairs.
Public opinion polls are not blocks of granite. When presidents fail to explain foreign threats and the necessary responses to them, the public can be excused for believing that these dangers have diminished, especially when the opposition party fears taking the subject on or confronts a rising isolationism within its own ranks.
The real problem with both Obama's defense cuts and his abysmal leadership is his systematic weakening of America's deterrence capabilities. We protect U.S. interests best by dissuading potential adversaries from even thinking about mounting challenges.
When they see retreat or incompetence, however, they calculate lower risks and greater opportunities, thus increasing threatening behavior. Weakening American capabilities therefore does not enhance the prospects for peace but diminishes them.
The consequences of Obama's personal indecisiveness and his ideological view that American strength increases international tension and conflict are grave. Both U.S. allies and adversaries perceive a weaker, less-attentive U.S. across the world's geographic regions.
And make no mistake, even small and medium-sized countries focused on their own regions carefully monitor America's performance globally. They believe, rightly, that Washington's policy in one area reveals much about our government's thinking worldwide.
The results of applying Obama's worldview for six years are only too apparent. The Middle East and North Africa are descending into anarchy, with Iran's nuclear and ballistic-missile programs proceeding unchecked. Obama wants to restore full diplomatic relations with Cuba and has hinted at doing the same for Iran.
Long-standing international boundaries are disappearing as terrorist groups such as the Islamic State are literally creating new states out of existing ones, and countries like Libya and Yemen are dissolving day by day.
Israel and our Arab friends (such as Jordan and oil-producing Arabian Peninsula nations) believe Obama has all but abandoned stopping Iran or the growing terrorist threats.
The list is nearly endless:
Russian military adventurism in Ukraine, China's belligerent territorial claims in the South and East China Seas and bending the knee to leftist caudillos in Latin America like the Castro brothers.
To be sure, the global collapse in oil prices has harmed Iran, Russia, Venezuela and others — outcomes we can all appreciate, but ones hardly due to Obama, any more than lower gasoline prices' stimulus to America's economy had anything to do with his domestic economic policies.
The systematic weakening of U.S. global influence is thus more than a year-end feature story. It requires a sustained national debate on what our proper place in the world should be.
Do we believe American strength is necessary to sustain our way of life, or are we part of the problem? We did not adequately debate this existential question during the 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns, and we have paid a devastating price.
If we fail to do so in the already-launched 2016 campaign, we have only ourselves to blame.
• Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.