Is Iran Having A Great Obama Presidency ?

Foreign Policy Magazine Editor David Rothkopf

Real Clear Politics: Foreign Policy Magazine Editor David Rothkopf: "Iran Is Having A Great Obama Presidency"

WNU Editor: What makes these comments noteworthy is that it is coming from Foreign Policy Magazine Editor David Rothkopf .... his publication is read widely by the elites, and it reflects the opinion of many in foreign affairs. What's my take .... I would not say that Iran is having a "great Obama Presidency", what i would say is that U.S. reluctance to get directly involved in this new Middle Eastern conflict has given Iran a certain opportunity to dominate this part of the region Iraq .... but in view of the bloodshed and destruction that is now happening for the battle of Tikrit .... this opportunity may become fleeting with the passage of time.

Is The U.S. Heading Into Another War?

LOADING OSPREYS

Marines board MV-22 Ospreys before they take off from the flight deck of the amphibious assault ship USS Makin Island off the coast of Camp Pendleton, Calif., Feb. 23, 2015. U.S. Navy photo by Petty Officer 1st Class Ronald Gutridge

Paul R. Miller, National Interest: Are Americans Sliding Into Another War?

The current U.S. administration has wrapped up U.S. involvement in a mistaken war in Iraq (albeit on a schedule set by the previous administration, and with subsequent reintroduction of some U.S. military personnel into Iraq), has wound down U.S. involvement in a war in Afghanistan that had metamorphosed from a counterterrorist operation into a nation-building attempt (albeit only after an Obama-era “surge” and now with apparent second thoughts about how much longer the 13-year-old U.S. military involvement will continue), and has resisted pressure to throw U.S. troops into the civil war in Syria (albeit while employing other forms of U.S. military involvement, including airstrikes).

WNU Editor: The U.S. is currently involved in dozens of conflicts around the world .... so the U.S. is at war. But what makes the current situation unique is that most of these wars are low intensity .... albeit they do have the potential of exploding into a far more serious conflict.

With Allies Like This Who Needs Enemies

Doug Bandow, National Interest: Broken Hearts Club: 6 Allies America Needs to Divorce

It’s hard to get out of a bad relationship. The good times may be over and the once vibrant connection may be dead, but people just can’t admit that it’s time to say goodbye.

Countries have the same problem, especially the U.S. Washington has spent decades collecting allies like many people accumulate Facebook “Friends.” Virtually never, irrespective of the changed circumstances, does America drop an ally. Indeed, the less relevant the ties the more insistent U.S. officials become in demanding that the relationship be “strengthened” and “expanded.”

WNU Editor: I can add a few more countries to this list. But it is true .... having allies and building alliances is a very expensive proposition .... but when did the U.S. decide to be an empire with all of these obligations and commitments?

Is President Obama's Middle East Policy Based On 'Fantasy'?

Eli Lake, Bloomberg: Obama's Middle East Fantasy

Way back in the George W. Bush administration, his progressive critics used to call themselves members of the "reality based community." The phrase was first popularized by Ron Suskind in a lengthy criticism of Bush's so-called war on terror. Bush and his team were blinded by the moral certainties of ideology, whereas their critics understood the world as it is.

Reading through President Barack Obama's new 2015 National Security Strategy, I think it's time to resurrect the phrase, because this document bears very little relation to reality, at least in the Middle East.

WNU Editor: I believe that President Obama's policy towards the Middle East has always been the same ... stay away from their wars. Whether that is a strategy based on fantasy is open to debate .... but as Eli Lake in the above commentary very clearly comments on .... he believes that such a debate should start now.

Post-Cold War Caution And Prudence Is Now Coming To An End

Members of the armed forces of the separatist self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic gather near an armoured vehicle destroyed during battles with the Ukrainian armed forces in Vuhlehirsk, Donetsk region, February 4, 2015. REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov

Pat Buchanan, Real Clear Politics: U.S.-Russia Clash in Ukraine?

Among Cold War presidents, from Truman to Bush I, there was an unwritten rule: Do not challenge Moscow in its Central and Eastern Europe sphere of influence.

In crises over Berlin in 1948 and 1961, the Hungarian Revolution in 1956 and the Warsaw Pact invasion of Prague in 1968, U.S. forces in Europe stayed in their barracks.

We saw the Elbe as Moscow's red line, and they saw it as ours.

WNU Editor: There are times when I like reading a Pat Buchanan commentary .... this is one of those times.

Should U.S. President Obama Replace His National Security Team?

Pete Souza/White House

Leslie Gelb, Daily Beast: This Is Obama’s Last Foreign Policy Chance

The failure of Obama or Biden to show up in Paris made clear that most of the president’s team can’t be trusted to conduct U.S national security policy and must be replaced—at once.

WNU Editor: Leslie Gelb has been working and writing on Washington politics and foreign policy/national security for the past few decades .... but after reading his above commentary .... I have to wonder what has he been doing during the Obama Presidency. His call for President Obama to replace his staff is not going to happen and the reason why is simple .... President Obama's advisers are exactly like him .... that is why they are there. They think like him, they believe in his vision of the world, they believe in his policies, and more importantly .... they share the same view of how the U.S. should position itself in this world. Case in point .... when Nelson Mandela died .... President Obama's staff did not need to be told by President Obama that everything had to be cancelled .... and he had to be in South Africa in the next few days ... they just knew. Security considerations, flights, transportation, etc. .... not a problem .... the planning, logistics and timing were done within a few hours .... the implementation for the rest of the week. The end result was a successful trip ....at least in President Obama's eyes.

Flash forward to today .... by Friday the decision was made to hold a massive rally in France .... scores of dignitaries and world leaders immediately signaled their intention that they wanted to show up .... and no surprise .... timing, planning and logistics were implemented right away. But no word from the White House ... and the reason why was simple .... everyone knew that President Obama did not want to go. One of the cornerstones of his foreign policy has been his outreach to the Muslim world .... especially to the activist part of the faith .... and he was not going to throw it away by showing up at a rally supporting a magazine that enjoyed ridiculing Muhammad and the Muslim faith. His staff knew this. His Vice President knew it. His Secretary of State knew it. Everyone in the White House knew what was happening ... and why. Everyone but the U.S. main stream media .... including Leslie Gelb. On a side note .... the Europeans know why President Obama decided to not  show up .... and that is why his stature, reputation, and influence is never going to be same in Europe.

As Oil Prices Continue To Decline, Who Are The 'Losers And Winners'

‘Astonishing’ Shale Growth Bolsters US Power -- Financial Review/Bloomberg

A new age of abundant and cheap energy supplies is redrawing the world's geopolitical landscape, weakening and potentially threatening the legitimacy of some governments while enhancing the power of others.

Some changes already are evident. Surging US oil production enabled America and its allies to impose tough sanctions on Iran without having to worry much about the loss of imports from the Middle Eastern nation. Russia faces what President Vladimir Putin calls a possibly "catastrophic" slump in prices for its oil as its economy is battered by US and European sanctions over its role in Ukraine.

Read more ....

My Comment: U.s. and China are the big winners .... Venezuela, Iran, and Russia are probably the big losers, with Venezuela being the most vulnerable.

5 Foreign Policy Lessons

The Top 5 Foreign Policy Lessons Of The Past 20 Years -- Stephen Walt, Foreign Policy

From Russia to China to the United States, from hubris to ultimatums to power plays, the good, the bad, and the ugly of (recent) world politics.

Tell me, friend: Do you find the current world situation confusing? Are you having trouble sorting through the bewildering array of alarums, provocations, reassurances, and trite nostrums offered up by pundits and politicos? Can't tell if the glass is half-full and rising or half-empty, cracked, and leaking water fast? Not sure if you should go long on precious metals and stock up on fresh water, ammo, and canned goods, or go big into equities and assume that everything will work out in the long run?

Today's world is filled with conflicting signals. On the one hand, life expectancy and education are up, the level of violent conflict is down, and hundreds of millions of people have been lifted out of poverty over the past several decades. Private businesses are starting to take human rights seriously. And hey, the euro is still alive! On the other hand, Europe's economy is still depressed, Russia is suspending nuclear cooperation with the United States, violent extremists keep multiplying in several regions, the odds of a genuine nuclear deal with Iran still look like a coin toss, and that much-ballyhooed climate change deal between the United States and China is probably too little too late and already facing right-wing criticisms.

Read more ....

My Comment: These foreign policy lessons have been the rule since the development of the nation state .... not just the past 20 years.

An Analysis On The Geopolitical Impact Of Declining Oil Prices

Cheap-Oil Era Tilts Geopolitical Power to U.S. -- Bloomberg

A new age of abundant and cheap energy supplies is redrawing the world’s geopolitical landscape, weakening and potentially threatening the legitimacy of some governments while enhancing the power of others.

Some changes already are evident. Surging U.S. oil production enabled America and its allies to impose tough sanctions on Iran without having to worry much about the loss of imports from the Middle Eastern nation. Russia, meanwhile, faces what President Vladimir Putin called a possibly “catastrophic” slump in prices for its oil as its economy is battered by U.S. and European sanctions over its role in Ukraine.

Read more ....

My Comment: If we are entering a four or five-year cycle with oil prices in a general range of $65 to $80 a barrel .... the impact on countries like Venezuela, Iran, Nigeria, and Russia will be profound and negative. For a country like China .... totally dependent on oil imports .... the benefits will be enormous.

Faced With A Rash Of Global Crisis, Western Governments Are Stretched To The Limit

US Democratic presidential hopeful, Barack Obama, waves as he arrives to make a speech in front of the Victory Column in Berlin on July 24, 2008. Obama warned America could not quell violence in Afghanistan alone, and called on Europe for more troops and funding to defeat the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. MICHAEL GOTTSCHALK/AFP/Getty Images

Year Of Crises Stretches Militaries, Governments To Limit -- Reuters

(Reuters) - From a standoff with Russia to fights against Ebola and Islamic State, 2014 has pitted western policymakers against a scale of crises unparalleled in recent years.

The result, current and former officials say, has been a degree of overstretch in Washington, Whitehall and Brussels on a scale few can remember. The risk is that other danger signs get missed.

Even when officials say they know what needs to be done, an era of budget cuts means the required resources, particularly military, may simply not be there.

President Barack Obama took office wanting to move on from an era of international entanglements in Iraq and Afghanistan. But while large U.S.-led military interventions might be over, a period of multiple crises may only just be beginning.

"The world is changing in front of us," U.S. Army Chief of Staff General Ray Odierno told a military conference in Washington last month.

Read more ....

My Comment: So much for the optimism six years ago that many believed that then newly elected President Obama would bring to the international stage.

Is America’s War Against The Islamic State Quickly Turning Into A Quagmire

Kurdish refugees from Kobani watch as thick smoke covers their city during fighting between ISIS and Kurdish peshmerga forces on Oct. 26, 2014. Photo by Yannis Behrakis/Reuters

Obama’s Quagmire -- Fred Kaplan, Slate

America’s campaign against ISIS has already lost its way.

America’s war against ISIS is quickly turning into a quagmire.

A few signs of progress have sprung up in recent days. U.S. airstrikes have slowed down the Islamist group’s onslaught against the Kurdish town of Kobani in northern Syria. A much-cheered caravan of Kurdish peshmerga fighters is making its way from Iraq to join the battle.

But even if the Kurds push ISIS out of Kobani, what does that signify in the larger struggle? What happens next? And what is the Obama administration’s desired endgame and its path for getting there? These questions have no clear answers, and that speaks volume.

Read more ....

My Comment: This part of the world has been a "quagmire" since the beginning of civilization. A U.S./foreign intervention can only do so much .... in the end .... it is the people who live there who must decide on the future that they want.

Time Ran Out For President Obama On Syria

© Stringer/ Reuters

Time Is Running Out For Obama On Syria -- Jamie Dettmer, Daily Beast

The idea that U.S.-backed Syrian rebels defeat ISIS and force Assad to the negotiating table has absolutely nothing to do with what’s happening on the ground.

Only three days ago, President Barack Obama’s envoy to the Syrian rebels, retired Marine Gen. John Allen, explained confidently that the U.S. would help to train and equip Western-backed fighters to become a credible force that would compel the Assad regime to negotiate a political deal and end the four-year-long civil war.

Yeah. Right. The Obama administration’s plans have little or nothing to do with what is unfolding all too rapidly on the ground: Rebel brigades are demoralized, disintegrating, and fighting among themselves.

The Americans and their allies are carrying out a desultory air campaign in Syria that appears focused on support for the Kurds. Meanwhile, President Bashar al-Assad’s forces maintain a withering air offensive of their own on rebels and civilians alike in northern Syria.

Read more ....

My Comment: Time ran out on Syria three years ago when the civil war started .... and looking at the present moment .... I see no good options on the table for the U.S. (or anyone else) when it comes to Syria. The place has become a total disaster, and there is no political will in Washington (justifiably so in my opinion) to allocate the necessary (and enormous) resources to make a difference.

Shoud The U.S. Work With The Assad Regime And Iran To Defeat The Islamic State?

There’s Only One Way to Beat ISIS: Work with Assad and Iran -- Leslie H. Gelb, Daily Beast

The Obama administration has pulled together a coalition as ineffectual as it is unwilling. It's time to join up with the forces, however unsavory, that can do the job.

Earlier this week, outside Washington, the Obama team hosted senior military leaders from nations pledged to help fight the so-called Islamic State, in a mission the Pentagon is now calling “Operation Inherent Resolve.” Representatives from 21 of the 60-odd countries appeared. Everyone, of course, was too polite to inquire about the embarrassing number of absentees. Nor did they comment on how little these partners have contributed to the war effort thus far, or on the fact that no new serious help has been promised. Least surprising of all was the absence of the only two nations that could help fight the jihadis now and in a tangible form.

In the short term the only way to check ISIS, as the self-declared caliphate is widely known, is for the United States to work with Bashar Assad’s Syria, and with Iran. It is a tricky and perilous path, but there are no realistic alternatives.

Read more ....

My Comment: Is this where U.S. foreign/war policy is heading .... realpolitik with extremists as your allies with the understanding (and belief) that working with the devil that you know rather than the devil that you do not is preferable? I certainly hope not.

America's Five Biggest Foreign-Policy Fiascoes

U.S. soldiers salute during a mass reenlistment ceremony in a U.S. military camp in Balad, Iraq on Nov. 11, 2008. Thaier al-Sudani/Reuters

Mistakes Were Made: America's Five Biggest Foreign-Policy Fiascoes -- Robert W. Merry, National Interest

There were dubious decisions in the nineteenth century, but it was in the twentieth that misguided adventures were really in vogue.

The rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria has raised arguments on the part of some, including myself, that this ominous turn of events in the Middle East flows directly from the regional destabilization wrought by President George W. Bush’s 2003 invasion of Iraq, ruled by a brutal thug of a dictator who, nonetheless, was not part of the threat of jihadist Islam facing the West. Certainly, this presidential decision must rank among the five greatest foreign-policy fiascoes in American history.

That raises a couple questions: What are the other top-five foreign-policy fiascoes? And how should they be ranked within the top-five list?

Read more ....

My Comment: Is the Iraq War as the number one foreign policy fiasco? I am not sure. Iraq has throughout it's history been a place of conflict, war, and destruction .... in this context America's involvement is just a blip in Iraq's history .... and probably America's. But if it was up to me .... I would say that it was the Vietnam War that was the biggest fiasco. Ten times more U.S. soldiers were killed and wounded in Vietnam than in Iraq, the cost (in today's dollars) was far more expensive, and the conflict utterly ripped apart American society that is still impacting it today.

What Has Happened To U.S. Foreign Policy?

Official White House Photo by Pete Souza

The Meltdown -- Bret Stephens, Commentary

In July, after Germany trounced Brazil 7–1 in the semifinal match of the World Cup—including a first-half stretch in which the Brazilian soccer squad gave up an astonishing five goals in 19 minutes—a sports commentator wrote: “This was not a team losing. It was a dream dying.” These words could equally describe what has become of Barack Obama’s foreign policy since his second inauguration. The president, according to the infatuated view of his political aides and media flatterers, was supposed to be playing o jogo bonito, the beautiful game—ending wars, pressing resets, pursuing pivots, and restoring America’s good name abroad.

Instead, he crumbled.

As I write, the foreign policy of the United States is in a state of unprecedented disarray. In some cases, failed policy has given way to an absence of policy. So it is in Libya, Syria, Egypt, Iraq, and, at least until recently, Ukraine. In other cases the president has doubled down on failed policy—extending nuclear negotiations with Iran; announcing the full withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan.

Read more ....

My Comment: A brutal summary and analysis of President Obama's foreign policy.

Has The White House's Iraq Policy Backfired?

President Barack Obama and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki walk from the Oval Office for a joint press availability in the Rose Garden at the White House, Wednesday, July 22, 2009. Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy

U.S. Helped Push Iraq’s Politics To A Breaking Point, And Now Is Pushing Maliki Out -- Josh Rogin, Daily Beast

America’s rush to pressure Iraq’s political process may have backfired, analysts say—contributing to the crisis that threatens to tank the new government before it gets started.

President Obama has said that more U.S. help to Iraq in fighting ISIS depends on the Iraqis forming an inclusive government. But the American strategy to push the Iraqi political process appears to be backfiring, analysts say—and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has decided to fight to the end to hold onto power.

U.S. officials said late Sunday night that Maliki was being unreasonable when he accused Iraqi President Fouad Massoum of engaging in a “coup” by not selecting a new prime minister by Sunday midnight, the end of a constitutionally mandated deadline. Massoum’s failure to act leaves Maliki as the only choice for prime minister, according to Malik’s logic, a proposition U.S. officials sharply disagree with as they try to show Maliki the exit.

Read more ....

My Comment:It is true that President Obama's Iraq policy deserves to be criticized, but the lion share of blame must rest on the shoulders of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and the Iraqi people who voted for him constantly.

Update: In search of Obama's Iraq strategy -- Nick Childs, BBC

Will The U.S. Be Able To Face The Rise And Challenge Of The Islamic State?

The Islamic State’s Challenge To The United States -- David Ignatius, Washington Post

Warnings from U.S. officials about the terrorist Islamic State that has established a haven in Iraq and Syria sound ominously like the intelligence alerts that preceded al-Qaeda’s attack on Sept. 11, 2001.

Richard Ledgett, the deputy director of the National Security Agency, said at the Aspen Security Forum last week that the “most worrisome” threat he’s tracking are the thousands of foreign fighters training with the Islamic State. Lisa Monaco, the White House counterterrorism adviser, said at the same gathering that the al-Qaeda spinoff poses a potential danger to the U.S. homeland.

The lights seem to be blinking red, but the United States is holding its fire for the moment, despite some calls from congressional hawks to bomb the Islamic State terrorists before they get any stronger. This delay reflects a debate within the Obama administration about how and when to fight the self­proclaimed jihadist caliphate.

Read more ....

My Comment: So who is to blame for the rise of The Islamic State .... if David Ignatius is to be believed .... it is everyone's fault .... but no blame on the current occupier of the White House. This is the problem with Washington today ..... the political/media class who run Washington always go to great lengths to protect themselves .... and when something goes wrong .... it is everyone's fault but not their own. This is especially the case right now .... and as the world implodes into numerous wars and conflicts, shifting and disintegrating alliances, coupled with economic fears that the bubble that we have been living through for the past four years is about to burst .... I sense a growing worry (if not panic) from those who see themselves as the guardians of U.S. power and media influence. They all know that the rise of the Islamic State is going to be one of many challenges that the U.S. is going to face in the next few years .... but what is interesting is that they all know (and fear) that there is a very good chance that the U.S. is not going to be up to the job to face them.