Finally an article not following the official boot-licking line (like Drezner or Rothkopf). They are too quick to put the winding down of the Afghan and Iraqi wars into the success column... but wait: didn't Obama make the same promises three years ago? Now he is making them again. Do we have to give him credit for wasting three years scratching his buttocks? Did we gain anything during these years? None. Did we have to pay the ever-increasing bills of war. Sure. So why is he claiming credit for the same thing he already claimed it for, three years ago?

As for Libya and the Arab Spring, better wait and see. Tunisia just had a nice Islamist government, something the US is now routinely despises. I doubt a real regime change in Egypt, as Mubarak's comrades are already firmly in power. The backlash from an ultra-secular Quaddafi may well be another Islamist government.

Other points - China, Guantanamo, the cooling relation with indispensable powers like Russia, India, Brazil - should be included in Obama's failure list.

This op-ed in strikingly similar to Thomas Friedman's op-ed in today's New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/26/opinion/barack-kissinger-obama.html?_r=1&hp

Looks like Mandelbaum is not the only academic Friedman is collaborating with lately (not really, of course, Walt has been somewhat unimpressed if not critical of Friedman on many occasions including in his new NI article)

Last spring, President Bush ridiculed Obama's promise to negotiate with U.S. enemies. Obama rebutted that if Republicans have a problem with meeting with enemies then they can explain why they have a problem with John F. Kennedy, because that's what he did with Khrushchev.

The meeting of Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev offered the opposite lesson. Kennedy intellectually understood appeasement, as Obama does. JFK's magna cum lade Harvard thesis was on Appeasement at Munich.

Kennedy said afterward that the Soviet premier "just beat the hell out of me." Khrushchev walked away from the meeting characterizing Kennedy as "too intelligent and too weak." He soon challenged Kennedy as he had not Dwight Eisenhower. The Berlin wall was built a few months later. Kennedy told aides "a wall is a hell of a lot better than a war." War almost came the following year with the Cuban missile crisis.

The Bay of Pigs made America look feckless. But when Khrushchev met with Kennedy, the Soviet premier decided the president was feckless as well.

Kennedy once said, "let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate." Indeed. Absolute hawkishness offers only aggression to dissuade war. But as Kennedy learned with Khrushchev, premature dovishness can also undercut peace by inviting aggression.

I think Obama commenting on how working with France would be easier than working with the Republicans is a concerning comment. France is renowned for staying out of debates and looking into far too much detail on certain points. Not a good move to start naming countries and referencing them in this way, especially in regards to foreign policy. It kind of highlights the concern many had, Obama focus on the USA not other nations.

If Obama spent the same amount of time and money working on a Global policy with other nations that untitled decide to support and fund mutual causes, it would do wonders for America and it's international relations, unfortunately I don't think foreign policy is designed to please the masses, just the ones that matter.

Climate change, the facts are very clear on this one. The world has heated up and had ice ages many times in its life, Al Gore was almost convincing until we find he has invested interests in trading carbon offsetting with businesses. It's just a cash cow and reason to mine/frak in previous untouched areas of natural beauty and tax the people in new ways. Don't get me wrong, waste is pointless when so many are with nothing, but that’s what a foreign policy could be based on.

Regards,

Peter Smit

Continuing from my previous post. I would caution Walt to draw too many hard and fast conclusions regarding N. Korea's operations. It seems to me that the US is keenly interested in staying in the region. We have a long history of false flag attacks, and the details on the sinking of the S. Korean Chenonan sub are murky. While only conspiracy theorists have suggested the US may have conducted this operation, they have been more accurate than the main stream press. (we now know we went to Iraq for oil, Afghanistan for minerals and the oil pipelines)

Finally, you say we had little to do with helping the world economy. However, you seem to totally ignore the $trillions we loaned to EU banks through the Fed. Only an audit of the Fed exposed that, I suppose you missed it/forgot. I'm no fan of Obama, but your list, and the very self serving, and cumbersome, one item per page is incomplete and cynical. Put it on one page, let us review it without notes.

Putting libya into the failure column is wrong, walt cant even come up with a proper reason for it except "gee, hum, it might not work out in the future".

Maybe, if it doesnt then one may put it into the failure column but so far it has indeed been quite successful, considering it now to be a foreign policy failure is disingenuous.

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This is only because we have eliminated it from being used as a platform from which to launch attacks against the west by occupying it.

This will not last however because the threat has simply gone south of the Durand Line into Pakistan. It will come RIGHT BACK within a year of our departure.

The reason we are "stuck" is because we don't have the political cojones to hurt Pakistan for its support of the Taliban.

If Pakistan needs to go South (as Walt says) or down the toilet for its support of the Taliban, we should hasten that demise. That is the only lasting solution to this problem.

1) Climate Change - We have been and still are the largest polluter and a firm believer in that everyone else is much worse.
2) Israel-Palestine - Nothing has happened since Oslo. It is not our fault. Jewish lobbying groups did it all.
3) Iran - The only thing we have done right about and received positive rewards from Iran was Operation Ajax which overthrew an elected government and installed Pahlavi who resembles Gaddafi in many ways. There is no way we can get it right again because we have made no mistake.
4) Afghanistan - It is Soviet's fault. Soviet did not finish her job. Now we have to do it. Why didn't Russioa help us now?
5) Pakistan - Damn it! Why are they now no longer so useful as during Cold War? Incomprehensible.
6) Iraq - What else to do there? We can't continue bombing Iraqis until they come to their good sense. Besides we might not have enough money.
7) Libya - Qaddafi is gone. We are happy.
8) North Korea - Harry Truman should have nuked China. Instead he signed an armistice. What can we do but to adhere to armistice? North Korea has the bombs. So do India, Pakistan and Israel. Besides, we have BIGGER bombs.
9) World Economy - That's Wall Street's job. Besides, what do the world know about economy? Without us, there is no such a thing as world economy.

So, what is empty? What the heck is Stephen Walt talking about? I don't see no failure. We are just fine. Obama is as great as any other president we had and will have.

I get laid off work, my wife loses her job, and all I hear on the news is doom and gloom.

Can we please have some good news soon.

And as for the presidents pledge on climate change in 2008, well he's a politician, they say what they mean at the time, and then change it when it suits them.

Actually, this one would merit an evaluation by itself as Obama did no less than introducing a new kind of warfare. Is it good or bad? Idea for a new post, Mr. Walt?

I firmly believe that it is bad. The main drawback of drone warfare is its secretive, irresponsible nature. The Obama administration take full advantage of it. They claim huge credit for "successes" (when some kind of big-name terrorist is killed), but failures (when civilians are killed) are kept secret. Why is it a bad thing? Because there are no accountable, responsible personnel, whoever failed due to incompetence or else can easily get on, without answering for the failures.

Habeas corpus, anyone? When attacks are carried out, it is always against "militants", "suspected terrorists" or even "suspected insurgents". Based on a Wiki article (it is not reliable, I know), around 1.600-2.600 people have been killed by drone strikes so far in Pakistan alone. No one has been tried, no one has been convicted, killing thousands based on suspicions is a crime against humanity.

Based on the OBL mission, it is possible to pinpoint a suspected terrorist and capture him even on foreign soil. Then the use of an underdeveloped, generally unreliable technology to hunt down enemies, causing huge collateral damage is harmful. True, it is less risky and maybe cheaper than a drone strike, but isn't the life of hundreds (tens? thousands?) of innocent civilians worth it?

I did not voted Obama...so i see this like something normal..Apply for a job on internet, we pay 15-20$ per hour, read here: ho.io/workathome

I hate the right. Obama admittedly oversold himself for his first 4 years in office. "Yes we can" is one of the dumbest slogans considering the diametrically opposed positions of the left and right in US politics. There is nothing of great importance that you will succeed in if the political atmosphere is such that the opposition party will shut you down no matter what. Consider the fact that Obama did well in most of the areas he had full control over. The places he failed (including the top ten above) were policy choices in which he had to deal with some second party. In most of these cases, the second party was not cooperative. The loony who calls himself the prime minister of Israel is one example. The American right in the debt debates is another. It makes me furious when people then turn around and blame Obama. Blame the right people ffs.

The author of this article does touch on this at the end of the article and I'm glad about that, but a casual foreign policy reader who glances at the article titles will get a very bad impression on foreign policy in Obama's tenure.

I'm disappointed with Obama, as is everyone else, but its mostly because he oversold himself. Truth is, the US could have gone seriously downhill in his 4 years if he had mismanaged things. He didn't do an amazing, groundbreaking job, but give him credit nonetheless for keeping things somewhat stable.

I see Libya as a good test case for those folks (ie Bill Clinton and Al Gore) who so badly wanted Saddam Hussein gone but were unwilling to do anything about it. So now Qadaffi is gone, we have pulled chocks on the operation, and now have zero presence in the "now what" aftermath of a longtime strong man removed from power. Iraq went to hell in a handbasket even with 100,000 boots on the ground. Let's wait and see what happens with no adult supervision around and watch how Iraq might have played out had we decided to pull out after Dubya landed on that flat top. Give this a couple of years, combine that with whether or not Iran declares itself a nuclear power and see how long Karzai can stave off the Taliban once the last American troop has flown out of the 'Stan and then we'll be able to make a fair evaluation of Obama's foreign policy.

There is no way to know how Obama did with his foreign policy, because there has not been enough time. He did kill Osama, but there is not enough data of how things have become to know. Of course we can criticize him left and right for what he did and didn't do, but lets give it at least another year before we go ahead and promote or denounce him. Regardless, he has been in office in a tumultuous time with the financial crisis and collection agency. Lets not jump to conclusions just yet is all I ask.

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