Bin Laden's killing aside, his foreign policy has all been waffle, dither and drift – with a trail of acts of dismaying expediency.
Simon Tisdall
The Guardian, Tuesday 4 October 2011Candidates run on hope. Incumbents run on their record. But Barack Obama, lining up for a second term at the White House next year, has little to offer on either score. The heady optimism of 2008 has dissipated. At home, Obama is primarily associated with hard times: only 34% of voters approve of his handling of the economy, according to a recent poll. Abroad, his presidency has come to stand for impotence and incompetence. He promised new beginnings; what he has delivered, for the most part, is waffle, dither and drift.
If this verdict seems harsh, take a quick tour round the globe. Everywhere the pillars of American superpower are crumbling. The old habit of hegemony, formed in the postwar decades and confirmed in 1989 as Soviet power imploded, is fading as fast as a Honolulu sunset.
Part of the explanation is faltering industrial and financial clout, reflecting the rapid rise of rivals like China and India. But that is compounded by another central element: Obama's persistent failure to stand up, in practical, substantive ways, for the values, beliefs and interests he so eloquently espouses.
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Amid multiple disappointments, one dismaying act of expediency stands out: Obama's open-ended threat to veto UN recognition of a Palestinian state. After the three-year runaround handed out by Israel's last-ditcher, "no surrender" prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, Obama had the chance to deliver a symbolic blow for peace, something surely right up his street. But with a wary eye on the 2012 campaign, he just couldn't do it. Under Obama, the empire does not strike back. It strikes out.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/oct/04/barack-obama-foreign-policy-presidency