#Obama Doctrine

Jeffrey Goldberg: The Obama Doctrine, R.I.P. – The Atlantic

Even before he became president, Obama worried greatly about slippery slopes in the Middle East. In Syria, he understood that Assad would most likely survive an American missile strike on his airbases; the day after such strikes ended, Assad, Obama

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Frederic C. Hof: A Humanitarian Intervention in the West Wing – Foreign Policy

There are, to be sure, risks associated with changing course and protecting civilians — at least some of them — from mass homicide. These risks cannot be swept under the carpet. Yet neither can the risks associated with leaving 100

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Eli Lake: Obama’s Foreign Policy Guru Is the ‘Blob’ He Hates – Bloomberg View

If Rhodes and Obama really want to challenge the foreign policy establishment, I suggest they dig up the second inaugural address from George W. Bush. In 2005, he boldly proclaimed that it would no longer be U.S. policy to support

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Noble Liars 2: “Clearly the world has disappointed him”

“He is a brilliant guy, but he has a real problem with what I call the assignment of bad faith,” one former senior official told me of the president. “He regards everyone on the other side at this point as

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…so who are the “noble liars” now?

When I asked whether the prospect of this same kind of far-reaching spin campaign being run by a different administration is something that scares him, he admitted that it does. “I mean, I’d prefer a sober, reasoned public debate, after

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David Samuels: The Aspiring Novelist Who Became Obama’s Foreign-Policy Guru – NYT

In the narrative that Rhodes shaped, the “story” of the Iran deal began in 2013, when a “moderate” faction inside the Iranian regime led by Hassan Rouhani beat regime “hard-liners” in an election and then began to pursue a policy

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Philip Gordon: Obama Should Have Bombed Assad… – The Atlantic

Goldberg: But you still believe a limited strike would have been the right thing to do? Gordon: I believed it, and I said so at the time. And this is what I thought the president thought as well. The president

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Lee Smith: A World Unmoored – The Weekly Standard

The purpose of America’s post-WWII foreign policy was to clarify a complicated and often dangerous world for the leaders of a large republic responsible for the life, liberty, and prosperity of its citizens by ensuring a degree of stability abroad.

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Defense and Defense Mechanisms

Diehl assesses the Obama Doctrine, or Jeffrey Goldberg’s Obama’s Obama Doctrine, as, in a word, neurotic – as much a psychological construct or defense mechanism as a policy – enabling the President minimize the importance of any setbacks, the alternative being emotionally intolerable.

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The Melancholic Anti-Interventionist

If the systematic application of the desired policy leaves even its proponents bitterly unsatisfied with and haunted by the tragedies and catastrophes it either produces or does nothing to avert, then its prospects may be dim. The main question may be which will prove intolerable first, the growing dissatisfaction, or the next catastrophe.

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