Barack Obama has risked US credibility in the Middle East

Jeffrey Goldberg’s brilliantly composed portrait of Barack Obama’s foreign policy mindset in the The Atlantic is a landmark achievement. It also helps to explain why the US is today a halting and uncertain power in global politics.

Mr Obama will leave office with important international achievements in place, among them the Iran Deal, a historic climate change pact and the Asia and Europe trade agreements. He has also conducted himself with grace and dignity in office.

The US president was right to focus his conversations with Mr Goldberg on perhaps the most difficult question in American foreign policy: when should presidents order the military to intervene in wars beyond its borders and when should they not?

In doing so, however, he seems determined to contest principles that recent presidents have found vitally important in the exercise of American power. Here is where the emerging “Obama Doctrine” often comes up short.

Through all the successes and failures of America’s global strategy since the end of the Cold War, we have understood what works. We know, for example, that American diplomacy is most often effective when it is backed by a strong military and the willingness to threaten force when necessary.

This is why Mr Obama’s defence of his decision to pull back from striking Syrian military targets in 2013, after having drawn a “red line” against Bashar al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons, is so troubling. He adamantly rejects the notion that his restraint diminished US credibility in the region.

Full article available online here.