Michael Barone shares with Washington Examiner readers his assessment of President Obama’s reaction to changing geopolitical circumstances.
Middle Eastern oil is less strategic than formerly, but 9/11 and ISIS show how regional instability can threaten the advanced world. George W. Bush’s attempts to advance democracy there did not succeed. President Obama’s strategy — to appease Iran’s drive for nuclear weapons in the hopes it will be a “very successful” regional power — seems ill-conceived.
The big difference between the world balance in 1800 and today is, of course, the United States. The young U.S. was different, fighting the Barbary pirates and entering the China trade in the early nineteenth century. It built the world’s largest and most creative economy by 1900, to the point that exhausted European powers begged it to take a lead role in economics and politics in the years after World War I.
Americans declined that invitation, but took it up after World War II in what seemed still a Europe-centric world, in the confidence that they could make it better — and with notable success in Western Europe and Japan. Today administration leaders on trade and defense are trying to follow that example.
But the president seems to lack that confidence and, facing a world that resembles 1800 more than 1945, reaches out to Iran’s mullahs and the Castro brothers while disrespecting many of America’s friends. Curious responses to a difficult challenge.
