After a year in office we have had a chance to see and evaluate President Obama’s foreign policy agenda with an eye towards gauging it’s near and longer term impact. The President has been active since taking office and clearly has moved aggressively to put his imprint on U.S. bilateral and multilateral international relations. He has traveled around the world meeting with leaders of every region and continent carrying three major messages: we are sorry for the mistakes of the previous administration in its dealings with you and its approach to foreign policy issues; we are changing that approach completely to one of equal dialogue, mutual respect and cooperation; and we are ready to begin new dialogue and engagement with our antagonists and pursue a policy of multilateralism and internationalism in the pursuit of American goals and objectives. Riding his enormous popularity abroad, President Obama wasted no time in utilizing his political foreign capital to make a series of important initiatives in the Middle East, Latin America, Russia, Africa and Asia and restore frayed relations with our traditional allies in Western Europe. Most recently, the President has moved to foster greater cooperation and relations with China. These initiatives have been hallmarked by eloquent speeches outlining the President’s vision of a more peaceful, cooperative and prosperous world. These speeches and the President’s sincerity have had a favorable initial impression on world leaders and for the most part, our counterparts in countries around the world, though the latter remain more skeptical of real change in American foreign policy.

So after his whirlwind world tour of apologies; let’s talk; and some enormous political and economic concessions, we would sum up the President’s foreign policy scorecard as “strike one and you are out”. After going around the world speaking of compliance, concession and altruism, what is the follow-through when the concessions and overtures for change are not reciprocated or worse, rebuffed? The President cannot go around the world again and make the same speeches. Nor can his Secretary of State in her own discourse essentially repeat the President’s ideas. What we see missing from the Obama foreign policy is a firmer or harder set of positions in the face of continued adverse responses to American interests. To quote President Theodore Roosevelt whose foreign policy was summed up in “speak softly and carry a big stick”, we are afraid President Obama does not have a big stick and worse, he is not prepared to carry one. As a result, he runs the risk of being viewed as ineffective and naïve and creating the impression to the world of a weak U.S. foreign policy when our initiatives fail. We fear the enormous costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars will create another post Vietnam syndrome that plagued American foreign policy for 20 years until ... Log in to view full article.