Where is America’s missing foreign policy?
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By Cal Thomas,
What happened to Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 may eventually be discovered, but there is something else that has been missing for much longer and its “disappearance” has far greater implications for America. It is our foreign policy. Can anyone say what it is?
With Russia’s Vladimir Putin behaving like a modern Catherine the Great in his efforts to annex Crimea and possibly all of Ukraine, what is our policy toward Russia, which is behaving increasingly like its former, supposedly dead, communist self?
In a New York Times op-ed column last week, Arizona Republican Senator John McCain wrote: “…Crimea has exposed the disturbing lack of realism that has characterized our foreign policy under President Obama. … For five years, Americans have been told that ‘the tide of war is receding,’ that we can pull back from the world at little cost to our interests and values. This has fed a perception that the United States is weak, and to people like Mr. Putin, weakness is provocative.”
Secretary of State John Kerry warns of a “strong response” by the United States and severe economic sanctions against Russia if Putin proceeds as he has threatened in Ukraine. Whose threats are more credible?
President Obama has retreated on everything from Iraq and Afghanistan, to Iran’s nuclear program and his “red line,” which Syria crossed and paid no price when it used chemical weapons against its own people. He has even retreated on domestic policy issues, most glaringly on the individual mandate in the misnamed Affordable Care Act.
Not only does the “emperor” have no clothes, he appears to the world as having no backbone and no guts. It’s not just a question of military power. It is about formulating, articulating and implementing a consistent foreign policy that is credible and produces results in support of U.S. interests.
Somewhere between Ron Paul’s isolationism and neo-con interventionism is what the U.S. should be modeling to the world.
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