The Russian leadership, hardly believing its luck, needs no interpreter to understand that when the Obama team clownishly rushes in bearing gifts and "reset" buttons, there is nothing ulterior, diabolical, clever or even serious behind it. It is amateurishness, wrapped in naivete, inside credulity. In short, the very stuff of Nobels.
I wish we were so lucky that this is the result of amateurishness. If so, our foreign policy elites might learn from experience. Shoot, even President Carter learned (but when out of office forgot all he learned and degenerated into the caricature of idiocy that he is today). But the Obama team learned everything they need to know in kindergarten. Learning would force them to admit they do not already know everything:
I wish I could say this was amateur hour in the White House. But that would imply that they'll eventually learn. No, this isn't going to get better. What we are seeing is based on ideology that thinks America is almost always wrong and American power is a force for evil.
Early steps that seemed to indicate a more pragmatic foreign policy, such as retaining domestic security laws, completing the war in Iraq, and winning in Afghanistan are clearly--as I thought--just things to be done to avoid being blamed for disaster in the short run that might hinder the project of transforming our domestic economy and politics leftward. Avoiding television reports of defeat through the 2010 mid-term elections is our only foreign policy objective, I fear.
Yes, Secretary Gates will be allowed to finish the war in Iraq and keep fighting in Afghanistan (Gates I think sincerely cares about our troops and does not want to lose those wars, making our losses pointless), but at the price of providing legitimacy to generally lowering our defenses on the theory that in the medium term we face no real threats.
But outside of those three security areas, we are seeing the basic leftist thinking of our administration assert itself. Apologies all around, the love of talk over results, anti-Israel positions, sucking up to Latin American communists and thugs, wondering again why Islamo-fascists hate us, sucking up to Iran's thugs and various mini-thugs like Syria and Burma, hating missile defenses (think Reagan), letting our defenses erode, and generally treating our friends as suspect.
Face it, our leaders truly believe that retreat and concession--let's not shy from that word "appeasement"--will win us friends and influence rogue people.
