Why? Because Bush was unilateral and Obama is repairing our strained relations with the world:
His conservative opponents believe that Obama needs to get tougher, to push around these other countries and show them that America means business. There's just one problem: that policy has been tried extensively and failed miserably. The administration of George W. Bush consciously defined its foreign policy as tough and aggressive. "It is better to be feared than loved," Dick Cheney used to say, quoting Machiavelli. Donald Rumsfeld chose a less upmarket source, often citing Al Capone's line: "You will get further with a kind word and a gun than with a kind word."
Have we forgotten the results of this experiment in foreign policy as machismo? America's oldest allies in Europe turned against the United States. Governments publicly criticized Washington on policy after policy and refused to support its efforts. By 2007, large majorities of people in country after country, even historically pro-American places like Britain, had turned against America.
Well golly, Fareed. Really? I remain perplexed that Newsweek is going broke with insightful analysis like this.
Let's take the first sentence, "His conservative opponents believe that Obama needs to get tougher, to push around these other countries and show them that America means business."
Well, I'd settle for just not being pushed around. We can work on pushing other hostile countries around later. Baby steps, people. Baby steps. Is Zakaria really arguing that a reputation with friends, allies, and enemies for meaning business is bad?
The remainder of that paragraph is just ridiculous. First, sometimes it is better to be feared than loved. Our enemies won't love us no matter how lovable we try to be. Enemies, rivals, and even friends, so far, have just figured that our lovability is a license to push us around and do what they want. As for Rumsfeld's quote, all that is saying is that kind words work better when backed up with hard power than kind words alone. Is Zakaria really disputing that bit of Foreign Policy 101?
So how did Bush "fail miserably" with this so-called policy of pushing others (enemies) around? We pushed the Taliban down. Pushed Pakistan to flip and side with us. And pushed Saddam into his grave. Not too bad. Sure, we failed to get Turkey to help in the Iraq War, but we got enough support from other allies to set the land speed record in the Middle East anyway. Is that really an extensive record of pushing around other countries? And was it a failure? If that be pushing, let's start pushing again.
And recall the two big non-pushes of the Bush administration that got us nowhere--Chavez of Venezuela and North Korea. Oh, and one more example: Iran. How has the Obama non-push, open-handed outreach been going?
And Zakaria says we've alienated countries, including our allies?
Sure, we failed to get France, Belgium, and Germany to help us in Iraq. But Germany was never going to support us, anywhere, given their history, And France's help was not going to be any more militarily significant than it was in 1991, when France did help us. Further, the lack of help from France and Germany did not result in a broad collapse of their help in other security areas. Indeed, elections that replaced the leaders of France and Germany led to better relations with us without American ending the Iraq War.
And Britain, supposedly really alienated under Bush, followed us into Afghanistan in force after they withdrew from Iraq. Note further that the talk of the end of our special relationship happened under the policies of Barack Obama. Also, it is only now--under Obama--that India worries about our new budding alliance.
Zakaria's essay-ending conclusion of the bleeding obvious that the developing world is gaining in its percentage of global GDP is no reason to justify Obama's rolling over for our enemies and opponents. Our percentage of GDP is holding steady, and the fact that Europe is losing ground to the rest of the world is no reason for America to roll over and play dead, too.
Yeah, everything is fine now under the new era of hope and change. I can just hear Zakaria insisting that we should remain calm and that all is well.
I'm very reassured.
UPDATE: Austin Bay writes of the death of hope as a foreign policy strategy for the Obama administration. Rather than changing how the world works (and has worked for a few thousand years, now) with his purportedly inspirational words, the president finds that he must cope with the world as it is--hostility and cynical intrigue, included.
UPDATE: Thanks to Instapundit for the link. Usually, for the rare times I've gotten an Instalanche, I have to flog a post to him to get a link ...
