Obama Foreign Policy - Foreign Policy

19.1.
2017
SyriaWillStainObamasLegacyForever|ForeignPolicy
ARGUMENT
SyriaWillStainObamasLegacy
Forever
Thearcofhistoryislong,butit
won'teverjudgethe
president'sSyriapolicykindly.
BY DAVID GREENBERG
DECEMBER 29, 2016
Barack Obamas impending departure from the White House

has put many Americans in an elegiac mood. Despite an average approval
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rating of only 48 percent the lowest, surprisingly, of our last ve presidents

he has always been beloved, if not revered, by the scribbling classes. Just
as many prematurely deemed Bush the worst president ever, so many are
now ready to enshrine Obama as one of the all-time greats.
Or at least they were until the fall of Aleppo.
Since the Syrian uprising began in 2011, Americans have regarded the carnage
there as essentially a humanitarian disaster. For Obama, contemplating his
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legacy, the awful death and destruction that Syria has suered the 400,000
deaths, the wholesale wasting of civilian neighborhoods, the wanton use of
sarin gas and chlorine gas and barrel bombs, the untold atrocities has
raised the old question of how future generations will judge an American
presidents passivity or ineectuality in the face of mass slaughter.
Perhaps Obama has been hoping for a dispensation, since presidential
reputations have never suered much for such sins of omission. With a few
notable exceptions, biographies, textbooks, obituaries, and even public
memory have dwelled little on George W. Bushs inaction in Darfur, Bill
Clintons oundering over Rwanda, George H.W. Bushs dithering about
Bosnia, Jimmy Carters fecklessness in Cambodia, Gerald Fords cold realism
toward East Timor, or Richard Nixons complicity in Bangladesh. Who, after
all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians? Hitler reportedly said
in 1939, predicting that the worlds amnesia about the Turks mass killings
should allow his armies to proceed in all ruthlessness without fear of
judgment. We might think of those words in considering how little attention
in our history books is given to our presidents very limited roles in standing
up to atrocities overseas.
And yet now, as Obamas presidency winds down, and a ceasere begins to
take eect Syria that Washington played no role in negotiating, its becoming
clear that the loss of life and the humanitarian crisis represent just the rst of
many consequences that historians will have to assess as they ask how the
United States, under Obamas leadership, chose to deal, or not to deal, with
the Syrian Civil War. And if historians tend to give presidents a pass on failing
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to arrest slaughter, they are not so generous in evaluating the loss of

American inuence around the world.
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Right now, the apparent loss of that inuence seems to loom

newly large. The brutal Russian-backed assault in December crushed the
Syrian resistance in its main holdout city, Aleppo, calling into question
whether the rebel forces will still be able to carry on any insurrection at all.
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President Bashar al-Assad is gathering with the despots of Russia, Turkey,

and Iran to draw up the terms of resolution, pointedly excluding the United
States and the United Nations. Vladimir Putin seems high in his saddle.
For years, Obama has insisted that Syria isnt of great strategic importance to
the United States. But that judgment represents not just a break from decades
of geostrategic thinking but a gamble of considerable risk. If Obama is wrong,
his miscalculation could have massive implications.Should Russia displace
the United States as the regions preeminent great power, it will aect
Americas access to energy, its ability to ght terrorism, its capacity to ensure
Israels survival, and its relationship with states like Turkey, Iran, and Saudi
Arabia.
Equally important are the implications of Obamas Syria policy on Europes
immigration crisis. For decades the continent has struggled, with mixed
results, to assimilate Muslim arrivals from the Middle East and Africa, many
of whom come bearing sharply alien cultural values. But the new waves of
Syrian refugees unleashed by the failure to contain the civil war there has
now created a crisis of unparalleled magnitude. Countries from Turkey and
Hungary to Germany and France have been thrown into turmoil. Cultural
tensions escalated, empowering right-wing nationalist parties across the
continent and contributing to Britains vote to leave the European Union. In
the United States this past year, Donald Trump amplied his own pandering
to anti-Mexican sentiment with new worries about an inux of Syrian
refugees stoking anti-immigrant fears. Around the world, it seems, the rise
of noxious populist currents can be traced, at least in part, to the deepening
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of the immigration crises by the Syrian war.

Yet a third result of Obamas ineectuality lay in the rise of the Islamic State,
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a terrorist organization even more bloody-minded and bent on conquest than

the al Qaeda fragments from which it sprang. Obama obviously did not create
the Islamic State, contrary to Donald Trumps absurd campaign-trail
slanders. But his administration was laggard in countering its gathering
strength. Although the terrorist outt is on the defensive now, it continues to
orchestrate deadly strikes in Europe, and, indirectly, to inspire lone-wolf
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attacks in the United States, guaranteeing that terrorism will remain a major
threat on both continents for years to come.
Buses drive through the Syrian government-controlled

crossing of Ramous on the outskirts of Aleppo on Dec.
Fourth, the failure to contain the Islamic State early on also forced the United
States to change its strategy in Syria. Turning his attention from Assad,
Obama now chose to direct American military assistance mainly into the
ght against the radical Islamist group. Among other eects, this
reorientation of American policy made it much less likely if not impossible
for Obama to deliver on his August 2011 vow that Assad must go.
Fifth and nally, it wasnt only Assad who emerged emboldened. Fatefully, in
2012 Obama had declared that if Assad were to use chemical weapons, he
would cross a red line that would require American military intervention. A
year later, evidence surfaced that Assad did precisely that, ring rockets lled
with sarin gas at towns around Damascus. But in the face of skeptical
congressional opinion at home, Obama backed down from reprisals. Instead
he settled for a Russian proposal that Syria merely dismantle its weapons
stockpiles, but face no punishment for its war crimes.
Obama has made clear that he disdains the concept of credibility the
idea that the U.S. must follow through on its commitments lest it get pushed
around in the future. But the reversal of policy in September 2013 on a clearly
articulated principle sent shivers from Seoul to Jerusalem to Tallinn and
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may well have encouraged Americas adversaries, including Russia, to test

Obama further. Putins illegal 2014 seizure of Crimea and the ongoing
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fomenting of unrest in eastern and southern Ukraine were worrisome

enough. But now evidence suggests that the Russian president played a direct
role in hacking Democratic Party ocials emails in an eort to tip the scales
of the presidential election in favor of Trump. These disclosures have
shattered any claims that Obama showed sucient resolve against a
formidable, condent, and completely immoral rival for geopolitical
inuence.
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How all of this will affect Obamas reputation in the long run is
dicult to predict. Observers can only speculate, recognizing all the while
that we cant know which elements of Obamas policy future historians will
emphasize and which they will ignore, which they will esteem and which
they will scorn.
Sadly, it seems probable that Obama wont be judged too harshly for failing to
arrest the carnage in Syria. For all our fretting, inaction in the face of
genocide or mass slaughter or humanitarian disaster has never hurt our
presidents much in the historical reckonings. It is true that in the wake of the
Holocaust, Americans grew conscious of the suerings of foreign peoples and
of their own responsibility, as citizens of the worlds mightiest nation, to try
to do something. Looking at the past through this new lens, even the sainted
Franklin D. Roosevelt took a mild hit, as historians learned more about and
came to question his failure to assist the Jewish refugees of Europe, to bomb
the rail lines to Auschwitz, or otherwise impede or retard Hitlers killing
machine. More recently, historians and journalists like Samantha Power, Ben
Kiernan, and Gary J. Bass directed historians attention to other genocides
and mass slaughters. Human rights advocates argued more vociferously that
the worlds mightiest nations had a duty to try to prevent such atrocities.
An injured Syrian child receives treatment at a

makeshift hospital in Douma on Oct. 3. (Photo by ABD
But that consciousness peaked in the 1990s, and because military
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interventionism has fallen out of fashion since the Iraq War, it has been
receding. Obama may have sought some solace in the fact that presidents
reputations have not typically suered for inaction in the face of mass
slaughter.
They do suer, however, for frittering away American power and prestige.
Though Harry Truman wins high marks for his handling of the communist
threat in Europe, he and the Democratic Party were haunted for years by the
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question, following Mao Zedongs civil war victory in 1949, of Who lost
China? feeding a domestic political environment that arguably made his
successors keener to intervene in Vietnam, Laos, and elsewhere in Southeast
Asia. Similarly, Jimmy Carters inability to deal eectively either with the
Soviet Unions 1979 invasion of Afghanistan or the revolutionary Iranian
governments seizure of 52 American hostages contributed to his defeat by
Ronald Reagan in 1980 as well as to the low esteem in which his foreign policy
is held by scholars. Presidents cant, of course, always prevent the outbreak of
conicts and wars, but how they respond to those wars and whether the
U.S. emerges from them stronger or weaker, and the world safer or more
precarious is a telling measure of leadership.
On the other hand, as Obama knows well, presidents also suer for wars gone
badly. Lyndon Johnson should be remembered as one of Americas greatest
presidents, but his stubborn prosecution of the Vietnam War, despite
knowing it was unwinnable, has kept him out of the pantheon of greatness.
(Its possible that when the Vietnam-obsessed Baby Boomers pass from the
scene, LBJ will be judged with greater balance and charity.) George W. Bushs
invasion of Iraq, similarly, with all its disastrous implications, is likely to
remain the central episode of his presidency for a long time, outranking even
his more successful response to the terrorist attacks of 9/11.
Indeed, Obama, entering oce after Bushs ruinous adventurism, made the
avoidance of another quagmire his primary goal. Encouraged by national
security aides who hailed from the realm of domestic politics, Obama let the
fear of crossing antiwar opinion dictate his path. Yet in treading lightly,
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Obama misplaced his big stick. A conciliator by nature, he had reached the
presidency on promises to unite inimical groups red-staters and blue-
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staters, whites and blacks and in his inaugural address he likewise pledged
to bridge the gap with the Arab world. But just as he wasnt prepared for the
implacability of congressional Republicans, who scorned his outstretched
hand in a bid to bolster their own power, so he did not count on foreign
adversaries taking advantage of his aversion to conict.
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Obamas Syria legacy wont be the only factor shaping how

posterity regards his foreign policy. The uneven eorts to wind down the Iraq
and Afghanistan wars, the still-controversial Iran nuclear deal, the opening to
Cuba, the weakening of al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, the struggles to
revive peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians these add up to a
mixed and complicated record whose implications will take time and thought
to untangle. It may be that his focus on building alliances in Asia will prove,
despite the collapse of his Trans-Pacic Partnership, to be of greater longterm signicance than his misadventures in Syria. But for now it seems hard
to escape the conclusion that in correcting for Bushs overly aggressive
foreign policy, Obama went too far in avoiding confrontations, and that in
that halting and hesitant approach he wound up neither strengthening his
countrys inuence and status nor its power to bring about its ultimate goal of
a safer and more peaceful world.
Top image credit: Getty Images/Foreign Policy illustration
David Greenberg is a professor of history and media studies at Rutgers. His

most recent book is Republic of Spin: An Inside History of the American
Presidency.
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BarackObamaWasaForeignPolicyFailure|ForeignPolicy
Barack Obama Was a Foreign-Policy Failure

The 44th president of the United States promised to bring change but mostly drove the
country deeper into a ditch.
BY STEPHEN M. WALT
JANUARY 18, 2017
I began writing this column (originally in the form of a blog) in 2009, at the very beginning of Barack Obamas
presidency. His election lled me with both hope and trepidation: I admired his eloquence and visible
intelligence, and I shared some of his foreign-policy instincts, but my early columns also expressed
misgivings about his overly ambitious foreign-policy agenda.
Now, in his nal week in oce, its only natural to take a look back and oer an assessment. And when it
comes to foreign policy, I regret to say my verdict is not particularly favorable.
Lets start with the positive side of the ledger. Here one must begin by recalling the dire circumstances when
Obama took oce. The world economy was in the worst nancial crisis since the Great Depression, and the
United States was teetering on the brink of a complete economic meltdown. Unemployment was soaring, and
millions of Americans were losing their homes to foreclosures. The United States was mired in two
unwinnable wars, Osama bin Laden was still at large, and Americas image in many parts of the world was at
historic lows.
What has happened since? Here at home, the U.S. economy recovered faster than any of the other major
industrial democracies, were now at full employment, and the decits that resulted from the 2009 bailouts
and stimulus package have shrunk dramatically. Wall Street was at near-record levels even before the recent
post-election surge. More than 20 million Americans who lacked health care coverage now have it (for the
moment), and we have seen important progress on civil rights for gay Americans and some other minorities.
Moreover, Obama managed these important economic and social achievements in the face of extraordinary
opposition from the Republican Party, which seemed more interested in thwarting Obama than in doing
anything to help the American people.
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In foreign policy, the Obama administration successfully negotiated a deal that halted Irans progress toward
a nuclear weapon. He fullled the George W. Bush administrations plan to get U.S. troops out of Iraq and
signicantly reduced the U.S. role in Afghanistan. Bin Laden was found and eliminated on his watch. The
Paris agreement was an important step forward on climate change, and the pivot to Asia began a muchneeded reorientation of Americas strategic focus. Ending the spiteful and counterproductive ostracism of
Cuba was equally overdue and will do more for the Cuban people than our lame-brained embargo ever did.
In both foreign and domestic policy, therefore, this administration notched some genuine wins. And
throughout his presidency, Obama conducted himself with the same dignity, humor, grace, intelligence,
forbearance, respect for American values and traditions, and above all class that were on display in his
farewell speech. Contrast that with the tone of Donald Trumps rst post-election press conference, held the
day after Obamas speech, which was bombastic, deceptive, abusive, deant, contemptuous of traditional
norms and entirely consistent with Trumps campaign and business career. (If you think Jan. 20 isnt a
watershed moment for political leadership, think again.) No matter how petty or two-faced his opponents
were, Obama rarely paid them back in kind. One suspects Americans will appreciate these qualities even more
as Trumps egomaniacal circus act wears thin and his plutocratic policies leave his working-class supporters
out in the cold.
Yet Obamas presidency is in other respects a tragedy and especially when it comes to foreign policy. It is a
tragedy because Obama had the opportunity to refashion Americas role in the world, and at times he seemed
to want to do just that. The crisis of 2008-2009 was the ideal moment to abandon the failed strategy of liberal
hegemony that the United States had been pursuing since the end of the Cold War, but in the end Obama
never broke with that familiar but failed approach. The result was a legacy of foreign-policy missteps that
helped propel Donald Trump into the White House.
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For starters, Obama was persuaded to escalate the war in Afghanistan in 2009, in a pointless surge that was
doomed to fail and did. Instead of acknowledging that U.S. interests were minimal and the war was
unwinnable, his policies prolonged U.S. involvement to no good purpose and ate up a lot of his time and
attention. He also decided to embrace and expand many aspects of the Bush administrations approach to the
war on terror, especially the use of drones and special operations forces to chase down suspected terrorists
all over the world. He rightly banned torture which is both ineective and illegal but otherwise let U.S.
intelligence agencies o the hook for their past excesses and did little to rein them in when they overstepped
on his watch, as the CIA did when it repeatedly tried to interfere with Senate investigations of the so-called
torture regime. Meanwhile, his administration prosecuted whistleblowers and journalists with more vigor
than any of his predecessors. The result? The United States is conducting counterterrorism operations in
more places than ever before, albeit without apparent success, and Donald Trump has inherited a set of tools
he can use to suppress honest reporting if he wishes. Any bets on what hes likely to do?
Second, Obama and his team misread and mishandled the Arab Spring. As Joshua Landis explains in a
remarkable, must-read interview, the U.S. response to these events and especially Syria was ill-conceived
from the very start. In particular, Obama and his team mistakenly viewed the Arab Spring as a large-scale,
grass-roots uprising clamoring for liberal democracy and embraced it too quickly. They also underestimated
the ability of violent extremists to exploit power vacuums in failed states and the resilience of authoritarian
regimes in places like Syria or Egypt. These misunderstandings led to Obamas disastrous intervention in
Libya, his inept diplomatic interference in Yemen, and the premature demand that Assad must go in Syria.
As regular readers know, I think Obama made the right call when he decided not to wade deeper into the
Syrian quagmire, but his handling of this admittedly turbulent and dicult-to-read process can hardly be
considered a success.
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Regarding Israel-Palestine, Obama took oce vowing to achieve a two-state solution by the end of his rst
term, and he and his second-term secretary of state, John Kerry, devoted endless hours to this quixotic quest.
Unfortunately, they followed the standard peace process playbook and got the same results their
predecessors did. A two-state solution is further away than ever and probably impossible, in part because
Obama never seemed to grasp that relying on pro-Israel advisors with a long track record of not producing an
agreement was a pretty good way to guarantee failure again. Nor did Obama and Kerry ever realize that Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was not interested in a genuine two-state solution and that Israel was
never going to cut a deal unless the United States made it clear that failing to do so would lead to dramatic
reductions in U.S. military aid and diplomatic protection. Obamas oer of ever larger bribes of U.S. military
aid proved inadequate to the task, as Netanyahu quite sensibly pocketed the oer and dug in his heels, even
ying to Washington to dis the president in public. I understand why Obama felt he had to tolerate this sort of
abuse from a dependent client state (after all, I wrote a book about it), but if he was unwilling to play hardball,
he shouldnt have promised to deliver a solution and shouldnt have wasted any time or energy on it.
Obamas handling of Russia deserves no plaudits either. The early attempt at a reset made sense, but Obama
and his advisors never understood that what they regarded as innocent and legitimate eorts to strengthen
democracy in Eastern Europe or in Russia itself were not going to be viewed as benign by Moscow. Even
worse, the White House appears to have been asleep at the switch in the months preceding the crisis in
Ukraine and ended up blindsided by Russian President Vladimir Putins decision to annex Crimea. Moscows
actions are regrettable on many levels, but Obama and the people in charge of U.S. policy in Eastern Europe
should not have been surprised. Great powers are always sensitive to events near their borders, and Moscow
had made it clear, at least since 2008, that it would not let Ukraine or Georgia drift toward NATO without a
ght. It was also abundantly clear that Putin saw U.S. and EU eorts to draw Ukraine to the West as a step
toward bringing them into NATO, and he had both the motivation and the ability to stop it. And he did.
Obamas desire to rebalance U.S. attention toward Asia was sound, and his administration did make
important progress toward that goal. But the failure to set clearer priorities or liquidate losing positions faster
undermined the eort. Managing relations in Asia is complex, challenging, and time-consuming, and the
United States will not be able to manage its Asian alliances and counter a rising China if it is constantly being
distracted by events in places of far less strategic importance. The administration also blundered when it
decided not to participate in Chinas new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and then found that even
close allies like Britain and Israel were ignoring U.S. pressure and eager to join.
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As I argued several years ago, the days when the United States could create security and maintain order in
nearly every part of the world are behind it, and U.S. leaders must do a better job of deciding which places
matter most and which can be left to run themselves. To a large extent, Obama never made that choice.
What explains these various failures? Two things, primarily. First, although Obama took oce intending to reengineer Americas relationship with the world, he was quickly co-opted by the existing national security
establishment and bought into its mantra that the United States as the indispensable power must take the
lead in promoting a rules-based world order centered on free markets, democracy, and human rights. Here
Obama did face a real dilemma: The Democratic Partys foreign-policy apparatus was dominated by dedicated
liberal crusaders, which meant there was hardly anyone Obama could appoint who agreed wholeheartedly
with his foreign-policy instincts. Once he selected people like Hillary Clinton, Jim Steinberg, Susan Rice, Tom
Donilon, Samantha Power, and Anne-Marie Slaughter along with veteran insiders like Robert Gates, John
Brennan, and Dennis Ross the die was cast. This group had plenty of disagreements, to be sure, but they
were all ardent believers in U.S. global leadership, and they rarely saw an international issue they didnt
think the United States should play a major role in solving.
Like Bill Clinton, Obama tried to address a vast array of global problems as cheaply as possible (and without
boots on the ground), but he never told the American people what their vital interests actually were. Equally
important, this most eloquent of presidents never gave voters a simple template to help them distinguish
between the places where the United States should stand ready to ght and regions it could safely leave to
others. Instead, almost any part of the world could suddenly become a vital interest for which Washington
was supposed to have a solution, and failure to act immediately in a crisis anywhere exposed him to charges
that he was squandering U.S. credibility or leaving the country vulnerable to some shadowy danger. He who
defends everything defends nothing, warned Frederick the Great, and Obamas inability to develop a clear set
of strategic priorities hurt him throughout his presidency.
Second, in both domestic and foreign policy, Obama failed to appreciate that his opponents were not as
reasonable, rational, cool, or unselsh as he was. If a central theme runs through Obamas approach to
politics, it is his conviction that people with diering views can come together, discuss, debate, share
information, and gradually come to a mutual understanding that satises both sides and that will advance the
public interest. This quality made him a great law review editor and a successful community organizer, but it
hamstrung him as president in todays highly polarized political environment.
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When dealing with Netanyahu, for example, Obama (and Kerry) thought it obvious that two states for two
peoples was in Israels interest and that Netanyahu could be persuaded to see this once he was assured of
continued U.S. support. They did not consider that Netanyahu might be personally wedded to the Likud
partys dream of a Greater Israel or worried that cutting a deal would cost him his job, and therefore no
amount of cajoling or coddling would ever win him over. In Putin, Obama saw the leader of a declining power
whose best course was to liberalize further and reform the lagging Russian economy. In this view, Putin just
needed to be told that the United States was only trying to help his Eastern European neighbors prosper and
not seeking to hurt Russia or topple him. Putin had dierent priorities, however, and in any case was not
going to accept verbal assurances as he watched NATO creep ever eastward. Back at home, Obama seemed to
think that he could win over Republicans by reaching out to them as he did when he nominated a highly
qualied and decidedly moderate candidate for the Supreme Court never quite realizing that John
Boehner, Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, Ted Cruz, and the entire tea party cared more about Obama failing
than they did about America succeeding.
Barack Obama is an intelligent, disciplined, eloquent, upright, patriotic, and wholly admirable man, and in
many ways he was an inspirational president. It is no accident that his approval ratings are vastly higher than
the man who will succeed him or that he may be the most popular politician in the world at large. He took
oce at a time when the United States faced genuine perils, and he safely steered the country away from the
brink. Had he governed in a more tranquil era, and with a spirited but constructive party opposing him, he
might have achieved even more.
But in foreign policy Obamas record was mostly one of failure. Neither the state of the world nor Americas
position in it is stronger today than they were when he took oce. The outcome in Iraq and Afghanistan may
not be his fault, as those wars were failures even before he took oce, but some of his decisions compounded
the mistakes he inherited.
But as I said in my column earlier this month, just because things look grim today does not mean they cannot
get worse. And if they do, Obamas presidency, despite the missteps and missed opportunities, will seem like
an era of honor and decency that Americans willfully cast aside and may never fully regain.
Photo credit: ALEX WONG/Getty Images
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ObamaWasNotaRealistPresident|ForeignPolicy
Obama Was Not a Realist President

If he had been, he might have avoided some of his biggest foreign-policy mistakes.
BY STEPHEN M. WALT
APRIL 7, 2016
Barack Obama is in the homestretch of his presidency, and it is only human for him to care about how he will
be judged after he leaves oce. That impulse probably explains his decision to participate in a series of
interviews with the Atlantic in which he defends his approach to foreign policy and explains why he has been
reluctant to use American power as widely as his critics would have liked.
Not surprisingly, this story has rekindled the recurring question of whether Obama has been running a
realist foreign policy for the past seven-plus years or at least one heavily informed by realist thinking.
(One of our countrys sillier pundits once suggested I was the secret George Kennan guiding his actions;
anyone who reads this column regularly knows that U.S. foreign policy would have been markedly dierent if
that were in fact the case.)
I understand why many people regard Obama as some sort of realist, but from where I sit, the nonrealist
dimensions of his presidency are as prominent and important as any realist elements. And it is those
nonrealist features that account for his most obvious foreign-policy failures.
But rst, what will Obamas legacy likely be? My view, for what its worth, is that future historians will rate
Obama highly. He will be remembered for being Americas rst nonwhite president, of course, and for
conducting his oce with dignity, grace, and diligence. His administration was blissfully scandal-free, and he
didnt make a lot of hasty decisions that turned out badly. He was admirably thick-skinned and charitable
toward most of his critics, despite the abuse and thinly veiled racism he faced from some of them. And no
matter who wins in November, he is likely to look mighty good by comparison.
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As we look back, Obama will get credit for health care reform, for rescuing the country from the brink of
another Great Depression, and for promoting greater tolerance toward minorities through legalization of gay
marriage. When one remembers how scary things looked when he took oce in 2009, this is no small set of
achievements. And Obama did these things while facing a Republican opposition so toxic and extreme it kept
devouring its own leaders and repeatedly threatening to shut down the entire federal government. Thats
GOP-style patriotism for you.
But these elements of his legacy are all domestic achievements, and his record in foreign aairs is at best a
mixed bag. Still, Obama can claim some clear successes: The U.S. image in most of the world is higher than
when he took oce; relations with China have been mostly tranquil despite the U.S. pivot to Asia; and the
nuclear deal with Iran is a qualied success so far. Id also give Obama props for ending Americas long and
counterproductive eort to ostracize Cuba and for making progress on global nuclear security and climate
change (though more needs to be done on both fronts).
Unfortunately, Obamas foreign-policy record also contains a sizable number of depressing failures,
beginning with Afghanistan. Obama agonized over this issue during his rst year in oce and ultimately sent
nearly 60,000 additional troops there. He promised this temporary surge would turn the tide against the
Taliban and enable the United States to get out with honor. It is now 2016, the Taliban control more territory
than at any time since 2001, and the United States is still ghting there with no end in sight. As some of us
warned at the time, this policy was destined to fail and fail it did.
Similarly, Obamas well-intentioned eorts to achieve peace between Israelis and Palestinians were a series of
humiliations: Israeli settlements kept expanding, Gaza kept getting pummeled, moderate Palestinians were
discredited, Hamas grew stronger, and the two-state solution that Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama all
favored is now dead (if not quite buried). Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry wasted a lot of time and
energy on this problem and got bupkis.
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Obamas response to the Arab Spring was no more successful. The United States helped push Hosni
Mubarak out in Egypt and backed the newly elected government of Mohamed Morsi, only to reverse course
and turn a blind eye when a military coup ousted Morsi and imposed another thuggish dictatorship. U.S. air
power helped topple Muammar al-Qadda in Libya (a decision Obama now regrets), and the result is a failed
state where the Islamic State is active. Obama declared Assad must go in Syria, despite there being no good
way to ensure his departure and no good candidates to replace him, and then United States helped block the
initial U.N. eorts to reach a cease-re to end the ghting. Today, Syria is in ruins, and Assad still rules the
countrys key areas. Obama and his team were also blindsided by the emergence of the Islamic State and by
the Houthi rebellion in Yemen. It pains me to say so, but the Middle East will be in even worse shape when he
leaves oce than it was when he arrived. The United States is not solely responsible for this unfortunate
trend, but our repeated meddling sowed additional chaos and alienated both friends and foes alike.
To be sure, dealing with simultaneous uprisings in several dierent countries would have been challenging
for any president, and it is easy to imagine responses that would have been even worse than what the United
States actually did. Even so, Obama and his team never seem to have gured out what they wanted to
accomplish in the region (apart from stopping Irans progress toward a nuclear bomb), and the end result was
a series of incoherent improvisations.
Lastly, Obama deserves low marks for his handling of Russia. Im no fan of Vladimir Putin, but U.S. ocials
erred by openly siding with the demonstrators seeking to oust former Ukrainian President Viktor
Yanukovych and by failing to anticipate how Russia was likely to respond. The result was a tragedy for the
Ukrainian people, an embarrassment for the United States, and a more precarious situation in Europe, which
hardly needed another problem on its agenda.
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Does this record reveal the shortcomings of a supposedly realist foreign policy, as some of Obamas liberal
critics now contend? On the one hand, Obama does have certain instincts that are consistent with a realist
outlook. He recognizes that U.S. power is not unlimited and that military power is a crude instrument that
cannot solve every problem. Like most contemporary realists, he thinks the United States is extremely secure
and that nuclear terrorism and climate change are the only existential threats it faces for the foreseeable
future. His belief that Asia is of rising strategic importance shows an appreciation for the key role that
economic and military capability that is, hard power play in shaping world politics. Indeed, his
emphasis on nation building at home reects an acute awareness that domestic strength is the bedrock of
national security and international inuence. And like most realists, he thinks the idea that the United States
needs to ght foolish wars in order to keep its credibility intact is dangerous nonsense.
But on the other hand, the Atlantic story shows that Obama never fully embraced a realist worldview either.
He thinks there are four main strategic alternatives for the United States: realism, liberal interventionism,
internationalism, and isolationism. He rejects the latter completely and believes foreign-policy making
involves picking and choosing from among the rst three. And though he oers some tart criticisms of the
interventionist D.C. playbook, Obama believes (along with most of the foreign-policy establishment) that
the United States is an exceptional power and that American leadership is still indispensable. At bottom,
he wants to have it both ways: to acknowledge there are limits to U.S. power and some problems it can safely
ignore, but to still stand ready to intervene when vital interests are at risk or when U.S. power can produce
positive results.
But after seven-plus years in oce, this most articulate of presidents never articulated a clear and coherent
framework identifying what those vital interests are and why and spelling out how the United States could
advance broader political ideals at acceptable cost and risk. To be specic: What regions of the world were
worth signicant commitments of American blood and treasure? Why were these regions more important
than others? Under what conditions is it advisable to put U.S. citizens in harms way in order to keep the rest
of us safe? When will the costs and risks of action outweigh the potential benets? And dont forget the ip
side: What regions or issues are of little or no importance to the United States and can safely be left to others?
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The Atlantic story suggests that Obama has asked himself these questions more than once and is comfortable
with the answers he has come up with for each. He is said to believe the Middle East is of declining
importance, for example, and that Asia is rising. But Obama never shared his overarching vision with the rest
of us, and he never openly stated that some parts of the world lay outside the sphere of vital U.S. interests and
were therefore not worth sending Americans to ght and die for. Instead of laying out a hierarchy of interests
and explaining the logic behind his thinking, Obamas public utterances mostly echoed and reinforced the
familiar tropes of U.S. liberal hegemony.
In his 2009 speech accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, he defended the need for military power and told the
world that the United States has helped underwrite global security for more than six decades with the blood
of our citizens and the strength of our arms. And he showed he meant it by ramping up the use of drones,
targeted assassinations, and special operations activities. Obama may have used military power in smaller
increments and to achieve more modest goals than Bush did, but he used it in a lot more places. But how he
decided where to act and where to hold back remains something of a mystery, even to those of us who have
been paying attention.
His failure to dene U.S. interests clearly and his tendency to recite the familiar rhetoric of liberal hegemony
had several unfortunate consequences. First, it meant Obama faced constant pressure to do something
whenever trouble beckoned in some distant corner of the world, but he had no overarching argument or
principle with which to deect the pressure (save for the correct but unhelpful dictum to avoid stupid shit).
The danger, as the Libya debacle shows clearly, is that advocates of intervention will sometimes manage to
override more sensible instincts and convince even a reluctant president to act, even though vital U.S.
interests are not at stake and Washington has no idea what it is doing. In the absence of a clear strategy, stupid
shit sometimes happens anyway.
Second, because Obama kept saying U.S. leadership was indispensable, he was vulnerable to hard-line
criticism whenever he tried to end a failed policy or avoid some new quagmire. Getting out of Afghanistan
and Iraq and staying out of Ukraine and Syria were the right calls, because vital U.S. interests were not at stake
in any of these countries or their problems. But Obama never presented a convincing explanation for why this
was the case (and in Afghanistan, in fact, he said the opposite). Thus, what he should have presented as
dicult but hardheaded strategic judgments were seen as symptoms of war-weary and woolly-headed
weakness.
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This same ambivalence marred relations with U.S. allies. Free-riding and reckless driving by U.S. allies
clearly bothers Obama, yet he spent considerable time and eort trying to convince many of these same allies
they could count on Uncle Sam no matter what happened or what they did. What was the predictable result?
U.S. allies continued to misbehave in various ways while getting angry and upset because Washington wasnt
doing everything they wanted. Foreign governments might have been equally disappointed had Obama told
them why they had to do more to defend themselves, but at least they would have known where they stood
(and so would the American taxpayer).
Most importantly, because Obama never publicly embraced an unvarnished realist outlook or tried to explain
this view to the American people, he never disrupted the D.C. playbook that he now disparages. During his
rst presidential campaign, he said he didnt want to just end the Iraq War; he also wanted to end the
mindset that got us into war in the rst place. The American people are in some ways already there, but the
foreign-policy establishment hasnt gotten the memo. The Atlantic story describes Obama as openly
dismissive of the D.C. think-tank complex, but he appointed plenty of its members to prominent positions
and embraced many of its shibboleths most notably the indispensability of U.S. leadership throughout
his presidency.
Altering a well-entrenched mindset is not easy, and the president is just one voice (albeit an unusually
inuential one). Changing the current consensus would have required Obama to take on these entrenched
interests and intellectual efdoms directly and to appoint a dierent sort of person to at least a few important
government positions. He would have had to articulate a dierent grand strategy over the course of his
presidency and not just in a couple of quickly forgotten speeches. No, changing a consensus requires making
the case with the same persistence and focus that he showed in selling the Iran deal. And while he was doing
that, he would still have had to run the government and deal with each weeks surprises. Thats a lot to ask of
any president and especially one who took oce with the economy on the brink and without a lot of prior
experience in Washington.
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In short, Obama did not in fact run a realist foreign policy, because he doesnt fully embrace a realist
worldview, didnt appoint many (any?) realists to key positions, and never really tried to dismantle the
bipartisan consensus behind the grand strategy of liberal hegemony. As Ive noted before, a genuinely
realist foreign policy would have left Afghanistan promptly in 2009, converted our special relationships in
the Middle East to normal ones, explicitly rejected further NATO expansion, eschewed regime change and
other forms of social engineering in foreign countries such as Libya or Syria, and returned to the broad
strategy of restrained oshore balancing that served the United States so well in the past.
Of course, even if Obama had explained the logic behind this strategy carefully and followed it consistently,
he might still have failed to transform the foreign-policy establishments interventionist mindset. After all,
that worldview is supported by plenty of wealthy individuals, powerful corporations, inuential think tanks,
and well-connected lobbies. A more ambitious eort to change how Americans think about foreign policy
might not have succeeded. But as his presidency approaches its close, I still wish he had tried.
Photo credit: KEVIN DIETSCH-POOL/Getty Images
Moroccos Outlaw Country Is the Heartland

of Global Terrorism
The northern Rif mountains have been home to hash-peddlers, smugglers, and outlaws for
centuries. Now theyre a breeding ground for Europes jihadi terrorists.
BY LEELA JACINTO
APRIL 7, 2016
In the weeks since terrorists struck the Belgian capital, authorities and journalists have wasted no time
mapping out the links between the Brussels and Paris attacks between Molenbeek, Schaerbeek, and the
French banlieues, between a hideout location here, and a ngerprint found there. The lines connecting the
complex web of kinship and friendship ties across national borders are starting to resemble a Jackson Pollock
drip painting with a disturbing message: These are the squiggles and dots that can usher deadly terrorist plots
from conception through to execution.
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Mapping out the form and content of Europes terrorist cells is certainly vital investigative work. But lost in all
these lines connecting Europes gray urban landscapes are the sun-drenched hills, valleys, and towns of
northern Morocco. And it is to Morocco that we must go, tracing links that go back generations to the colonial
era, crossing the Mediterranean a sea that binds, rather than divides, Europe and North Africa to fully
understand what has spurred young men to wreak havoc in Western European capitals.
At the heart of terrorist strikes across the world over the past 15 years lies the Rif. A mountainous region in
northern Morocco, stretching from the teeming cities of Tangier and Tetouan in the west to the Algerian
border in the east, the Rif is an impoverished area rich in marijuana plants, hashish peddlers, smugglers,
touts, and resistance heroes that has rebelled against colonial administrators, postcolonial kings, and any
authority imposed from above. For the children of the Rif who have been transplanted to Europe, this
background can combine with marginalization, access to criminal networks, and radicalization to make the
vulnerable ones uniquely drawn to acts of terrorism.
The Rifs links to jihadi attacks probably rst came to light in 2004 following the March 11 Madrid bombings,
when it was discovered that nearly all of the plotters had links to Tetouan. Three years after the Madrid
attacks, when reporter Andrea Elliot, in an article for the New York Times Magazine, visited that hardscrabble
city in the heart of the Rif, she found a number of Tetouan youth, inspired by the Madrid bombers, making
their way to Iraq to wage jihad on U.S. troops with al Qaeda in Iraq, the precursor to the Islamic State.
Nearly a decade later, the same jihadi tourism trail has led to the Paris and Brussels attacks. One of the latest
Rians to gain international notoriety has been Najim Laachraoui, the Islamic State bomb-maker who
traveled to Syria in 2013, where he perfected his explosives expertise. Weve all seen him by now: Hes one of
the three men captured on CCTV footage pushing trolleys in Brussels Airport on the morning of March 22.
Initial reports claimed he was the third man also known as the man with a hat who got away. But
Belgian prosecutors now say Laachraoui was one of two suicide bombers who blew themselves up at the
airport.
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Laachraoui was Rian: a Belgian national predominantly raised in the Schaerbeek neighborhood of Brussels
but born in Ajdir, a small Moroccan town with a proud Rif history. Paris attack suspect Salah Abdeslam and
his brother Brahim, who was one of the Paris attackers who targeted bars and restaurants in the 10th and 11th
arrondissements before blowing himself up at a popular Paris eatery on Nov. 13, 2015, were also both Rian
by parentage. (Ringleader Abdelhamid Abaaoud was not of Rian origin, for what its worth his family
came from southern Morocco.)
The regions baggage goes back a long way. The history of the Rif is choked with battles between Berber
kingdoms in the precolonial era, which gave way to major wars and rebellions against the Spanish and French
during the colonial period. Independence in 1956 brought French and Spanish withdrawals, but a
continuation of power struggles between the newly independent Moroccan elites and their Berber
populations sparked another cycle of rebellions and crackdowns by Moroccan King Mohamed V, followed by
his son, King Hassan II. For its historic rebelliousness, the Rif was rewarded with decades of state neglect.
King Hassan II famously never visited his palaces in Tangier and Tetouan. Government services in the region
were negligible, Islamists lled the void, and Wahhabi teachings spread like wild re in the slums and
shanties of cities like Tetouan. Today, the region has the highest rates of poverty, maternal death, and female
illiteracy in the country, coupled with Moroccos lowest growth indices. So, though the current King
Mohammed VI has invested in the region and makes it a point to vacation in the Rif, the largesse has not
trickled down to ordinary Rians. As Elliot put it in her New York Times Magazine piece, [m]any of the
locals nd their rickety cars are no match for the smooth new highways or that they are woefully untrained to
compete for jobs in the areas lavish resorts.
The story of the Abdeslam family ts a typical Rian pattern. The parents hail from the village of Bouyafar in
the Nador province of the Rif, a region they quit for Algeria, then a French territory, where Berber mountain
men worked on French-owned farms or settled in Algerias rapidly expanding coastal cities. It was in Frenchcontrolled Algeria that the Abdeslams got French citizenship, resulting in all their children being French
nationals as well. Step two of the Rian migration saw millions joining the postwar wave of low-skilled
workers feeding Western Europes mines and factories during the postwar boom years; the Abdeslams came
to Belgium in the 1960s.
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But while Europe oered the sorts of economic opportunities for which the rst generation of migrants was
grateful, the next generation has struggled. The economic downturn since the late 1970s has not helped. The
Belgian heavy industries and coal mines that once drew Moroccans from their villages have now shut down,
leaving behind areas of urban blight. Belgiums national unemployment rate, which hovers around 8 percent,
climbs to more than 20 percent among the youth. For Belgians of Moroccan or Turkish origin, that gure can
double to around 40 percent.
But unemployment is not the sole factor contributing to the attraction among some Belgian Muslims to the
jihadi cause. Among Belgiums Muslim minority an estimated 5.9 percent of the total population of 11.3
million Moroccans form the largest community (between 400,000 and 500,000), followed by people of
Turkish origin. While Belgian nationals or residents of Moroccan origin dominate the countrys roster of
jihadis over the past 15 years, experts have noted the lack of Turkish names on terrorist lists. In a country like
Belgium which, unlike France, has no history of colonization in the Muslim world not enough attention
is paid in intelligence and policy circles to the origins of criminals-turned-jihadis. Thats a pity, because the
answers can help frame solutions for what is primarily a domestic problem with transnational implications.
Why are Belgians of Turkish descent so reliably unimpressed by jihad? The reasons are varied: For starters,
theyre Turkish speakers, and so theyre less exposed to mostly Arabic Wahhabi proselytizing than their
Moroccan brothers. Then theres culture: In a recent New York Review of Books interview, Didier Leroy, a
leading terrorism researcher at the Royal Military Academy of Belgium, talks about a certain type of identity
construction in the Turkish community, in which the secularist heritage of Mustafa Kemal Atatrk
probably still plays a part. Another critical factor is how mosques are run and staed with imams: Turkey
sends its own imams to cater to the Turkish communitys religious requirements in Belgium, and most
mosques frequented by Belgian Turks are run by the Diyanet, the Turkish directorate for religious aairs,
which keeps a tight rein over the religious sphere in the Turkish state. By contrast, the mosques serving the
Moroccan community are staed by Gulf-trained imams who, critics say, have preached a Sala form of Islam
far more radical than the Maliki school of Islam practiced in North and West Africa.
But, lurking in the background of all this, there is still the Rif a radicalizing factor all its own.
http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/04/07/obamawasnotarealistpresidentjeffreygoldbergatlanticobamadoctrine/?utm_content=buffer3102f&utm_mediu...
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The regions dynamics of pacication, mismanagement, and neglect, inherited from the colonial era, mirror
those that plague Pakistans troubled tribal zones. Like the Rif which, in Arabic, literally means the edge of
cultivated land the peripheral tribal zones of Pakistan have gotten by with traditional codes of conduct
based on honor, revenge, and hospitality. When the old order collapses in the absence of state institutions,
jihadi ideologies ourish in these places like marijuana crops on the Rif slopes or poppy shoots along the
Helmand highway.
The baggage of neglect has aected even the relatively lucky Rians who escaped poverty back home for
Europe. The older generation arrived in then-French-controlled Algeria, Belgium, or mainland France only to
nd that, as residents of a former Spanish enclave, their French was not up to snu. Neither, as Berbers
speaking Amazigh languages and dialects, was their Arabic.
Under these circumstances, the old Rian ways and mores of traditional codes of conduct, honor, justice, and
suspicion of authorities were transplanted to Brussels neighborhoods and allowed to bloom and grow. Fairly
or not, Belgian authorities describe the countrys Rif community as marked by lawlessness and a tribal, more
aggressive culture that sets it apart from other immigrant communities. In an incisive Politico piece titled
Molenbeek Broke My Heart, Teun Voeten, a former neighborhood resident and member of the boroughs
bobo (bourgeois bohmiens) set, noted how, like many white professionals taking advantage of Molenbeeks
aordable rents, he moved in dreaming that his kids would play with their Moroccan neighbors in a
multicultural love zone. But, he noted, [t]he neighborhood was hardly multicultural. Rather, with roughly 80
percent of the population of Moroccan origin, it was tragically conformist and homogenous. There may be a
vibrant alternative culture in Casablanca and Marrakech, but certainly not in Molenbeek.
What Voeten didnt understand and what so many in Belgium still dont is that the alternative cultures
of Casablanca and Marrakech are as far from Molenbeek as the hills of the Rif are from the royal palace in
Rabat. While newcomer bobos are made to feel like outsiders, for the old migrants and their children, there
are ties that bind. And it was those Rian ties, based on old codes of conduct that place hospitality and
kinship above the law laid out by distant elites, that helped Salah and Brahim Abdeslam and their criminaljihadi brothers hide and thrive.
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These are the sorts of networks that the predominantly white Belgian and French security services now must
crack and inltrate. Well, good luck to them. The old colonial chickens are coming home to roost, and the best
way to address these problems is by diversifying the security services and ensuring migrants dont hit a glass
ceiling when theyre striving to nd a place in Western society. While its important to understand the
nuances of origins particularly when it comes to hiring imams and security cooperation between European
and North African authorities its equally critical to ensure we dont fall into the trap of stereotyping. It goes
without saying that not all Rians are jihadis or prone to criminal acts. Like the majority of Muslim
immigrants in Europe, most Rians nd the Islamic States brand of nihilistic, non-Islam alien and anathema
to the lived religion they practice. Europe has plenty of qualied, educated Rians. In the Netherlands, for
instance, the mayor of Rotterdam, Ahmed Aboutaleb, is a Rian.
Last year, the Moroccan-born Aboutaleb created a buzz in Dutch political and rap circles when he told
Muslims who do not want to adapt that they could fuck o. Its the sort of tough talk from a homeboy who
has made it that Rians respect. Im getting hoarse saying this, but Ill say it once more: Its time to involve
the Muslim community in this ght in societys highest positions. Forget about Europes Islamophobic white
right and the politically correct left. They can argue and stew in their salons and studios. This battle must be
won on the streets, from Molenbeek to Tetouan.
Photo credit: ABDELHAK SENNA/AFP/Getty Images
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When I think about morale at the CIA, I

think about 2 things: Mission and family
BY THOMAS E. RICKS
JANUARY 18, 2017
By Jacqueline Lopour
Best Defense Council of the Former Enlisted
Imagine having the job of your dreams. You look forward to work each morning and are lled with a
tremendous sense of purpose.
Then imagine that you get a new CEO who starts publicly trashing your organization to the entire world. He
tells the world that he sees no value in your work, belittles your intelligence, and questions your integrity.
Every day you wake to new insults hurled on Twitter or television.
This is the situation that some CIA analysts, of whom I was one for 10 years, now face. While their jobs might
not sound as sexy as those on the operational side, CIA analysts are no less dedicated to the mission and no
less self-sacricing. When duty calls and it does so often they miss family dinners, birthdays, a childs
play, or ballet recital, and most frequently, sleep. Some even lose marriages, friendships, and their own health.
They serve in war zones and sometimes see friends and colleagues injured or killed.
To be fair, CIA analysts have always faced intense public criticism. Intelligence successes are classied; often
you cannot talk about them to friends or family because they do not have security clearances. I still cannot tell
my loved ones about my greatest professional achievements. Intelligence failures, of course, are splashed
across every newspaper. Analysts must sit by and watch as the public accuses them of lies, conspiracies, or far
worse. They cannot even defend themselves, because doing so might reveal classied information and violate
the most sacred tenets of the organization.
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However, even in those previous dicult times, employees had the comfort of knowing their bosses and
customers valued their work and commitment to national security. We were constantly reminded that our
work was critical that it helped protect national security and was valued by arguably the most powerful
person in the world: The U.S. president. Former presidents provided feedback on analytic pieces, knowing
that it would inspire and galvanize the trenches to keep up the good work. Today, Im certain CIA senior
management is taking every step possible to reassure its workforce. But when your ultimate boss goes on
Twitter and compares you to Nazi Germany, I can only wonder if these assurances seem hollow and
unfullling.
So what do I tell friends who are thinking of joining (or those who are considering leaving)? I tell them that the
CIA is probably the greatest place you will ever work. The situation might be dicult right now, but you can
draw support from the people you work with. The sense of community is breathtaking. On my former team,
we might not have always liked each other, but we always respected, supported, and cared for each other.
Mission rst is practically a sacred motto, so we put pettiness aside to get the job done. Even in the midst of
crises, I saw teams rally together to cover the workload, so that a colleague could make it to an important
personal event. That is far more than mere teamwork that is family.
It was not always perfect. Any time you put so many talented people in the same room, friction is bound to
occur. However, one friend put it quite brilliantly, borrowing a theme from an old Bedouin proverb: We are a
tribe. We might ght and scheme against each other every day, but if someone attacks us as a group? The
spears go out and we have each others backs. It was pretty spectacular to seen that in action. Leaving this
family was probably the hardest decision I have ever made, and I often miss it ercely.
The CIA is lled with consummate professionals. I have absolute faith that, no matter the political climate,
they will always do their jobs admirably and with integrity. For that, I thank them for all they do to protect U.S.
national security and want them to know it was an honor to have worked alongside them and called them
colleagues, friends, and family.
Jacqueline Lopour spent 10 years at the Central Intelligence Agency, specializing in South Asia and the
Middle East. She currently works at the Centre for International Governance Innovation, a non-partisan think
tank where she focuses on international security challenges. She holds the CIA chair in the Best Defense
Council of the Former Enlisted.
Image credit: CIA
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19.1.

DECEMBER 29, 2016

Barack Obamas impending departure from the White House

rating of only 48 percent the lowest, surprisingly, of our last ve presidents

to arrest slaughter, they are not so generous in evaluating the loss of

Right now, the apparent loss of that inuence seems to loom

President Bashar al-Assad is gathering with the despots of Russia, Turkey,

of the immigration crises by the Syrian war.

a terrorist organization even more bloody-minded and bent on conquest than

Buses drive through the Syrian government-controlled

may well have encouraged Americas adversaries, including Russia, to test

fomenting of unrest in eastern and southern Ukraine were worrisome

An injured Syrian child receives treatment at a

But that consciousness peaked in the 1990s, and because military

Obamas Syria legacy wont be the only factor shaping how

Top image credit: Getty Images/Foreign Policy illustration

David Greenberg is a professor of history and media studies at Rutgers. His

Barack Obama Was a Foreign-Policy Failure

JANUARY 18, 2017

Obama Was Not a Realist President

Moroccos Outlaw Country Is the Heartland

When I think about morale at the CIA, I

JANUARY 18, 2017

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