Posted 9:08 pm Saturday, February 04, 2012
Sweet-Talking Tyrants Just Doesn’t Work
CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, putting aside his reporter persona for blatant partisanship, on Thursday sought to school presidential hopeful Mitt Romney on the “post-American world.”
That’s the name of Zakaria’s book, and it’s mostly about the growing prominence of former “third-world” nations. That much is true; countries such as India, Turkey and China have advanced and are now economies and powers to be reckoned with.
Where Zakaria goes further off the tracks than even California’s bullet train is when he lectures Romney on just how America can succeed in such a world.
Use the Obama model, he counsels.
That’s the name of Zakaria’s book, and it’s mostly about the growing prominence of former “third-world” nations. That much is true; countries such as India, Turkey and China have advanced and are now economies and powers to be reckoned with.
Where Zakaria goes further off the tracks than even California’s bullet train is when he lectures Romney on just how America can succeed in such a world.
Use the Obama model, he counsels.
“This is a new world, very different from the America-centric one we got used to over the last generation,” Zakaria wrote. “Obama has succeeded in preserving and even enhancing U.S. influence in this world precisely because he has recognized these new forces at work. He has traveled to the emerging nations and spoken admiringly of their rise. He replaced the old Western club and made the Group of 20 the central decision-making forum for global economic affairs. By emphasizing multilateral organizations, alliance structures and international legitimacy, he got results.”
Such a statement cannot go unchallenged. Let’s look at those results, shall we?
First, the most volatile region in the world is the Middle East. President Barack Obama’s strategy for peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians has been an abject failure.
He began by snubbing our true ally, Israel, repeatedly and publicly. He issued strongly worded demands of the Israelis — stop all settlement building — while coddling the Iran-backed Palestinian regime. At the start of Obama’s term, things were looking up in the region; the 2007 Annapolis Conference produced the first real agreement on a two-state solution.
Such a statement cannot go unchallenged. Let’s look at those results, shall we?
First, the most volatile region in the world is the Middle East. President Barack Obama’s strategy for peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians has been an abject failure.
He began by snubbing our true ally, Israel, repeatedly and publicly. He issued strongly worded demands of the Israelis — stop all settlement building — while coddling the Iran-backed Palestinian regime. At the start of Obama’s term, things were looking up in the region; the 2007 Annapolis Conference produced the first real agreement on a two-state solution.
But Hamas and Iran immediately denounced the agreement, and even Fatah refused to remove from its constitution the clause calling for the “eradication of Zionist economic, political, military and cultural existence.”
And it’s all pretty much gone downhill from there, with Obama’s direct involvement.
But that’s not his only foreign policy failure. Each began with the very premise Zakaria is advancing — that speaking admiringly of (and to) tyrants is a good idea.
“In his first year Obama dispatched two letters to (Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah) Khamenei while keeping his distance from the revolutionary Green movement,” writes Jackson Diehl of the Washington Post. “He shook hands with Hugo Chavez. He launched a ‘reset of relations with Russia’s Vladimir Putin and dispatched envoys to reason with Bashar al-Assad in Damascus. He delivered a sweeping address to the Muslim world from Cairo. The results have been meager. Khamenei spurned the U.S. outreach. Relations with Putin warmed for a time but now have grown cold again. In Egypt and across the Middle East, the president’s popularity is lower today than when he gave the Cairo address.”
And now Israel is on the verge of attacking Iran, Turkey has turned away from the West, and China is expanding its military as fast as it can.
Perhaps President George W. Bush’s much-maligned “cowboy” diplomacy didn’t work well; what Obama has proved, however, is that most of those anti-U.S. countries can’t be made to love America, no matter how sweetly he engages them.
Zakaria’s advice for Romney is pretentious; worse, it’s wrong-headed. History has shown us this.
And it’s all pretty much gone downhill from there, with Obama’s direct involvement.
But that’s not his only foreign policy failure. Each began with the very premise Zakaria is advancing — that speaking admiringly of (and to) tyrants is a good idea.
“In his first year Obama dispatched two letters to (Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah) Khamenei while keeping his distance from the revolutionary Green movement,” writes Jackson Diehl of the Washington Post. “He shook hands with Hugo Chavez. He launched a ‘reset of relations with Russia’s Vladimir Putin and dispatched envoys to reason with Bashar al-Assad in Damascus. He delivered a sweeping address to the Muslim world from Cairo. The results have been meager. Khamenei spurned the U.S. outreach. Relations with Putin warmed for a time but now have grown cold again. In Egypt and across the Middle East, the president’s popularity is lower today than when he gave the Cairo address.”
And now Israel is on the verge of attacking Iran, Turkey has turned away from the West, and China is expanding its military as fast as it can.
Perhaps President George W. Bush’s much-maligned “cowboy” diplomacy didn’t work well; what Obama has proved, however, is that most of those anti-U.S. countries can’t be made to love America, no matter how sweetly he engages them.
Zakaria’s advice for Romney is pretentious; worse, it’s wrong-headed. History has shown us this.
