Obama is a one of the weakest Presidents in the history of the United States.I am glad he will soon be leaving the White House, so that I will never again have to write about him or the weakest president in the history of America. Obama’s presidency will be defined by its failure, his disengaging America from the Middle East, and his letting the Russians and the Iranians be in charge of the region. His “pivot to Asia” is also a total catastrophe, particularly in losing the Philippines to China. During his eight years in power President Obama bullied his allies and empowered his enemies.The role of the President is to hold his constitutional duty to preserve, protect, and defend the United States, but now we are hearing that the President hasn’t done anything, for example, about Russians’ hacking American democracy with the help of Putin and Iran or about the Assad regime’s mass slaughter. He has, however, reserved a special anger for Duterte for going after the drug users and dealers, and for Jews building houses in their homeland. Yet, he has ignored the Gulenist cult’s failed coup against the democratically elected Turkish government, and, as a result, the killing of more than 245. Additionally, he has failed to address the home front problem of the cult’s giving bribes to so many American politicians, academics, and others in the form of free trips to Turkey to promote Gulen’s Islamic view around the world. Gulenists even tried to help some of Obama’s extended family in Kenya, so that his group could get free access to the White house. Despite so much evidence that Gulen is a cult leader who led a terrorist group with members of the Turkish government’s help to orchestrate the coup that killed so many innocent people, the Obama administration still harbors the head of this organization in the USA and refuses to extradite Gulen to Turkey to face Turkish justice for committing these crimes against the state and against the innocent.
The underlying problem is that the President entered the White House believing that America has done more evil than good in the world and consequently took a tour of apology immediately after gaining office. Even his wife Michelle, a child from a middle class family who attended Princeton and Harvard Law School to win a high paying job, said in 2008, that his becoming the Democratic nomination was the first time in her adult life that she was proud of her country.
Eight years ago when President Obama assumed the office of the Presidency with very ambitious promises in mind, his presidential campaigning and his inauguration speech made many feel that he would be a savior of the world. President Obama made a speech in Cairo to the Muslim world, and everyone thought things would be great; people were very optimistic hoping that his administration would lead to a new beginning for peace in the Muslim world. President Obama has not done anything other than win an election. After one year in office the Nobel committee awarded him the 2009 Nobel Peace Laureate for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples. This shows that corporations that do not have a clue about peace and justice run our world. The really enormous problem here is that egregious things took place during the tenure of President Obama. Giving Obama, who led Syria into the hand of the Russians, a Nobel peace prize simply for doing nothing but compromising the national interests of the United States, is like giving a Nobel Literature Prize to someone who is illiterate and just learned to sign his name with an X.
If Assad is still in power , if Russians are in charge of Syria, and if they have taken over the Middle East, it is because the President constantly signaled to the Assad regime that the U.S would not use force or put boots on the ground in Syria. President Assad with the help of Russia and Iran violated the norms and rule of the international system, not President Duterte whom President Obama tried to lecture for declaring war on drugs. The reason the Assad regime is still in power and ISIS is still reeking havoc is because Obama lost American’s deterrent power. None of Allied nations share a commitment to democracy, but Iran, Russia, and Assad are using the same page out of the playbook to kill civilian people. Consequently, Assad will not go anytime soon, and the leaders will have to divide Syria into three parts and let Assad remain in power under the triune leadership with Iran and Russia. One of the Obama‘s worse foreign policy decisions that will be remembered is when the Assad regime killed more than half a million civilians and more than six million were displaced. These acts against humanity happened because President Obama refused to take any action. This will continue to be recorded as Obama’s foreign policy legacy.
President Obama created more hate and division than President Bush did. President Obama has not done anything about climate change, nuclear disarmament, terrorism, or peace in the Middle East. He probably wanted his foreign policy to be remembered for the pact with Iran and the normalizing of relations with Cuba. As mentioned, his Asian pivot policy, which was largely abandoned, especially lost the friendship of the Philippines to China.
Granted, the killing of Osama Bin Laden was one of the most significant achievements of his Presidency, but it was conducted by US intelligence and military agencies. President Obama’s foreign policy, however, will be remembered for abandoning Syria and excluding America in the region. There are new paradigm shifts in the geopolitics of the Middle East, where the axis of Russia, Turkey, and Iran has replaced the U.S as the main power player.
Further, the U.S and Europe, the two pillars of the transatlantic alliances, have failed to prevent the de facto collapse of the international order in the Syrian war, the chaos in Iraq, the refugee crisis, the Russian invasion in Ukraine, terrorism, and the Russians’ daredevil cyber attack on the USA’s national security and election system. Clearly, the West is lacking in leadership and vision.
President-Elect Donald Trump is like President Duterte; he is totally unpredictable and his victory was unprecedented, so it is hard to predict the future U.S foreign policy, but what is predictable is that Donald Trump will handle this state of affairs and the mess Obama left in the Middle East, Asia, and around the world; he cannot accepted.
With just less than a week before the inauguration of a new administration in the U.S, areas are still not clear in terms of domestic and foreign policy proposals such as relations with Russia, but already we see the existence of a different dynamic that will influence U.S policy toward not only Russia, but also EU countries. Either Trump will make America great again or accept that America is no longer great and that we are living in a multi-polar system with the rise of China, Russia, and new powers in the Middle East. Donald Trump has to decide what the role of the U.S. in the international system should be. How much should the U.S be involved in the conflicts in different parts of the globe?
The Obama Presidency used term “retrenchment “ to explain that his administration was trying to reduce the role of the U.S in the international system. However, the members of the Trump cabinet will have different backgrounds and varying policy priorities. With a CEO from a major oil corporation, two marine corps generals, a third-term Congressman, a fourth-term Senator, a campaign finance chairman, a former deputy US trade representative, a former restaurant executive, a retired pediatric neurosurgeon, and a popular governor, Trump will have a myriad of vantage points on handling a crisis and on dealing with domestic illegal immigrants, refugees, Islamic terrorism, and, of course, the reaction of other major actors in the international system to the policies that U.S will make.
Major challenges remain for President-Elect Donald Trump such as a global rearrangement of power equilibrium, the current international order, and the institutions that embody democracy and must be fixed to prevent further chaos. The U.S and the Soviet Union’s nuclear threat shaped the Cold War, but now a new cold war between the U.S., Russia, China, and the Muslim world has emerged.
Naturally, President-Elect Donald Trump‘s polices will have an impact around the world. Moscow and Beijing are carefully watching the moves that Trump will take in regards to current crises. In particular, Trump has publically attacked China for unfairly manipulating its currency, being easy on North Korea, slapping taxes on American goods, provoking military issues in the South China Sea, and telephoning the head of the Taiwan government so that the leader plans to visit America. Trump will need to address China, which will definitely put restrictions on American companies in China; Russian cyber attacks on the US electoral process; Israel; and the Iran deal. The President-Elect said he would reduce corporate taxes from 30% to 15 %, so that American corporations will come back to the USA. This could be good news for the Japanese economy because it will support Japanese exports to America.
President-Elect Donald Trump needs a massive foreign policy reset. I am not sure Donald Trump will make America great again, but it is important that he makes the nation America again for America itself and for others who depend on American leadership in a dark world.
Dr. Aland Mizell is President of the MCI and a regular contributor to Mindanao Times. You may email the author at:aland_mizell2@hotmail.com
