No attention to foreign policy
In the aftermath of the alleged snubbing of British PM Brown, how has this not gotten more notice? Or am I missing something?
A well-connected Washington figure, who is close to members of Mr Obama’s inner circle, expressed concern that Mr Obama had failed so far to “even fake an interest in foreign policy”.
A British official conceded that the furore surrounding the apparent snub to Mr Brown had come as a shock to the White House. “I think it’s right to say that their focus is elsewhere, on domestic affairs. A number of our US interlocutors said they couldn’t quite understand the British concerns and didn’t get what that was all about.”
The American source said: “Obama is overwhelmed. There is a zero sum tension between his ability to attend to the economic issues and his ability to be a proactive sculptor of the national security agenda.
Perhaps this is why Hillary is clocking so many miles straight out of the gate - visiting Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and Mexico during her first two months in office. To that, add a slew of high profile envoys and arguably a faster rate of confirmation of Deputy, Under, and Assistant Secretaries at Foggy Bottom than elsewhere in the government.
In other words, on all issues save Iraq and Afghanistan, the word of the day (or month) is “delegate.”
And I have to admit that, even as a supposed foreign policy guy, I don’t blame the administration. I heard story on NPR this morning talking about the immediate need for presidential engagement on Sudan, and I just laughed. The White House probably did too. Look, I am as pro-peace/anti-genocide as absolutely anyone, but the president has a very limited amount of time; his attention on any foreign policy issue that doesn’t pertain to the world economy right now is probably a misallocation of it.
Posted in PPI, US foreign policy, obama
March 17th, 2009 at 4:43 pm
One other thing the MSM might note: these “domestic” issues that Obama is focusing so closely on are pretty frakking important to the global community right now, and are clearly greater national security issues than traditional foreign policy. The collapse of the global economy would quite obviously be an enormous problem as far as destabilizing nations and infrastructures that promote peace and engagement, both in the First World and in the Third World.
Or perhaps everyone forgot that the biggest upcoming summit of global leaders is going to be ENTIRELY focused on economic issues?
March 26th, 2009 at 4:00 pm
[...] around about how the economic crisis has occupied so much of President Obama’s time that he hasn’t turned much attention to foreign affairs. An issue like this should draw some Presidential notice - if we’re going to have a [...]