Morning Bell: Neglecting Allies and Appeasing Foes

Conn Carroll / September 08, 2010

In yesterday’s New York Times, International Herald Tribune columnist Roger Cohen reported: “Since taking office, President Obama has reached out to the Muslim world as a whole, to China, to Turkey and to Iran, but has devoted scant serious diplomatic energy to Europe.” Cohen then went on to quote prominent Paris-based defense analyst Camille Grand: “Europe is the object of benign U.S. neglect. Obama has not established or re-established a strategic relationship with any single European country or with Europe as a whole.”

This analysis is dead on. In their report released last week, Defining the Obama Doctrine, Its Pitfalls, and How to Avoid Them, Drs. Kim Holmes and James Carafano detail just some of President Obama’s practice of extending an open hand to enemies while rebuffing friends and close allies, including: not welcoming the Dalai Lama to the White House when that dignitary made his first visit to Washington after Obama took office; reversing years of U.S. policy by supporting Argentina over the U.K. on the Falklands; caving to Russia by abandoning our missile defense plans with the Czech Republic and Poland; and backing a Hugo Chavez ally in Honduras. (more…)