Climbing Out of the Obama Foreign Policy Hole

"So what would you do about Ukraine?" asked my exasperated interlocutor after listening to my rant on the foreign policy disaster that is the Obama misadministration. "Wrong question," I smugly replied. "Read The Diplomad for the right one."

Without doubt President Obama and John "Xmas in Cambodia" Kerry have fallen into yet another trap put out by the wily Putin-Lavrov hunting pair. Kerry's announced trip to Kiev, for example, is a classic scramble by a misadministration with no idea of what to do. I am willing to bet that Kerry's visit, far from being a demonstration of support for Ukrainian sovereignty, will be a Chamberlain-to-the-Czechs message of "don't increase tensions by resisting aggression." I am almost certain Kerry will advise Ukraine to roll over, and accept the loss of Crimea in exchange, maybe, for some additional vague "promises" from the West to help preserve the remainder of Czechoslovakia Ukraine. Kerry's visit certainly will do nothing to dissuade Moscow as Putin and Lavrov have taken measure of their "adversaries" and found them wanting.

Our "leaders" are simply not to be taken seriously on critical foreign policy issues. They have no overall strategic aim for our foreign policy; no clear idea where they want us to be in three, four, five years; simply put they don't really care about foreign policy. They react to crises with bland words, and by wishing them away into the cornfield with the help of the compliant media. Whatever happened to the urgency of the Syrian crisis?

As I wrote July of last year,

My experience at State and the NSC, has shown me that < . . . > [f]oreign policy for the Obama crew is an afterthought. They really have little interest in it; many key jobs went vacant for months at State, DOD, CIA, and the NSC. The Obama foreign policy team is peopled by the "well-educated," i.e., they have college degrees, and as befits the "well educated" in today's America, they are stunningly ignorant and arrogant leftists, but mostly just idiots. They do not make plans; they tend to fly by the seat of their pants using a deeply ingrained anti-US default setting for navigation. They react to the Beltway crowd of NGOs, "activists" of various stripes, NPR, the Washington Post and the New York Times. Relying on what they "know," they ensure the US does not appear as a bully, or an interventionist when it comes to our enemies: after all, we did something to make them not like us. Long-term US allies < . . . > they view as anti-poor, anti-Third World, and retrograde Cold Warriors. Why else would somebody befriend the US? Obama's NSC and State are staffed with people who do not know the history of the United States, and, simply, do not understand or appreciate the importance of the United States in and to the world. They are embarrassed by and, above all, do not like the United States. They look down on the average American, and <. . . > have no problem with anti-American regimes and personages because overwhelmingly they are anti-American themselves.

So what should we do? As noted, it's the wrong question if focussed solely on Ukraine. It is almost too late to do much about Ukraine per se. This misadministration is all about reacting to crises that arise because of things done by the misadministration. Show weakness over and over, and you find your opponents do not take you seriously, they seriously take you. Obama set the stage for the Ukrainian disaster with his policies in Egypt, Libya, Syria, Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan; with his disregard for our nation's military strength; his abuse of its enormous intelligence capabilities; and our collective electing of low quality people to positions of power.

The path to a real foreign policy rebirth begins at home.

As I said before our goal should be,

a government in which 95%-98% of the time it makes no difference to the average American citizen who is president. The US President should matter more to foreigners than to Americans. Except for foreign policy, national defense, times of national crisis, and providing a very broad economic vision, it should not matter who controls the White House. That means keep the government out of as many areas as possible, and where it has been involved deeply and for a long time, try to push the responsibility and resources out to the states, counties, cities, and people.

To repeat, our president should matter more to foreigners than to us. We hear nonsense from progressives about the president "running the country." Wrong! Our presidency was not designed to run the country--anybody who thinks that it was has not read the Constitution. The executive branch is not the country. The president must concentrate on the executive branch and the main tasks assigned it by the Constitution. Instead of promoting disastrous health care initiatives, listening to every phone call in Iowa, using the IRS to suppress dissent, beating up on Israel, yammering about fictitious global climate change, or demanding a costly and pointless relabeling of food products in the supermarket, the President should focus on his primary responsibility, the national defense. We must have a military capability second to none, and, in fact, greater than any foreseeable coalition of powers that might oppose us. We must stand with our allies; our word must be a gold coin; our enemies and friends must know we say what we mean and mean what we say, to wit, we have the biggest gun and will pull the trigger. The enemy is real and dangerous--a look at the forcibly altered NYC skyline should be proof enough of that. The "end of history" silliness should have died in the rubble of the Twin Towers.

More than ever before we need a rebirth of personal liberty that would produce the wealth and technology to underpin our military and economic strength. Aggressive fracking and ambitious marine oil drilling efforts, for example, by the US and Canada would help undermine the economic and, therefore, the military strength of Russia, Iran, and other trouble-makers. An unleashing of the tremendous creative potential which still exists in our frayed Republic would create one, two, many Silicon Valleys that would generate whole new technologies and sources of wealth. The government must get out of the way: taxes axed; regulations tossed by the dumpster-full; bureaucracy slashed and burned like the choking weed cover that it is.

Above all, we need men and women in the highest reaches of our government who know, understand, and love the greatness that is Western civilization, especially that variant of it handed us by our great English forefathers, and the role the USA should and must play in ensuring its survival. We do not have that now; freedom-loving people around the world pay the price for that hideous fact, and that must change. That is the only way out of this hole dug by the Obamistas and their "progressive" groupies.