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Obama’s Foreign Policy

by tdaxp ~ March 20th, 2009

While any part of Obama’s globalizaton policies that overlap with any other part of his administration tend to be a disaster (Buy American bills I & II, the sanctions against Mexico, the SNAFU with Gordon Brown, and nearly anything related to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner), Obama’s foreign policy proper has been exceptionally smooth and well-done. The President’s messgae to the Iranian people is just the latest example of this:

Elsewhere, Obama wisely continues Bush administration policies. Obama won’t be pulling a brigade out a month after all, an the KMT-CCP peace process has become the new normal, we will be reducing our purchases of F-22s.

At least as far as foreign policy itself goes, Barack Obama has been a good president.

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5 Responses to Obama’s Foreign Policy

  1. Garrett G.
    March 20th, 2009 at 6:04 pm

    “The President’s messgae to the American people is just the latest example of this:”

    I assume you meant: “message to the Iranian people.” =)

  2. Eddie
    March 21st, 2009 at 12:47 pm

    He really irked Tom with this rethinking of trade.

    http://thomaspmbarnett.com/weblog/2009/03/good_obama_foreign_policy_bad.html

    If the EU does not get its act together and makes things far, far worse (along with Treasury’s Zombie fetish), I suspect a nasty anti-foreign tinge to the populism already rampant across much of the political spectrum.

    This only feeds into these destructive trade policies (though why can’t we have full access to South Korea’s auto market if they have full access to ours?… sometimes these trade agreements don’t smell right to the layman and that is part of their unpopularity).

  3. tdaxp
    March 21st, 2009 at 6:02 pm

    Eddie,

    Tom’s quote is good:

    This alone is enough to make me rethink my vote for Obama. McCain would have done far less damage to our future simply by trying to do less to “fix” trade.

    On second thought, Obama’s foreign policy successes may just be a function of Hillary Clinton’s power-of-appointment within the State Department. All areas of foreign policy outside of Hillary’s purview appear to be going disastrously (trade, Zinni [1], etc.).

    Garrett,

    Heh. Yeah, that was a typo. Though the use of the White House youtube channel means the American people were an audience too… Iran is too important to let it default on our partnership.

    [1] http://www.tdaxp.com/archive/2009/02/04/obama-stiffs-zinni.html

  4. Eddie
    March 23rd, 2009 at 12:15 pm

    Now at least he has admitted fault and made moves to fix the problem.

    http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123759817059301405.html

  5. tdaxp
    March 23rd, 2009 at 1:23 pm

    From the article:

    The Obama administration began efforts Friday to ease an erupting trade dispute with Mexico by starting work on a new program to give Mexican truckers broader access to U.S. highways.

    Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood met with officials from the State Department and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative to design a cross-border trucking program “that will meet the legitimate concerns of Congress and our [North American Free Trade Agreement] commitments,” said a White House spokesman.

    A person familiar with the meeting said the participants “are going to work to get a proposal everyone likes before [President Barack] Obama’s trip to Mexico in April.”

    So it turns out that Obama was serious about renegotiating NAFTA.

    What other trade agreements will he renig on / “renegotiate”?

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