Barack Obama, The Idealistic Realist, 2009-2017, Part I: The Middle East and East Asia

CHAPTER 6
Barack Obama,
the Idealistic Realist, 2009–2017,
Part I: The Middle East and East Asia
Barack Obama entered the White House intending to emulate the more
realistic foreign policy philosophy of the first President Bush without aban-
doning American ideals. However, more often than not, his foreign policies
reflected the greater emphasis he placed on realistic rather than idealistic
considerations.
Nowhere were the realistic and idealistic components of Obama’s foreign
policy more difficult to blend than in the Middle East. In Eastern Asia, on
the other hand, he was confronted with the rising economic and military
power of China and the threat of an increasingly nuclear-armed North
Korea (Fig. 6.1).
The Rise of Barack Obama

Barack Hussein Obama was the first African American to hold the office
of president of the United States. He was born on August 4, 1961, in
Honolulu, Hawaii. His mother, Ann Dunham, was of mostly English
ancestry, while his father, Barack Obama Sr., was a Kenyan. Obama’s par-
ents divorced in 1964, and Obama Sr. returned to Kenya where he was
killed in an automobile accident in 1982. In 1965, Obama’s mother mar-
ried an Indonesian, Lolo Soetoro, and moved to Indonesia with her son
two years later. In 1971, Obama, his mother, and her daughter (by Lolo)
returned to Hawaii to live with his maternal grandparents, Madelyn and
Stanley Dunham. Four years later, Obama chose to stay in Hawaii with
© The Author(s) 2019 157

R. E. Powaski, Ideals, Interests, and U.S. Foreign Policy
from George H. W. Bush to Donald Trump,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97295-4_6
158 R. E. POWASKI
his grandparents when his mother and stepsister returned to Indonesia,

where his mother spent most of the next two decades. She died in 1995
in Hawaii following treatment for ovarian and uterine cancer.
Living with his grandparents in Honolulu, Obama attended Punahou
School, a private college preparatory school, from fifth grade until his
graduation from high school in 1979. He then attended Occidental
College in suburban Los Angeles for two years and then transferred
to Columbia University in New York City, where in 1983 he received
a bachelor’s degree in political science, with a specialty in international
Fig. 6.1 Barack Obama, Official White House Photograph (Credit: Pete

Souza, courtesy of the Library of Congress; Souza, Pete, photographer.
Official portrait of President Barack Obama in Oval Office/Official White House
photo by Pete Souza, December 6, 2012. Photograph: https://www.loc.gov/
item/2017645540/)
6 BARACK OBAMA, THE IDEALISTIC REALIST, 2009–2017 … 159
relations. After serving for a couple of years as a writer and editor for
Business International Corporation, in 1985 he took a position as a com-
munity organizer on Chicago’s largely impoverished Far South Side.
Three years later, he entered Harvard University’s law school, where he
was the first African American to serve as president of the Harvard Law
Review. He graduated magna cum laude in 1991. The following year,
Obama met Chicago native Michelle Robinson, a young lawyer. The two
married and subsequently had two daughters.
After receiving his law degree, Obama moved to Chicago where he
became active in the Democratic Party. He organized Project Vote, a
drive that registered tens of thousands of African Americans on voting
rolls and in so doing helped Democrat Bill Clinton win Illinois and cap-
ture the presidency in 1992. While lecturing on constitutional law at the
University of Chicago and working as an attorney on civil rights issues
between 1992 and 2004, Obama wrote his first book, Dreams from My
Father (1995), which traced the lives of his now-deceased father and his
extended family in Kenya. In 1996, Obama was elected to the Illinois
Senate, where he served three terms, from 1997 to 2004. While cam-
paigning for the US Senate in 2004, he gained national recognition by
delivering the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention.
After his election to the Senate that November, his political star rose rap-
idly. In 2008, he won the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination
after defeating Hillary Clinton in a close primary campaign. He then
defeated Republican nominee John McCain in the general election and
was inaugurated president on January 20, 2009.1
Obama and National Security

As president, Obama proved to be a very intelligent, relatively intro-
verted—at least for a politician—outwardly calm, and pragmatic chief
executive. He also was a very energetic and hardworking president who
voraciously read governmental papers, books, newspapers, and letters, often
until the late hours of the day. Even his critics conceded that in his personal
behavior he set a standard for class, dignity, and integrity that few presi-
dents have matched. His administration was remarkably free of scandal.
Although Obama was not afraid of making difficult decisions, most
of them were risk averse. He was determined not to do “stupid things.”
As a consequence, he adhered to an elaborate and time-consuming
decision-making process. For example, his decision to send 30,000
160 R. E. POWASKI
additional US troops to Afghanistan in 2009 required ten meetings over

three months, and unanimity among his senior advisers, before he was
willing to issue a public policy statement.2 He also insisted on being his
administration’s chief spokesman, not only to demonstrate that he was
in charge, but also because the role enabled him to display his impressive
in-depth knowledge of his policies, thereby generating confidence that
he knew what he was doing.3
Obama selected two highly experienced individuals to serve as secretary
of state: Hillary Clinton during his first term and John Kerry during his
second. Clinton’s role and influence within the administration, historian
James Mann observed, was sometimes immense, sometimes less than she
would have liked. But she proved to be a loyal member of the president’s
team, and in the process added to her extensive resumé, thereby increasing
her own presidential prospects.4 Before succeeding Clinton as secretary of
state, in January 2013, Kerry served five terms in the US Senate, including
four years heading the Foreign Relations Committee. As secretary of state,
he traveled much more than Clinton, or any other predecessor. He also
worked diligently on some extraordinarily difficult foreign policy issues,
including China, Russia, Palestine, Iran, and Syria.5
Obama had four secretaries of defense. The first, Robert Gates, served
in that position under George W. Bush and continued in that post until
2011. He was succeeded by Leon Panetta, who served for the remainder
of Obama’s first term. Obama’s third secretary of defense, Chuck Hagel,
held the position from 2013 to 2015, when he was pressured to resign.
He was succeeded by Ashton Carter, who served the last two years of
Obama’s presidency. After leaving office, both Gates and Panetta severely
criticized Obama and his closest advisors, charging that they lacked mili-
tary experience and refused to take the advice of those who did.6
General James Jones, the first of Obama’s three chief national secu-
rity advisors, certainly would agree with that criticism. “There are
too many senior aides around the president who did not understand
war or foreign relations,” Jones told Washington Post reporter Bob
Woodward.7 According to James Mann, Obama was also closer to his
National Security Council staff than he was to Jones, Clinton, or Gates.8
In November 2010, Jones was replaced by his deputy, Tom Donilon,
a lawyer by training, who played a key role in shaping Obama’s prag-
matic approach to foreign policy. In July 2013, Donilon was succeeded
by Susan Rice, the US ambassador to the UN since 2009. She served for
the remainder of Obama’s presidency.
Obama, Idealism and Realism

Obama described his philosophy of international relations to Jeffrey
Goldberg, who subsequently wrote an article about it for The Atlantic
magazine. Obama said he ascribed to the realism of the first President
Bush, and especially to his chief national security advisor, General Brent
Scowcroft. Like Bush, Scowcroft, and other realists, Obama attempted to
place US national interests at the forefront of his administration’s foreign
policy. He added, however, that he was not so much the realist that he
would not pass judgment on immoral leaders. He just did not think it was
America’s responsibility to remove them from power or, as President John
Quincy Adams once said, go around the world seeking “monsters to
destroy.” He insisted that the United States does not have the means
to police the world or to make right what is wrong everywhere. Almost
every great world power, he told Goldberg, “has succumbed” to over-
extension. “This explains,” he said, “the Vietnam and Iraq quagmires.”
Nevertheless, he thought it was possible to “advance both our security
interests and those ideals and values that we care about,” but not always.
“There are going to be times where we can do something about innocent
people being killed, but there are going to be times where we can’t.”9
Obama also resented that other nations, particularly the richer members of
the NATO alliance, relied excessively on the United States to solve the world’s
problems and did not do their fair share to uphold the liberal international
order. As Brookings analyst Thomas Wright points out, “Obama’s solution to
this problem was to set a high threshold for U.S. action in those cases where
America’s core interests—the security of the United States or its citizens, of
surrounding territories, and U.S. allies—were not directly threatened.” In
other cases, “the United State would act only multilaterally, but only if other
nations did their fair share, and the costs were relatively low.”10 Moreover, the
United States was still in the depth of the Great Recession. Unemployment
reached 10% and the national budget deficit for 2010 almost 11% of gross
domestic product. If the economy were to recover, and Obama’s liberal
domestic agenda get enacted, extremely expensive foreign conflicts would
have to be avoided. Accordingly, American international leadership would
have to be, as critics would call it, a case of “leadership from behind.”
Considering Obama’s determination to make US interests the para-
mount consideration in his foreign policy, he entered the presidency with
a number of goals that appealed to idealists as well as realists. Among
them was the prevention of nuclear weapons proliferation, nuclear
162 R. E. POWASKI
terrorism, and nuclear war. This required, among other actions, steps
to ensure the safety of nuclear materials as well as a strengthening of the
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. To that end, he was particularly inter-
ested in negotiating a deal with Iran that would halt its effort to develop
a nuclear arsenal. He also wanted to engage the Russians in nuclear arms
reduction talks. And he intended to commit the United States to reduc-
ing climate-warming gas emissions, which would require intensive dip-
lomatic engagement with other nations, particularly China. In addition,
he wanted to improve US relations with the Muslim world by undoing
the perception held by many Muslims during Bush’s presidency that the
United States was at war with Islam. Transforming the US relationship
with the Muslim world, in turn, required peace between Israel and the
Palestinians, another problem Obama intended to address.
The War in Afghanistan

With respect to the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, Obama was largely
successful. After boosting US troop strength to 100,000 by 2010—sup-
posedly in a final effort to crush the Taliban before withdrawing mili-
tarily from the country—he was able to reduce the number of military
personnel to about 5000 by the time he left office in January 2017.
Nevertheless, despite over fifteen years of intense military effort and the
loss of thousands of American lives and over a trillion dollars, the Taliban
controlled more territory in 2016 than they had at any point since 2001.
To make matters worse, the US-backed Afghan government still lacked
the ability to stand on its own.
More than a few critics blamed Obama for the failure of America’s
Afghan policy. For one, Robert Gates, Obama’s first secretary of defense,
wrote in his memoir that the president “doesn’t consider the war to
be his. For him, it’s all about getting out.”11 While desiring to end the
Taliban threat, Obama clearly was more interested in getting out of
Afghanistan, as Gates asserted. During the 2009 review of his Afghan
policy, he told his staff that “our entire national policy can’t just be
focused on terrorism.” He said that the “world’s 6 billion people have
a vast range, diversity and concerns, and we must also focus on our own
economy because it’s the foundation of our strength in the world.”12
However, the US failure in Afghanistan was due more to exter-
nal factors over which Obama had little control. One was the absence
of a reliable partner in the person of Afghan President Hamid Karzai,
deeply corrupt and extremely unpopular in the eyes of the Afghan peo-
ple. Many Afghans were even more critical of the continuing American
presence in their country, especially as mounting US air strikes killed
noncombatants. The ethnic diversity of the Afghan people also contrib-
uted to the difficulty of unifying the country around the national gov-
ernment. In addition to the Taliban, local warlords and armed groups
challenged its authority.13 Finally, the United States and its NATO part-
ners never deployed enough troops in Afghanistan to pacify the country.
Although total NATO forces peaked at 150,000 military personnel, this
number was well short of the 500,000 troops required by US counter-
insurgency doctrine. The gap was supposed to be filled by training
Afghan police and army troops, but they proved notoriously unreliable
and remained substantially unprepared.14
Another reason for the US failure in Afghanistan was the relative
safe haven the Taliban found in neighboring Pakistan, and the contin-
uing support they received from the Pakistani military and its main spy
agency, the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence. By supporting the
Afghan Taliban, Pakistan’s generals hoped to counter India, Pakistan’s
traditional rival, by creating a bloc of Muslim nations, comprising
Pakistan, Kashmir, Afghanistan, and eventually all of Central Asia.15
The Death of Bin Laden

The close connection between Pakistan, the Afghan Taliban, and their
Al Qaeda allies explains President Obama’s decision not to inform the
Pakistani government in advance about the US operation to kill Al
Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. As a result of intelligence gathered by
the CIA in late 2010 and early 2011, bin Laden was discovered to be
living in a compound right next to the Pakistan Military Academy in
Abbottabad, a suburban area 35 miles from Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital
city. Obama rejected a plan to bomb the compound and instead author-
ized a “surgical raid” by Navy Seals on May 2, 2011. As a result, bin
Laden was killed and then buried at sea several hours later.
In spite of the elation in the West over bin Laden’s death, some
criticized the continuing US policy of “rewarding” Pakistan with mil-
itary and economic aid, totalling over $30 billion by the time Obama
left office in 2017, despite Pakistan’s long ongoing support for the
Afghan Taliban and its collusion with bin Laden. The critics argued that
Pakistan should have been named a state sponsor of terrorism, requiring
164 R. E. POWASKI
the termination of US military and economic aid to that country. Such

action, the critics believed, would have compelled the Pakistanis to cut
their ties to the Taliban. But Obama, like his immediate predecessors,
Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, refused to take this step, arguing that
it was the much lesser of two evils to keep afloat a flawed Pakistani gov-
ernment than to allow it to be overthrown by radical Islamists eager to
get their hands on Pakistan’s nuclear weapons.16
Iraq and ISIS
Obama also was only partially successful in achieving his goal of with-
drawing all US military forces from Iraq. Taking advantage of an agree-
ment that George W. Bush had negotiated with the Iraqis requiring
the withdrawal of all US forces by 2011, Obama reduced US military
personnel to only 150 by the end of that year, a number that remained at
that level for about three years. However, early in the summer of 2014,
Obama once again was compelled to react militarily to events in Iraq.
The Shiite-dominated government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki
was threatened by a rapidly spreading Sunni uprising spearheaded by a
former Al Qaeda affiliate, the so-called Islamic State in Iraq and Syria
(ISIS). This jihadist group held to a fundamentalist doctrine of Sunni
Islam called Wahhabism or Salafism.
Taking advantage of the hatred of Iraq’s Sunnis for the Shiite-
dominated Iraqi government, ISIS quickly conquered territory on
both sides of the Iraq–Syria border, including Iraq’s second largest city,
Mosul. In the face of the ISIS advance, the US-trained and equipped
Iraqi army disintegrated, leaving Baghdad, the capital city, in jeopardy.
The besieged Iraqi government begged Obama to intervene once
again with US military power, but he refused to do so as long as Maliki
remained in office. However, with Maliki’s resignation imminent, on
August 8, 2014, the United States launched air strikes against ISIS forces
in Iraq and, a month later, against those inside Syria. And despite his
pledge to keep US ground troops out of Iraq, the near collapse of the
Iraqi army in the face of the ISIS advance compelled Obama to gradually
reinsert US ground forces into Iraq until by 2016 they numbered 4400.
Critics blamed Obama for the new war in Iraq, charging that he was
too anxious to get US troops out of that country and, consequently, he
removed them too quickly. But the president’s defenders point out that
the Iraqi parliament refused to grant the immunities that would have
enabled US forces to stay in Iraq. Moreover, some analysts asked how

keeping 5000 or more troops in Iraq could stabilize the country when
the earlier presence of 100,000 US combat troops did not. Nevertheless,
other analysts believe that had Obama kept a small residual US force in
Iraq, he would have had greater insight into how badly the Iraqi secu-
rity forces were deteriorating under Maliki.17 The validity of this assess-
ment seems to be supported by the fact that once Maliki was removed
from power, and US air power and ground forces engaged ISIS, the
Iraqi army was able to recover and regain much of the territory it had
lost to the insurgents. By the time Obama left office in January 2017,
Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, was on the verge of liberation by the
Iraqi army, with support from Kurdish troops and US special forces. But
the ultimate defeat of ISIS was a task left for Obama’s successor, Donald
Trump.
The Arab Spring

In 2011, just as Obama began to withdraw US troops from Iraq, a rev-
olutionary wave of protests, demonstrations, riots, coups, and civil wars
erupted in the Arab world. Civil wars occurred in Iraq, Libya, Syria, and
Yemen, along with uprisings in Tunisia, Bahrain, and Egypt. Numerous
factors triggered the uprisings, including repressive dictatorships or abso-
lute monarchies, human rights violations, political corruption, economic
decline, unemployment, extreme poverty, and the concentration of
wealth in the hands of a few. This so-called Arab Spring began in Tunisia
on January 14, 2011, with street demonstrations against the government
of long-time President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. Two weeks later, the
Tunisian army put a new constitution into effect that laid the ground for
a democratic parliamentary system.
Inspired by the successful popular uprising in Tunisia, on January 25,
2011, tens of thousands of Egyptians began protesting on the streets of
that country’s major cities against President Hosni Mubarak, who had
ruled Egypt for thirty years. Although Mubarak was a long-time ally of the
United States, and Obama had opposed Bush’s campaign to spread democ-
racy throughout the Middle East, the president publicly called for Mubarak
to resign. But Mubarak did not resign until mid-February, after the
Egyptian generals turned against him. During May and June 2012, Egypt
staged a free and fair election, but the winner, Mohammed Morsi, was
the leader of a radical Islamist party, the Muslim Brotherhood. Although
166 R. E. POWASKI
Obama publicly supported the right of the Egyptian people to elect their
own government, Morsi’s Islamist strategy alarmed Israel and the conserva-
tive Arab regimes that the United States had supported for decades.
Many Egyptians also became alarmed by Morsi’s efforts to turn Egypt
into an Islamic-based republic. They again took to the streets demon-
strating against the Morsi government, which prompted the Egyptian
army, in late June and early July 2013, to remove Morsi from power,
in the process killing or imprisoning several thousand members of the
Muslim Brotherhood. The following May, the army’s leader, General
Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, was elected president. Despite a legal obligation
to suspend aid in the event of a coup, the Obama administration main-
tained the flow of US military aid to Egypt, which amounted to $1.3
billion per year. Said Secretary of State Kerry, the Egyptian army was
“in effect … restoring democracy” and averting civil war.18 Once again,
Obama’s idealistic side succumbed to the reality of the new order in
Egypt. He obviously was not going to intervene in Egypt to restore a
democratically elected government.
Intervention in Libya
Stung by criticism that he had not done enough to save democracy in
Egypt, Obama reluctantly agreed to limited US military intervention in
neighboring Libya. The US action was prompted by an uprising, begin-
ning in February 2011, against the regime of long-time Libyan dictator
Muammar el-Qaddafi. Concerned about the possibility of a massacre of
civilians, like those that had occurred in the Balkans during the 1990s,
British Prime Minister David Cameron and French President Nicolas
Sarkozy persuaded Obama to intervene in the Libyan civil war. Obama
justified his decision to get involved by saying, “To brush aside America’s
responsibility as a leader and—more profoundly—our responsibilities to
our fellow human beings under such circumstances, would have been a
betrayal of who we are.”19 However, fearing a repetition of the extended
US ground wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, he insisted that NATO take the
lead in the operation to which he committed only US military aircraft.
Although the UN Security Council authorized the intervention in
order to protect Libyan noncombatants, the allied effort quickly mor-
phed into an ultimately successful campaign to get rid of Qaddafi.
In August, with allied military support, rebel forces compelled him to
flee Tripoli, the Libyan capital, but he was captured and killed by rebel
soldiers two months later. However, the overthrow of Qaddafi brought

only further violence as rival militias fought for control of the coun-
try. Among the victims of the renewed fighting was US ambassador J.
Christopher Stevens, who was killed in an Islamist attack on the US con-
sulate in Benghazi on September 11, 2012.
In the end, the continued warfare in Libya compelled Obama to
concede that “we and our European partners underestimated the need
[for] a much more aggressive effort to rebuild societies that didn’t have
any civic traditions.”20 He had thought that the European allies, rather
than the United States, should take the lead in rebuilding Libya. But
the Europeans were unable, or unwilling, to do so. In effect, in Libya,
Obama repeated the same mistake of winning the war and losing the
peace that Bush had committed in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Syria
The Libyan experience reinforced Obama’s resolve to avoid US involve-
ment in the Syrian civil war, which began in March 2011 with massive
demonstrations against President Bashar al-Assad. After Assad attempted
to violently suppress the demonstrations, opposition militias formed and
the conflict soon blossomed into a full-fledged civil war. Some rebels had
a democratic motive for challenging Assad’s regime, but the rebellion
also had sectarian and international components. It pitted Syria’s Sunni
majority against Assad’s ruling Shiite minority. Assad received vital mili-
tary support from Shiite Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, while his oppo-
nents, with the notable exception of ISIS rebels, received considerable
assistance from Saudi Arabia and other Sunni-run Persian Gulf states.
While Obama was determined to stay out of the Syrian conflict, after
witnessing repeated government atrocities against civilians, in August
2011 he said that “the time has come for President Assad to step aside.”
But Assad had no intention of giving up power, and with US forces with-
drawing from Iraq and Afghanistan, Obama was not about to send US
troops to Syria to oust him. However, in May 2012, the president said
that he might be willing to order a US military response if as he put it,
“we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or
being utilized.”21
On August 21, 2013, Obama’s “red line” was crossed when hun-
dreds of Syrian civilians died as a result of chemical weapon attacks by
government forces. But at virtually the last minute, Obama called off
168 R. E. POWASKI
a planned retaliatory US missile strike against Syrian military installa-

tions. His change of mind was prompted in part by a vote of the British
House of Commons rejecting Britain’s participation in military action
against Syria. Obama refused to act without Britain. In addition, Pew
public opinion surveys revealed that most Americans also opposed mili-
tary action against Syria; only 28% of those polled supported a US mil-
itary response. As a consequence, Obama decided to refer the matter
to Congress, which he realized would not endorse US military action
against Assad.
Obama’s failure to carry through with his threat to punish Syria
was roundly criticized by his Republican opponents as well as some
Democrats. However, a few days later, Obama received unexpected help
from Russian President Vladimir Putin, who persuaded Assad to hand
over his chemical weapons to international observers for their supervised
destruction. Putin intervened in Syria because he feared that allowing
Assad to be overthrown would create a power vacuum in that country
that jihadists would fill. He pointed to the US overthrow of Saddam
Hussein in Iraq and the rise of ISIS as a prime example of such action.
But it was not only the spread of radical Islamism that Putin feared. He
also was well aware that if the democratic elements in the Arab Spring
uprisings succeeded in supplanting dictators in the Middle East, his
regime could be next. Consequently, Putin not only rejected the US
demand that Assad resign, two years later he committed Russian military
forces to Syria to save Assad’s regime.
On September 30, 2015, Russian military aircraft based in Syria began
a sustained campaign of air strikes against rebel forces—and civilian facil-
ities. In response, Obama condemned the Russian action, authorized
Secretary of State Kerry to negotiate with the Russians in order to try
to end the war, and continued to supply Syrian Kurds and Arab-Syrian
forces fighting Assad’s army, assistance that he had initiated in 2013. But
the US aid proved insufficient in preventing Assad’s forces from captur-
ing the rebel-held city, Aleppo, in December 2016.22
In the end, the Syrian civil war proved to be a monumental human-
itarian disaster. By September 2016, almost a half million Syrian civil-
ians had been killed and nearly 5 million had fled to other countries
in the Middle East and Europe. The massive influx of terrorized peo-
ple threated to unravel the European Union after some member states
closed their borders in response to the tide of refugees. Obama was
roundly criticized for not doing enough to end the war as well as to
relieve in a substantial way the plight of millions of Syrian refugees. The

United States agreed to take in only 10,000 refugees, a very small frac-
tion of the total. But Obama argued that he had done all he could, short
of involving the United States in another Middle Eastern war, a step he
was determined to avoid. While he conceded that the civil war in Syria
was a monumental human tragedy, he placed the blame for it entirely on
Assad and his Russian and Iranian allies. Moreover, he argued, no major
US national interest was jeopardized by the war against Assad. More vital
to US national security, he insisted, was the threat posed by ISIS, both
in Syria and in Iraq, where he preferred to engage US forces, albeit in
a very limited way. In the end, in Syria, as elsewhere, Obama’s realistic
inclination overcame his idealistic sentiments.23
Obama and Saudi Arabia

For a variety of reasons, US relations with long-time ally Saudi Arabia
deteriorated stunningly during Obama’s presidency. One reason was
the president’s response to the Arab Spring. The Saudis were dis-
mayed by Obama’s refusal to support Egyptian President Hosni
Mubarak, a long-time friend of Saudi Arabia, as well as the United
States. The Saudis abhorred Obama’s toleration of Morsi’s Islamist
government, which succeeded Mubarak’s. Not surprisingly, the Saudis
supported the coup that restored Egypt to military rule. They also sent
troops into neighboring Bahrain to quash an uprising against its Sunni
ruling family by that country’s largely Shiite population. Obviously,
Saudi Arabia, an absolute monarchy that adhered to the extremely fun-
damentalist Wahhabism sect, was determined to do everything in its
power to crush the Arab Spring.
The Obama administration, for its part, was increasingly irritated by
Saudi Arabia’s lackluster military effort against ISIS militants in Syria
and Iraq. Instead of ISIS, the Saudis concentrated on assisting the Sunni
jihadists fighting Assad’s Shiite-dominated government. In 2015, the
Saudis shifted their focus to Yemen, where they intervened militarily to
put down a rebellion by Shiite Houthis against that country’s Sunni-run
government. In so doing, the Saudis demonstrated that their top priority
was one of rolling back the expanding influence of Iran in the Middle
East, and not the war against ISIS.
The Saudis were particularly alarmed by Obama’s diplomatic approach
to Iran, which culminated in an agreement, in June 2015, that severely
170 R. E. POWASKI
restricted Iran’s nuclear program. In return, international sanctions

imposed on that country were gradually removed. The Saudis, who ini-
tially opposed the deal, feared that it would become the basis for normal-
izing US-Iranian relations. Although that was Obama’s hope, that goal
was not realized during the balance of his presidency.
The Saudis also were upset by Obama’s disinclination to get
deeply involved in the affairs of the Middle East, which they feared
would encourage Iran to expand its regional influence at the expense
of Sunni Arabs. Reinforcing this fear was Obama’s announced inten-
tion to “pivot” US resources from the Middle East to Asia, where
China appeared to be more menacing to US allies and interests. In
an attempt to relieve Saudi anxieties about Iran, Obama traveled to
Riyadh in April 2016 to meet with Saudi King Salman and Persian
Gulf state leaders. He promised that he would keep close tabs on Iran,
to insure that they would not use the billions of dollars they would
receive from ending the international sanctions to flex their military
muscle. While the Saudis initially opposed the deal, in September 2015
the Saudi foreign minister said his country was “satisfied” with the
agreement.
As a consolation prize to the Saudis for acquiescing to the Iran nuclear
deal, Obama came to the assistance of the Saudi military campaign in
Yemen, even though the United States had no quarrel with the Houthis.
On August 8, 2015, the Obama administration notified Congress that it
planned to authorize the sale of $115 billion in tanks and other military
equipment to Saudi Arabia. It provided an additional $2 billion worth
of military assistance during the following year. US intelligence also pin-
pointed Houthi targets for the Saudi air force, and US drones attacked
the militants. But the price in human lives for the US-supported Saudi
campaign in Yemen was steep: more than 10,000 people were killed
and more than three million displaced by the time Obama left office.
In November 2016, the World Food Program warned that 7.2 million
people in Yemen were on the brink of famine. As in Syria, the Obama
administration did try to end the war in Yemen through negotiation. In
November 2016, Secretary of State Kerry met with Houthi representa-
tives in Oman and announced a provisional truce and power-sharing
plan. But Yemen’s Saudi-backed president, Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi,
rejected the plan. As a result, the conflict remained unresolved as Obama
left office.24
As if the Arab Spring, Syria, and Iran were not enough to strain
US-Saudi relations, another was the declining price of oil. Largely
because of rising US shale oil production, Saudi oil exports to the
United States declined by more than 50% from April to December
2014. The rising oil production and resulting oversupply caused world
oil prices to plummet from a June 2014 peak of $110 per barrel to less
than half that amount in 2015, and less than $27 per barrel in early
2016. Although the price of oil recovered to around $50 per barrel by
the end of that year, there was little prospect of it returning to the hal-
cyon level of $100 per barrel. As a result, the Saudis were compelled to
draw down their financial reserves to compensate for their declining oil
income. They also tried to drive American and other oil producers out of
the market, initially by persuading the OPEC oil cartel to keep pumping
oil in order to force high-cost producers—like US shale oil drillers—to
reduce their output. As a result, after September 2014, US shale drillers
were compelled to cut the number of their rigs by 75%.
However, on November 30, 2016, the Saudis reversed course and
supported an OPEC decision for a small cut in the cartel’s oil produc-
tion, less than 1% of global production. But that amount was hardly
enough to significantly dent the massive global oversupply. As a conse-
quence, some analysts believed that Saudi Arabia may exhaust its finan-
cial reserves by 2020 if oil prices remained at their low level. To stave off
that possibility, the Saudi government would have to make deep cuts in
the country’s generous social safety net. However, this would risk ignit-
ing a social and political upheaval that would threaten the continued sur-
vival of the Saudi regime.25
Despite the repressive nature of the Saudi regime and the problems
the United States had experienced in dealing with it, the Obama admin-
istration argued that the relationship with Saudi Arabia was vital to US
security. Both countries considered ISIS and Al Qaeda as threats, and
Saudi Arabia maintained a “robust counter-terrorism relationship with
the United States” to combat them. And both countries wanted to avoid
any disruption of the vast energy supplies that flow through the Persian
Gulf. In addition, neither the United States nor Saudi Arabia wanted
Iran to dominate the region. Finally, both countries sought a negotiated
settlement of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Obviously, these essentially
realistic considerations eclipsed the idealistic arguments of those who
criticized Obama for supporting a repressive Saudi Arabia.26
172 R. E. POWASKI
Iran
Of all the Middle Eastern issues that Obama inherited, he was most con-
cerned about the threat of an Iran equipped with nuclear weapons. He
feared that the actualization of that possibility would set off a nuclear
arms race in the Middle East, particularly if the Saudis reacted by acquir-
ing their own nuclear weapons, as they threatened they would do. Before
that could happen, however, a war between Israel and Iran was more
likely to occur. The Israelis warned repeatedly that they would not tol-
erate the development of a nuclear weapon capable Iran—whose leader
had called for the destruction of Israel.
The Bush administration clearly had failed to address Iran’s nuclear
threat by refusing to talk to the Iranians. As a consequence, Iran
moved virtually unhindered toward a nuclear weapon capability dur-
ing Bush’s presidency. When Bush came into office in 2001, Iran did
not have any centrifuges for enriching uranium, which is one of the two
pathways to producing nuclear material for a bomb, the other being plu-
tonium separation. But by the time he left office in January 2009, Iran
had almost 7000 centrifuges. In addition, Iran had built the largest force
of ballistic missiles in the Middle East, which soon would have the capa-
bility to reach targets in Israel as well as Saudi Arabia.27
To eliminate Iran’s nuclear threat, Obama embarked on a complex
“dual track” strategy that employed both diplomacy and various forms of
pressure. He began the diplomatic approach in his first inaugural address,
by offering an “outstretched hand” to US foes like Iran. He also sent
letters to Iran’s supreme leader, the Ayatollah Khamenei, with an offer
to improve relations. And, for the first time in decades, he allowed sen-
ior US diplomats to meet with their Iranian counterparts. Predictably,
the Iranians resisted such overtures, prompting Obama to ratchet up the
pressure.
One form the pressure took was the insertion of “worms” into
Iranian computers, which set back the pace of Iran’s nuclear develop-
ment. Another was the exposure of Iranian nuclear deception. US intel-
ligence revealed the construction of a supposedly secret Iranian nuclear
enrichment facility deep inside a mountain near the Iranian city of Qom.
Obama used the exposure of illicit Iranian nuclear activity to generate
support for international economic sanctions on Iran, which severely
damaged the Iranian economy. Inflation soared by more than 40%, the
value of the Iranian currency plummeted, and Iran’s oil exports fell by
more than half with the loss of tens of billions of dollars of sorely needed
income. In addition, foreign investors and big multinational companies
fled from Iran. Obama also applied military pressure against the Iranians.
During his first year in office, he directed the Pentagon to prepare for
military action against Iran. As a consequence, 35,000 US military per-
sonnel, the most advanced fighter aircraft, and over forty naval ships
(including an aircraft carrier strike group) were placed in striking dis-
tance of Iran.28
The international pressure finally compelled the Iranians to negoti-
ate. In March 2013, US diplomats began a series of secret bilateral talks
with the Iranians. The talks picked up momentum after Hassan Rouhani
was elected president of Iran in June 2013. Rouhani was described as
more moderate, pragmatic and willing to negotiate than his predeces-
sor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. As a result, in November of that year, an
interim agreement, known as the Joint Plan of Action, was negotiated
by the so-called P 5+1 countries—the five permanent members of the
United Nations Security Council (Britain, France, Russia, China, and the
United States) plus Germany. Under its terms, Tehran agreed to freeze
many of its nuclear activities for six months, the United States and other
countries lifted some of the sanctions they had imposed on Iran, and talks
began on a permanent settlement, which was to be concluded within six
months. However, a final agreement was not reached until July 14, 2015.
By its terms, Iran agreed to accept restrictions on its nuclear program,
all of which would last for at least a decade and some longer, and to sub-
mit to increasingly intensified international inspections. In return, the
agreement provided Iran with broad relief from US, UN, and multilat-
eral sanctions on Iran’s energy, financial activities, shipping, and other
sectors of the Iranian economy. On January 16, 2016, the International
Atomic Energy Agency certified that Iran had complied with the stip-
ulated nuclear dismantlement commitments under the agreement.
Consequently, some sanctions were suspended or lifted. Analyst Marc
Lynch called Obama’s nuclear diplomacy with Iran “a textbook exam-
ple of a successfully conceived and implemented foreign policy: priorities
outlined, resources allocated, outcome achieved.”29
Nevertheless, by the end of Obama’s presidency, the Iranians did not
experience the full economic benefits they had expected to receive from
the deal. Iran gained access to about $50 billion in assets that were fro-
zen overseas, new foreign bank accounts were opened, and their oil
exports doubled to two million barrels a day. But the Iranians did not see
174 R. E. POWASKI
the level of foreign investment that Rouhani had promised the nuclear
deal would facilitate. And while international sanctions were largely
removed, most American secondary sanctions remained in place. They
had been imposed because of Iran’s support for terrorism, its human
rights abuses, its interference in specified countries in the region, and its
missile and advanced conventional weapons programs. In addition, reg-
ulations barring transactions between US and Iranian banks stayed in
force. The resulting ban on access to US dollars made risk-averse foreign
banks nervous about doing business in Iran. As a consequence, Rouhani
and other Iranian moderates came under severe criticism from Iranian
hard-liners who never liked the nuclear deal in the first place.30
Iran’s hard-liners were not the only opponents of the nuclear deal.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called it “a mistake of his-
toric proportions.”31 Rather than eliminating the threat of Iran eventu-
ally developing a nuclear arsenal, he argued that the agreement permitted
the Iranians to retain a significant number of centrifuges and keep intact
their entire nuclear infrastructure. As a result, Iran would remain a
nuclear threshold state, with the ability to scrap the agreement at any
time and, shortly thereafter, “breakout” out of it with a nuclear weapon
test. Although the Iranians accepted a number of the nuclear deal’s
restrictions on their enrichment activities, Obama conceded that even if
the agreement lasted its full fifteen-year duration, Iran’s breakout time
upon the expiration of the deal would “almost be down to zero.” Even
so, he argued, the deal was worth it because it bought time.32
While Netanyahu was persuaded by his advisers, as well as the Obama
administration, to refrain from launching unilateral Israeli military action
against Iran’s nuclear facilities, it did not stop him from appealing to
the president’s Republican rivals to reject the deal. His speech before
Congress to that end added fuel to the personal hostility that character-
ized the relationship between the two leaders. However, a Republican-
initiated Senate resolution to reject the nuclear deal was defeated on
September 9, 2015, after a procedural vote fell two votes short of the 60
needed to break a Democratic filibuster.
The Israeli–Palestinian Conflict

One of the major goals of President Obama was to end the conflict
between the Israelis and the Palestinians, which had helped to radicalize
the Middle East and drain US energy and resources for decades. To that
end, in September 2010, the Obama administration pushed to revive

the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process by getting the two parties to
begin direct talks for the first time in about two years. The talks aimed at
bringing the conflict to an end with a two-state solution for the Jewish
and Palestinian peoples. It would require Israel to return to its pre-1967
borders, except for mutually agreed upon territorial adjustments. But the
talks ran aground in late 2010, largely because of Palestinian opposition
to the continued construction of Israeli settlements on the West Bank.
However, in July 2013, Secretary of State Kerry got the parties back
to the negotiating table. But the following April, the Israelis suspended
the talks after Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of the Palestinian Fatah Party,
which rules the West Bank, agreed to a unity government with Hamas,
a more radical group that controls the Gaza Strip. Unlike Fatah, Hamas
refused to recognize the state of Israel. Although the unity government
broke up after only a year, Netanyahu refused to resume talks with Abbas.
It appeared that Netanyahu had no intention of permitting the cre-
ation of an independent Palestinian state. According to Daniel Levy,
an advisor to former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, Netanyahu
only pretended to support the peace process in order to allow time for
new “facts on the ground” to be created, that is, additional settlements
in the West Bank. That strategy proved to be highly successful. When
Netanyahu entered office in February 2009, there were 73,000 Israelis
living in the West Bank; by 2015, there were 93,000. By the end of
Netanyahu’s new term as prime minister, in 2019, it was estimated that
the population in the settlements would have reached around 115,000.33
With that many Israelis in the West Bank, a two-state solution became
impossible to consider for Netanyahu and his right-wing supporters. He
said as much during his reelection campaign in March 2015, when he
flatly declared that the two-state solution was dead.34
Obama, like previous US presidents, proved powerless to reverse
Israel’s colonization of the West Bank. Although he demanded an end to
settlement construction, he did nothing meaningful to stop it, for exam-
ple, by curtailing US military and economic aid to Israel. Quite to the
contrary, he increased US aid to Israel, culminating in a $38 billion dol-
lar, 10-year assistance package in the fall of 2015. There were a number
of reasons why Obama continued to help Israel in spite of the refusal
of Netanyahu to cooperate with the administration in dealing with the
Palestinians. For one, he wanted the Israelis to feel sufficiently secure
to accept the nuclear deal with Iran and refrain from going to war with
176 R. E. POWASKI
the Iranians. And while he obviously was not Israel’s enemy, he did not
want to appear like one either, particularly before his presidential reelec-
tion bid in 2012. At the same time, he also did not want the West Bank
to fall under the control of Hamas. Consequently, he also provided the
Palestinian Authority with considerable military and economic aid.
In the minds of some critics, however, by assisting the Palestinian
Authority to police the West Bank, the Obama administration also
helped to perpetuate its occupation by the Israelis, thereby increasing
the appeal of Hamas among the Palestinian people. This impression was
reinforced in February 2011, when the United States vetoed a UN reso-
lution declaring Israeli settlements in the West Bank illegal. The follow-
ing September, Obama also declared that the United States would veto
any Palestinian application for statehood to the United Nations, a step
Abbas was considering in order to pressure the Israelis. Obama justified
his warning by asserting that “there can be no shortcut to peace.”35
However, very late in his presidency, on December 23, 2016, Obama
permitted his UN ambassador to abstain during the vote on a Security
Council resolution condemning Israel’s settlements on the West Bank.
Although the US abstention was a significant departure from previous
American vetoes of similar UN resolutions, the move had only sym-
bolic value since Netanyahu had no intention of abiding by it. Nor
was he at all willing to consider the administration’s plan for an even-
tual Israeli-Palestinian peace treaty, which was outlined in a speech by
Kerry on December 28.36 Instead, the Israeli prime minister denounced
the Obama administration and looked forward to dealing with the
new American president, Donald Trump, whose attitude toward Israel
seemed to be much more compatible with Netanyahu’s objectives.
The Challenges of China

One of the main reasons why Obama did not want the United States
to get deeply involved militarily in the Middle East was his desire to
concentrate US energy and resources on a number of challenges posed
by China. One challenge was military in nature. China, with the larg-
est economy in East Asia, was using some of its great financial reserves
to increase its military capabilities in the hope of establishing a regional
hegemony that would challenge US naval supremacy in the western
Pacific. Another Chinese challenge was diplomatic in nature. Obama
wanted to enlist China’s cooperation in addressing a number of pressing
global problems, including nuclear proliferation, climate change, and

international financial instability. Finally, China challenged the free inter-
national trading system to which it had only recently become a member
by restricting foreign access to its domestic market.
In the first meeting of Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao, in
April 2009, at the London G-20 economic summit, they agreed to work
together to build a positive, cooperative, and comprehensive US-Chinese
relationship. To that end, they announced the establishment of a high-
level forum called the US-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue.
Obama intended to use the dialogue as a way to petition Beijing to
put pressure on an increasingly antagonistic North Korean regime. He
also wanted to convince China to agree to curb its emissions of carbon
dioxide ahead of the key climate change conference in Copenhagen in
December 2009. At the London meeting, Obama also accepted Hu’s
invitation to visit China later in 2009.
However, a number of economic obstacles stood in the path of closer
US-Chinese cooperation. The great international financial crisis of 2007–
2009 caused the Chinese to doubt the ability of the United States to
lead the international economic community. While China experienced
impressive 8.9% economic growth in the third quarter of 2009, thanks
to the infusion of an enormous economic stimulus by the Chinese gov-
ernment, the United States was struggling with massive (over 10%)
unemployment and domestic political infighting between the Obama
administration and its Republican opponents in Congress.
The acute US economic crisis—the greatest recession since the Great
Depression—caused the Chinese to fear that the United States would not
be able or willing to pay back its debt to China, amounting to $739.6
billion as of late January 2009, without devaluing the dollar. Such a step
would adversely affect China’s export-dependent economy on which its
continued economic growth, social stability, and ultimately the legitimacy
of the Communist Party depended. However, China achieved its high
level of exports and its impressive economic growth in part by underval-
uing its currency the yuan (Chinese renminbi), and funneling cheap capi-
tal into artificially low-priced industrial exports. As a consequence, China
was able to run up huge trade and currency surpluses ($3 trillion) while
hurting exports and employment in many other countries.37
Nevertheless, the Chinese complained about a series of US protection-
ist measures, including special tariffs on Chinese tire imports and coated
paper products, and preliminary duties on some steel products. Yet they
178 R. E. POWASKI
continued to defend their own restrictive measures. Many in Congress

insisted that the new administration pressure the Chinese to stop under-
valuing their currency, but Obama feared that doing so would trigger a
trade war that would damage the US economic recovery.38 Obama’s
refusal to confront the Chinese on the currency issue prompted opponents
to charge him with unprecedented deference to the Chinese leadership.
Another display of the president’s deference to Chinese sensibilities
took the form of ignoring China’s human rights issues. For example,
Obama initially refused to meet the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual
leader, when he visited Washington, in order to avoid offending the
Chinese. Another example was the administration’s muted response
to ethnic riots in China’s Xinjiang province, in which scores of people
were killed. In return, Beijing offered the United States little coopera-
tion, and in some cases outright hostility. On the issue of climate change,
for example, the Obama administration went into the Copenhagen cli-
mate conference in December 2009 offering to make significant cuts in
American carbon emissions in the hope that this position would trigger
similar concessions by the Chinese. But they refused to make any com-
parable reductions in absolute terms and, as a result, the conference
achieved virtually nothing of practical importance.39
The Chinese also did nothing meaningful to halt North Korea’s con-
tinuing development of nuclear weapons and delivery systems. Shortly
after Obama entered the White House, the North Koreans conducted
their second nuclear weapon test. In response, Obama decided that the
Bush administration had been too eager to pursue talks with the North
Koreans without a prior commitment by them to halt their nuclear weap-
on-related activities. As a result, the talks were not resumed for the dura-
tion of Obama’s presidency.
The Asian Pivot

Beginning in 2010, the Obama administration took a number of steps to
end the perception of excessive US deference to China. In mid-January,
the US government officially supported Google’s decision to challenge
China’s censorship of internet content. Shortly thereafter, on February
18, Obama met with the Dalai Lama. In addition, the administration
proposed a $6.4 billion arms sale to Taiwan. The Chinese responded
by threatening to impose sanctions on US companies supplying arms to
Taiwan. More significantly, the Obama administration also proceeded

with what came to be called the “Asia pivot.”
The Asia pivot called for an enhanced US military presence in the
western Pacific, combined with a more active diplomatic approach
designed to advance the region’s economic prosperity. On the military
side of the pivot, the Pentagon called for devoting 50% of US naval
power to the Asia-Western Pacific theater by 2013, and 60% by 2020.40
The US military buildup in the region, which actually began during the
administration of George W. Bush, helps to explain Obama’s determina-
tion to reduce the US military presence in the Middle East.
The economic dimension of the pivot called for an expansion of
America’s Asian markets. Although by 2012 US trade with Asian coun-
tries was twice as large as its trade with Europe, the United States was
running significant trade deficits with Asia because it lacked equal access
to Asian markets for many of its export products.41 As a result, an essen-
tial component of the Asian pivot was the administration’s efforts to
lower trade barriers, open new markets, and reduce trade deficits.
To these ends, the administration promoted new trade pacts, like
the US-South Korea Free Trade agreement, and used institutions, like
the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation program (APEC), to reduce
economic barriers and bolster investment. But the centerpiece of
Obama’s effort was the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, which was
designed to be the most far-reaching free trade agreement in decades,
as well as a strategic, long-term US commitment to Asia. It would have
brought together twelve countries (including the United States) into
a single trading community representing well over $1 trillion in global
trade. However, the TPP was one of the chief casualties of Donald
Trump’s ascension to the presidency in January 2017.
China’s Counter Pivot

Although the Obama administration tried to persuade the Chinese that
the US pivot was not designed to contain China militarily, but rather
to promote stability in the region, the Chinese were not fooled. As
research scholar Justin Logan put it: “If China made this sort of argu-
ment to defend deploying more than half its naval assets to the Western
hemisphere, American leaders would not give the argument a moment’s
consideration.”42
180 R. E. POWASKI
As a counter to the US Asia pivot, Xi Jinping, who became China’s

president in March 2013, adopted a more assertive and nationalistic
approach to the United States and its East Asian allies.
One way Xi tried to counter the US Asian pivot was to propose the
creation of a new Asian security system from which the United States
would be excluded.43 Xi also initiated the creation of a new international
economic structure that he expected China to dominate. Its nucleus was
the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, which would provide financ-
ing for railways, roads, power plants, and other infrastructure projects in
the world’s fastest growing region. Among these projects was a Chinese
effort to rebuild the old Silk Road, which once carried trade between
China and the Mediterranean world.
The Obama administration treated the Asian Infrastructure Investment
Bank as a Chinese attempt to rewrite the global rules of international
economic engagement and thereby undermine the US-dominated
International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Consequently, the
United States not only refused to join the Asian bank, but also launched a
quiet diplomatic campaign to dissuade its allies from joining. But the US
attempt to marginalize the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank failed.
The bank was launched in 2015 and, by the middle of the following year,
a host of close US allies—including Australia, Canada, France, Germany,
Israel, South Korea, and Britain—had joined.
Instead of joining the new Chinese international bank, the Obama
administration accelerated the TPP negotiations as a way to preserve
international property as well as labor and environmental safeguards
absent in the Chinese arrangement. The original participants in the TPP
were Singapore, New Zealand, Chile, and Brunei. However, a number
of additional countries joined the TPP negotiations, including Australia,
Canada, Japan, Mexico, Peru, Malaysia, and Vietnam. While China did
not participate in the TPP negotiations, Xi Jinping had no intention
of curtailing China’s trade or risking a war with the United States. “If
[China and the United States] are in confrontation,” he insisted, “it
would surely spell disaster for both countries.”44 Not only is the United
States the leading customer for Chinese goods, China holds almost a
couple of trillion dollars worth of US Treasury notes.
In an effort to build a “new model” of US-Chinese relations, in June
2013 Xi met with Obama in California. The two leaders agreed to com-
bat climate change and cooperate in curtailing both Iran’s and North
Korea’s nuclear programs. Although China imposed some sanctions
on North Korea, they were not enough to dissuade the North Koreans
from continuing to develop their nuclear weapon program. The Chinese
obviously did not want the North Korean economy to collapse and
bring down its communist regime. However, China did participate in
the international talks that produced the agreement restricting Iran’s
nuclear activities. In addition, Xi signed the Paris Climate Agreement
in December 2015. Its long-term goal was one of limiting global tem-
perature increases to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.4 degrees Fahrenheit) above
pre-industrial levels. However, the agreement itself remains non-binding
and lacks provisions for inspection and enforcement.45
On the downside, the Chinese persisted in violating human rights.
They also continued to strike trade and investment deals with oppres-
sive regimes that were the objects of international sanctions. In addition,
China joined Russia in routinely opposing UN Security Council resolu-
tions aimed at human rights violators, especially countries such as Sudan,
Iran, and Syria. In March 2014, after the Russians annexed Crimea,
China supported Russia by abstaining on a UN General Assembly resolu-
tion affirming Ukraine’s territorial integrity.
The South China Sea Challenge

Perhaps the most dangerous of the US-Chinese quarrels was China’s
continuing encroachment into territorial waters claimed by other coun-
tries in the East and South China Seas. What concerned the Chinese was
the potential positioning of US naval forces in a way that could block
China’s supply lines through the South China Sea. “The oil and raw
materials transported through those shipping lanes,” military analyst
Richard Halloran noted, “are crucial to a surging Chinese economy—
an economy paying for Beijing’s swiftly expanding military power.”46 In
addition, the South China Sea may be rich in oil and natural gas depos-
its, which obviously the Chinese would want to exploit.
China reacted by expanding its territorial claims in the South China
Sea hundreds of miles to the south and east of its island province of
Hainan. In some cases, the Chinese claims encroached upon those of
neighboring countries, that is, Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan,
and Vietnam. China also engaged in an extraordinary construction pro-
ject in the South China Sea by building a string of artificial islands in
a contested archipelago called the Spratly Islands. The number, size,
and nature of the Chinese construction convinced analysts that it was
182 R. E. POWASKI
for military purposes. The Chinese also drilled for oil in the waters off
the contested Paracel Islands and kept Vietnamese ships away from the
area. China also sent fishing boats, escorted by coast guard ships, into
the waters around the Senkaku Islands, which are claimed and controlled
by Japan.47
In order to enhance China’s ability to defend its territorial claims in
the surrounding seas, Xi also accelerated China’s military modernization.
The Chinese deployed hundreds of accurate, conventionally-tipped bal-
listic missiles with the ability to attack Taiwan, as well as a smaller num-
ber of ballistic missiles capable of reaching US bases in Japan and the
western Pacific. In addition, the Chinese developed a terminally-guided,
anti-ship missile capable of striking US aircraft carriers. In short, China
acquired the ability to challenge US control of the high seas as well as to
attack America’s regional allies.
The Obama administration reacted by pointing out that China’s mar-
itime claims in the South China Sea violate international laws designed
to uphold freedom of navigation for all nations. Accordingly, US mili-
tary surveillance aircraft flew over the Chinese-built artificial islands in
2015 and 2016, and US warships sailed within 12 nautical miles of the
disputed Chinese installations on both the Spratly and Paracel Islands.48
The administration also took steps to strengthen longtime US alliances
with Australia, Japan, and the Philippines, and courted new partners,
including Malaysia, Singapore, and Vietnam.
Japan
Japan was another country that felt threatened by China’s expansive
claims to East Asian territorial waters. China challenged Japan’s claim to
the Senkaku Islands, a group of uninhabited Japanese-controlled islands
in the East China Sea. Although the islands have only limited intrin-
sic value, they do give the Japanese control of the access routes to the
Pacific Ocean and its seabed, as well as to fishing, navigation, and hydro-
carbon deposits in the surrounding waters. Japan’s dependence on for-
eign oil is one of that nation’s greatest vulnerabilities. Addressing that
existential threat prompted Japan to go to war with the United States in
1941. Consequently, the Japanese are hyper-vigilant about any Chinese
threat to block the sea-lanes through which ships deliver foreign oil to
Japan. It explains their alarmed reaction to the Chinese declaration, in
2013, that they had established an Air Defense Identification Zone over
the Japanese-occupied Senkaku Islands. China also sent coast guard ships
to defend Chinese fishing and oil exploration in waters surrounding
those islands.49
Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe, reacted to the Chinese naval
challenge by putting the Japanese navy and coast guard on alert and by
turning to the United States for support. The Obama administration
responded by assuring the Japanese that the Senkaku Islands fall under
the protection of Article 5 of the US-Japanese Security Treaty.
Abe also ratcheted up his previous efforts to expand Japan’s military
forces. In 2011, his government increased Japan’s defense budget by
nearly three percent per annum over the following five years. In 2013,
Abe pushed through the Japanese Diet (parliament) legislation reinter-
preting the clause in that nation’s constitution prohibiting Japan from
waging war except in defense of the Japanese home islands. The new
constitutional interpretation permits Japan’s military forces to participate
in overseas combat missions, thereby enabling the Japanese to assist the
United States and other allies if they are attacked.50
Paradoxically, while China’s new assertiveness strengthened the
US-Japanese security relationship, the rising economies of China and
other East Asian countries were major causes of the declining significance
of the US-Japanese trade relationship. Japanese trade flowed increasingly
toward East Asia and away from the United States. Conversely, US trade
with Mexico and China surpassed US trade with Japan. Japan’s ability
to trade with the United States also was affected by the continuing poor
performance of its economy, which was damaged by the severe global
economic recession that began in 2008, as well as by the tsunami and
nuclear accidents that were triggered by an earthquake in March 2011.
As a result of Japan’s economic decline, the Japanese were no longer
viewed by Americans as the competitive threat that they were considered
to be in the 1980s and early 1990s.
Nevertheless, a number of US-Japanese trade problems persisted. One
was Japan’s failure to remove long-standing barriers to US exports, espe-
cially automobiles and beef. The Obama administration used the leverage
provided by offering US support for Japan’s admission to the Trans-
Pacific Trade Partnership to win some Japanese trade concessions related
to the importation of US beef and automobiles. While Japan’s market
was not entirely opened to US trade, the Obama administration believed
that more progress on that issue could be made once the TPP went into
effect.51
184 R. E. POWASKI
As a result, by the end of the Obama presidency, the economic con-

nection between the two countries, like their security relationship,
remained strong and mutually advantageous. They continued to be large
markets for each other’s exports as well as important sources of imports.
In addition, Japan remained a major foreign provider of funds that
finance the US national debt, as well as a significant source of foreign
private investment in the United States. The United States, in turn, con-
tinued to be the origin of much foreign investment in Japan.
The Koreas
South Korea was another US ally that was challenged by China. While
the Chinese did not directly threaten South Korea militarily, its ongo-
ing economic support for North Korea’s communist regime facilitated
the development of that country’s nuclear arsenal, which threatened not
only South Korea but Japan as well—and potentially even the continental
United States.
Although China had worked closely with the United States on pre-
vious North Korean denuclearization negotiations, especially those
between 2006 and 2008, the talks broke down in the last year of the
Bush administration. For the first three years of Obama’s presidency, the
United States made no effort to resume those talks, believing that North
Korea first would have to commit itself to denuclearization. However, in
early 2012, North Korea’s new hereditary leader, Kim Jong-un (the son
of Kim Jong-il), expressed his interest in resuming the negotiations, and
the Obama administration indicated its interest in doing so as well. But
the North Koreans scuttled the possibility of reviving the talks by using
ballistic missile technology to launch a satellite. And, in early 2013, the
North Koreans conducted another nuclear weapons test, cut off commu-
nications with South Korea, and warned that the outbreak of war was
imminent.
As a result, Obama made no further effort to resume the talks for the
balance of his presidency. Instead, following North Korea’s two nuclear
tests and multiple missile launches in 2016, the United States and South
Korea responded with a more coercive policy. First, they successfully per-
suaded the UN Security Council to expand economic sanctions on North
Korea. In February 2016, Congress also expanded unilateral US sanc-
tions against the North Korean government. In addition, in July 2016,
the United States and South Korea announced plans to deploy the Theater
High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) ballistic missile defense (BMD) system
in South Korea. THAAD ostensibly would give the United States the capabil-
ity to destroy North Korean missiles launched against South Korea or Japan.
There was another, underlying, motive behind the THAAD decision,
that is, to get China to take a much harder line against North Korea. But
the Chinese were not prepared to take action that would risk bringing
about the collapse of North Korea. Not only did the Chinese fear that a
North Korean collapse would prompt tens of thousands of North Korean
refugees to flee across the border into China’s Manchurian provinces,
it could also lead to the reunification of a Korea allied to the United
States. Not surprisingly, the Chinese government reacted with hostility to
the THAAD deployment decision, denouncing it as a threat to China’s
nuclear deterrent capability and warning that it warranted an expansion
of China’s nuclear arsenal.52 The Chinese also threatened retaliatory eco-
nomic measures against South Korea, which had developed an extensive
trade relationship with China. The Chinese reduced South Korean tour-
ism in China and permitted Chinese to fish in South Korean waters.
South Korean President Park Geun-hye had attempted to cultivate a
stronger strategic relationship with China, partly to motivate a more vig-
orous Chinese stand against North Korea’s menacing actions. But after
it became obvious that Chinese pressure had failed to curb Pyongyang’s
provocations, Park approved the deployment of the THAAD system.
However, the Obama administration was unsuccessful in persuading the
South Koreans to cooperate more closely with Japan in building a com-
mon defense against China and North Korea, primarily because of lin-
gering issues related to Japan’s occupation of Korea before World War II.
In the end, Obama was no more successful in eliminating North Korea’s
nuclear menace than any of his presidential predecessors. In January
2017, the task of resolving that threat fell to his successor, Donald
Trump.
The Statecraft of Barack Obama:

The Middle East and East Asia
Obama entered the White House intending to emulate the more realistic
foreign policy philosophy of the first President Bush without abandon-
ing American ideals. However, more often than not, his foreign policies
186 R. E. POWASKI
reflected the greater emphasis he placed on realistic rather than idealistic

considerations. As a realist, he insisted that the United States does not
have the means to police the world or to make right what is wrong every-
where. And he believed the United States had become overextended in
areas that did not concern its vital, core national interests, such as Iraq
and Afghanistan. Consequently, he was determined to extract US military
forces from those countries as quickly as possible. He also intended to
reduce the US military presence in Europe. He argued that the European
allies of the United States did not do their fair share to uphold the
NATO alliance nor the liberal international order to which it was a part.
In the Middle East, Obama succeeded in reducing the number of US
troops in Afghanistan from a peak of 100,000 in 2010 to about 5000
by the time he left office. But the US withdrawal left a void that was
rapidly filled by the Taliban, who gained control of over one-half of the
country by 2016. Obama also was largely successful in withdrawing US
military forces from Iraq. However, by setting in advance a deadline for
their complete withdrawal, a military vacuum also was created in Iraq,
one that was filled—temporarily and partially—by the so-called Islamic
State. Confronted with the imminent collapse of the Iraqi government
and its replacement by ISIS, Obama recommitted a small number US
ground forces to Iraq. As a result, with the assistance of US air power
and special forces, Iraqi Shiite and Kurdish troops were able to drive out
ISIS from Iraq shortly after Obama left office.
Nowhere in the Middle East were the realistic and idealistic com-
ponents of Obama’s foreign policy more in conflict than in his var-
ied responses to the popular uprisings of the Arab Spring. Although
he felt compelled to give at least lip service to the democratic aspira-
tions of the Arab people, when they failed to actualize them, he felt
he had no other choice but to accept the return of the military to
power in Egypt and a failed state in Libya. The Libyan experience,
in turn, reinforced Obama’s resolve to avoid extensive US military
involvement in the Syrian civil war. Although he did provide very lim-
ited assistance to non-jihadist rebels fighting Syrian President Assad,
he was unable to realize his goal of removing the Syrian dictator from
power or ending the humanitarian crisis and enormous bloodshed
that it produced.
A high point of Obama’s Middle Eastern policy was the US operation
that killed Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. But Obama left unresolved
the problem of continuing Pakistani support for the Afghan Taliban,

which in turn was one of the primary reasons for his inability to stabilize
Afghanistan.
Obama also failed to achieve another of his Middle Eastern goals, that
is, ending the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Like pre-
vious US presidents, he proved powerless to reverse, or even halt, Israel’s
continued expansion of settlements on the West Bank. To so, would have
entailed a US break with Israel, which Obama considered politically and
strategically unacceptable. It was another case of Obama’s realism eclips-
ing his idealism.
As in the Middle East, Obama demonstrated his preference for real-
ism over idealism in dealing with China. His desire to find agreement
with the Chinese on issues of mutual interest to both countries required
him to downplay China’s continuing violation of human rights. He
did gain China’s cooperation in dealing with Iran’s nuclear threat and
the menace of global warming. But he was unable to persuade China
to do anything meaningful to eliminate North Korea’s nuclear threat.
However, he was able to avoid a military conflict with China over its
continuing encroachments on the territorial claims of other countries in
the East and South China Seas. In addition, the US-Chinese trade rela-
tionship remained relatively unimpaired even though issues of fair trade
continued to persist.
China’s continuing support for North Korea and the dispute over
the East and South China Sea islands also drew the United States closer
to Japan and South Korea. A new interpretation of Japan’s constitution
enabled the Japanese to assist the United States and other allies outside
Japan’s home territory. For its part, the Obama administration used the
leverage provided by its offer of US support for Japan’s admission to the
Trans-Pacific Trade Partnership to win some Japanese trade concessions.
As a result, by the end of Obama’s presidency, the economic connec-
tion between the two countries, like their security relationship, remained
strong and mutually advantageous.
With respect to South Korea, the Obama administration’s most signif-
icant accomplishment was one of persuading the South Korean govern-
ment to permit the deployment of the THAAD ballistic missile defense
system in South Korea. THAAD ostensibly would give the United States
the capability to destroy North Korean missiles launched against South
Korea or Japan.
188 R. E. POWASKI
Notes
1. For a brief biography of Barack Obama, see the Miller Center, University
of Virginia, https://millercenter.org/president/obama.
2. Bob Woodward, Obama’s Wars (2011), 326–327.
3. Stephen J. Wayne, “Obama’s Personality and Performance,” in James A.
Thurber, ed., Obama in Office (2011), 70.
4. James Mann, The Obamians: The Struggle Inside the White House to
Redefine American Power (2012), 3.
5. Washington Post, February 5, 2015.
6. Katie Pavlich, “Brutal: Former Defense Secretaries Openly Slam
‘Inexperienced’ Obama White House War Micromanagement,”
Townhall, April 7, 2016.
7. Fred Lucas, “New Book Describes Rift Between Obama’s Nat’l Security
Adviser and His Political Team: ‘Water Bugs,’” CNS News, June 5, 2012,
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/new-book-describes-rift-be-
tween-obama-s-nat-l-security-adviser-and-his-political-team.
8. Mann, 11.
9. Jeffrey Goldberg, “The Obama Doctrine,” The Atlantic (April 2016),
70–90.
10. Thomas J. Wright, All Measures Short of War: The Contest for the 21st
Century and the Future of American Power (2017), 172–173. David
Fitzgerald and David Ryan, Obama, US Foreign Policy and the Dilemmas
of Intervention (2014), 19–20.
11. Sean Kay, America’s Search for Security: The Triumph of Idealism and the
Return of Realism (2014), 175.
12. Woodward, 307.
13. Max Fisher and Amanda Taub, “Why Afghanistan’s War Defies
Solutions,” New York Times, August 24, 2017.
14. Kay, 172–173.
15. Peter Tomsen, “Pakistan: With Friends Like These,” World Policy Journal
(Fall 2011), http://www.worldpolicy.org/journal/fall2011/pakistan.
16. Martin Indyk, Bending History: Barack Obama’s Foreign Policy (2012),
91. Mark Landler, Alter Egos: Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and the
Twilight Struggle over American Power (2016), 121–124.
17. Michael O’Hanlon, “How to Win in Iraq,” Foreign Affairs, August 12,
2014.
18. Shadi Hamid, “Islamism, the Arab Spring, and the Failure of America’s
Do-Nothing Policy in the Middle East,” The Atlantic Monthly, October 9, 2015.
19. Michael Mandelbaum, Mission Failure: America and the World in the Post-
Cold War Era (2016), 303.
20. Dominic Tiernney, “The Legacy of Obama’s Worst Mistake,” The

Atlantic Monthly, April 15, 2016.
21. Colin Deuck, The Obama Doctrine: American Grand Strategy Today
(2015), 142.
22. Kay, 276.
23. Roger Cohen, “America’s Syrian Shame,” New York Times, February 8,
2016.
24. World Food Programme, “Yemen,” Situation Report, November
14, 2016. Rick Gladsone, “Houthis, in Surprise Move,” New York Times,
November 28, 2016.
25. Council on Foreign Relations, “U.S.-Saudi Relations,” May 12, 2017,
http://www.cfr.org/saudi-arabia/us-saudi-relations/p36524.
26. F. Gregory Gause, “The Future of U.S.-Saudi Relations: The Kingdom
and the Power,” Foreign Affairs, July/August 2016.
27. Derek Chollet, The Long Game: How Obama Defied Washington and
Redefined America’s Role in the World (2016), 181.
28. Chollet, 184.
29. Marc Lynch, “Obama and the Middle East,” Foreign Affairs, September/
October 2015.
30. Editorial Board, “Don’t Let Iran’s Progress Go to Waste,” New York
Times, July 8, 2016.
31. Isabel Kershner, “Iran Deal Denounced,” New York Times, July 14, 2015.
32. Elise Labott, et al., “Iran Nuclear Deal Framework,” CNN, April 2015,
http://edition.cnn.com/2015/04/02/world/iran-nuclear-talks/.
33. Elliott Abrams and Uri Sadot, “Settling Settlements: Netanyahu’s Real
Policies, Before and After the Election,” Foreign Affairs, April 16, 2015.
34. Jodi Rudoren, “Netanyahu Says No to Statehood for Palestinians,” New
York Times, March 17, 2015.
35. Associated Press, September 21, 2011.
36. “Kerry’s Speech,” New York Times, December 29, 2016.
37. Robert J. Lieber, Retreat and Its Consequences: American Foreign Policy
and the Problem of World Order (2016), 82.
38. Meghan A. Crossin, “Engaging China: Obama’s Struggle to Define a
New Framework for Sino-American Relations,” Washington Journal of
Modern China, Vol. 9, No. 2 (Winter 2010), 5.
39. Deuck, 73.
40. Kay, 213.
41. Kay, 96. David Shambaugh, “Assessing the US ‘Pivot’ to Asia,” Strategic
Studies Quarterly, Vol. 7, No. 2 (Summer 2013), 10–12.
42. Justin Logan, “China, America, and the Pivot to Asia,” Policy Analysis,
No. 117, January 8, 2013.
190 R. E. POWASKI
43. Ariane C. Rosen, “Will the Past Repeat Itself? Examining the Accuracy
of a Cold War Analogy in Framing U.S.-China Relations,” Washington
Journal of Modern China, Vol. 12 (Spring 2016), 5.
44. “Xi Jinping,” Revolvy, undated. https://www.revolvy.com/main/index.
php?s=Xi%20Jinping&item_type=topic.
45. Lieber, 78.
46. Kay, 213.
47. Jennifer Lind, “Asia’s Other Revisionist Power: Why U.S. Grand Strategy
Unnerves China,” Foreign Affairs, March/April 2017.
48. Katie Hunt, “Showdown in the South China Sea: How Did We Get
Here?” CNN, August 2, 2016, www.cnn.com/2015/10/28/asia/
china-south-china-sea-disputes-explainer/.
49. Doug Bandow, “Are the Senkaku Islands Worth War Between China, Japan and
America?” The National Interest, February 13, 2017, http://nationalinterest.
org/feature/are-the-senkaku-islands-worth-war-between-china-japan-19403.
50. Thomas J. Christensen, The China Challenge: Shaping the Choices of a
Rising Power (2015), 109.
51. William H. Cooper, “U.S.-Japan Economic Relations: Significance,
Prospects, and Policy Options,” Congressional Research Service,
February 18, 2014, https://fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RL32649.pdf.
52. Bonnie S. Glaser, Daniel G. Sofio, and David A. Parker, “The Good, the
THAAD, and the Ugly: China’s Campaign Against Deployment, and
What to Do About It,” Foreign Affairs, February 15, 2017.
For Further Reading

Among the Obama biographies that have appeared so far, one of the best is
David Maraniss’s Barack Obama: The Story (2012). See also Obama’s Dreams
from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (2004).
Early studies of Obama’s presidency are provided by James A. Thurber, Obama
in Office (2011) and Stephen J. Wayne, Personality and Politics: Obama For
and Against Himself (2012).
Among the books dealing with Obama’s foreign policies are James Mann’s, The
Obamians: The Struggle Inside the White House to Redefine American Power
(2012), and Martin Indyk, Bending History: Barack Obama’s Foreign Policy
(2012). Hillary Rodham Clinton’s Hard Choices (2014) is an account of her
years as Obama’s first secretary of state. John Kerry, Obama’s second secretary
of state, is in the process of writing his memoir, which will be published by
Simon and Schuster.
Another insider view is provided by Derek Chollet’s The Long Game: How
Obama Defied Washington and Redefined America’s Role in the World (2016).
More critical viewpoints are provided by Robert J. Lieber’s Retreat and
Its Consequences: American Foreign Policy and the Problem of World Order
(2016); Colin Dueck’s The Obama Doctrine: American Grand Strategy Today
(2015); Sean Kay’s America’s Search for Security: The Triumph of Idealism and
the Return of Realism (2014); and Thomas J. Wright’s All Measures Short
of War: The Contest for the 21st Century and the Future of American Power
(2017). See also Mark Landler, Alter Egos: Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama,
and the Twilight Struggle over American Power (2016).
For Obama’s early decision to escalate US military involvement in Afghanistan,
see Bob Woodward, Obama’s Wars (2010). For his policies toward
Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, see David Fitzgerald and David Ryan, Obama,
US Foreign Policy and the Dilemmas of Intervention (2014). See also Lloyd
C. Gardner, Killing Machine: The American Presidency in the Age of Drone
Warfare (2013).
For area studies, see Trita Parsi, Losing an Enemy: Obama, Iran, and the Triumph
of Diplomacy (2017); Angela E. Stent, The Limits of Partnership: U.S.–Russian
Relations in the Twenty-First Century (2014); and Thomas J. Christensen, The
China Challenge: Shaping the Choices of a Rising Power (2015).

Barack Obama, The Idealistic Realist, 2009-2017, Part I: The Middle East and East Asia

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Barack Obama, The Idealistic Realist, 2009-2017, Part I: The Middle East and East Asia

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Barack Obama, The Idealistic Realist, 2009-2017, Part I: The Middle East and East Asia

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

CHAPTER 6

The Rise of Barack Obama

© The Author(s) 2019 157

his grandparents when his mother and stepsister returned to Indonesia,

Fig. 6.1 Barack Obama, Official White House Photograph (Credit: Pete

Obama and National Security

additional US troops to Afghanistan in 2009 required ten meetings over

Obama, Idealism and Realism

The War in Afghanistan

The Death of Bin Laden

the termination of US military and economic aid to that country. Such

enabled US forces to stay in Iraq. Moreover, some analysts asked how

The Arab Spring

soldiers two months later. However, the overthrow of Qaddafi brought

a planned retaliatory US missile strike against Syrian military installa-

relieve in a substantial way the plight of millions of Syrian refugees. The

Obama and Saudi Arabia

restricted Iran’s nuclear program. In return, international sanctions

The Israeli–Palestinian Conflict

end, in September 2010, the Obama administration pushed to revive

The Challenges of China

global problems, including nuclear proliferation, climate change, and

continued to defend their own restrictive measures. Many in Congress

The Asian Pivot

Taiwan. More significantly, the Obama administration also proceeded

China’s Counter Pivot

As a counter to the US Asia pivot, Xi Jinping, who became China’s

The South China Sea Challenge

As a result, by the end of the Obama presidency, the economic con-

The Statecraft of Barack Obama:

reflected the greater emphasis he placed on realistic rather than idealistic

the problem of continuing Pakistani support for the Afghan Taliban,

20.  Dominic Tiernney, “The Legacy of Obama’s Worst Mistake,” The

For Further Reading

You might also like

CHAPTER 6

The Rise of Barack Obama

Fig. 6.1 Barack Obama, Official White House Photograph (Credit: Pete

Obama and National Security

Obama, Idealism and Realism

The War in Afghanistan

The Death of Bin Laden

Obama and Saudi Arabia

The Challenges of China

The Statecraft of Barack Obama:

20. Dominic Tiernney, “The Legacy of Obama’s Worst Mistake,” The