OBAMA'S FOREIGN-POLICY WRECKAGE – AT 8:36 A.M. ET:  Something else that must be depressing the enthusiasm of Americans is the wreck that Barack Hussein Obama Jr. has made of foreign policy.

Can you point to a single Obama success in foreign policy, other than his popularity with teen-aged German girls?

Robert Kagan, in the Washington Post, surveys the storm damage in a rather devastating way: 

The president who ran against "unilateralism" in the 2008 campaign has worse relations overall with American allies than George W. Bush did in his second term.

In Democratic circles, that is the second-worst insult that can be delivered, the worst being that you didn't graduate from an Ivy League school with a degree in ethnic grievance. 

In Britain, people are talking about the end of the "special relationship" with America and worrying that Obama has no great regard for the British, despite their ongoing sacrifices in Afghanistan. In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy has openly criticized Obama for months (and is finally being rewarded with a private dinner, presumably to mend fences). In Eastern and Central Europe, there has been fear since the administration canceled long-planned missile defense installations in Poland and the Czech Republic that the United States may no longer be a reliable guarantor of security.

And...

Who has attracted attention in the Obama administration? The answer, so far, seems to be not America's allies but its competitors, and in some cases its adversaries. If there were a way to measure administration exertion in foreign policy, the meter would show the greatest concentration of energy, beyond the war in Afghanistan, has been devoted to four endeavors: the failed first-year attempt to improve relations with Iran; the ongoing attempt to improve relations with Russia; the stalled effort to improve cooperation with China; and the effort -- fruitless so far -- to prove to the Arab states that the United States is willing to pressure Israel to further the peace process. Add to these the efforts to improve relations with Syria, engage Burma and everything with Af-Pak, and not much has been left for the concerns of our allies.

This is bad enough, but compounding the problem has been the administration's evident impatience with allies who don't do as they are told.

And...

The president has shown seemingly limitless patience with the Russians as they stall an arms-control deal that could have been done in December. He accepted a year of Iranian insults and refusal to negotiate before hesitantly moving toward sanctions.

Finally...

This administration pays lip-service to "multilateralism," but it is a multilateralism of accommodating autocratic rivals, not of solidifying relations with longtime democratic allies. Rather than strengthening the democratic foundation of the new "international architecture" -- the G-20 world -- the administration's posture is increasingly one of neutrality, at best, between allies and adversaries, and between democrats and autocrats.

COMMENT:  That is not a vote of confidence, but it is one of the best descriptions of our foreign policy that I've read.  Change is needed.  Remember that 2012 is only two years away.

March 19, 2010