There are those who claim that President Obama has been a disaster both at home and in foreign policy. Let us look at domestic policy and accomplishments and resolve those first. The largest area of agreements are President Obama’s signature policy accomplishment according to most, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), aka Obama Care, and the Presidents most recent controversy with his announced intended amnesty of illegal immigrants should they be able to prove they meet requirements generally described criteria which will be defined through not Presidential Executive Actions but through merely ‘memos’ sent to Cabinet Secretaries to implement these changed definitions of policies and not changes of actual policies. The much maligned ACA may be established law as its defenders claim makes it sacrosanct and thus untouchable. Actually, it is as touchable as was the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution which was later repealed by the Twenty-First Amendment to that very same Constitution. So, there is precedent of the highest order that laws can be overturned, amended, redefined or altered in ways approaching uncountable and the ACA is not an exception. If the American people express an overwhelming and honest majority demanding the ACA be repealed, it will eventually be repealed, but only by such pressures being maintained until the repeal or redefinition of the changes within meet the people’s expectations. The immigration amnesty can be altered simply by finding a middle ground with legislation and holding President Obama to his promise to revoke his immigration ‘memos’ and sign the Congressional immigration reform legislation once it reaches his office. Further, if the President refuses to sign a truly compromise and rational approach which the American people have heard explained and support, then that veto can be overruled through constitutionally defined votes of both houses of Congress. Finally, the Congress can also prevent the implementation of President Obama’s immigration ‘memos’ by simply interceding and cutting off any federal funding of those changes and allowing them to die on the vine. So, anything that President Obama has done in domestic policies can be altered, repealed, amended, defunded or otherwise neutered by the Congress or potentially by the courts even if it needs to be taken to the Supreme Court making those alterations to the American legal fabric more compatible with the desires of the American people.
This leaves us with the effects and affects President Obama and his policies and actions have had on our world. The biggest problem caused by President Obama on the world’s stage was the damages he caused to the trust that both America’s allies and enemies could have in the promises made by any individual President because of the many standing policies which President Obama either ignored or worked with a great animosity and actually reversing previous American constants in foreign policy. Because many NATO countries came to fear that the United States no longer was there to protect them, they began to arm themselves and take on defense for themselves and many met the demanded minimal investments as required as a percentage of their budgets and national wealth on those defenses. Other nations such as Japan, Philippines, Israel, Taiwan and South Korea also realized that the promises made by previous administrations and even treaties may not be fulfilled to the extents they had always been guaranteed in word and actions including cancellation of joint exercises, the withholding of arms, changing promised arms sales replacing the weapons systems like aircraft and submarines with similar but lesser capable systems as well as actually cancelling some already planned and promised radar systems which were replaced with promises to have similar capabilities in place using naval systems or orbital surveillance satellites. No matter what good may come as nations react to a new reality where the United States can no longer be relied upon to keep its word and live up to promises to protect them from deadly threats or simply meet promised sales or stationing of resources, but they now know that promises from any President of the United States becomes null and void as soon as he leaves office and it depends upon the whims and fancies of his successors on into perpetuity. This alone will damage the United States and its foreign policy for decades, even centuries and potentially forever if the Obama perfidy is recalled into the distant future.
Now perhaps a closer look at the individual crises which have resulted to date and will likely play a large part of the historical legacy of President Obama’s two terms and its foreign policy and the ripples they have caused. First to examine Japan, Philippines and South Korea and their similar reactions and new realities they face due to President Obama’s foreign policy changes. The primary adversaries these three nations face is obviously China who has been developing advanced weapons systems, upgrading their military capabilities on the land, the sea and in the skies. Their other main adversary who is extremely unpredictable and potentially dangerous is North Korea with its new leader, Kim Jung Un who murdered his own Uncle for reasons which are unknown. With both of these adversaries possessing nuclear weapons, and with China developing a deep sea capable navy, what is often referred to as a blue water navy, these nations used to depend upon the United States and her nuclear threat to balance the nuclear potential threat from China and North Korea. With their faith and assurances broken, at the very least both South Korea and Japan have started to consider whether developing their own nuclear arsenals might be an idea whose time has come. Furthermore, both the Philippines and Japanese have conflicting claims for Islands located between them and China that China also makes claims to. This has caused a great potential for conflict to break out should the Chinese decide to exercise her ownership while the Philippines or Japan also have troops on exercises on the disputed Islands. The conflict potentially brewing for Japan is over the Senkaku Islands which the Chinese claim calling them the Diaoyu Islands. The Philippines dispute is over the Spratly Islands which the questions of ownership is also contested with Brunei, China, Malaysia, Taiwan and Vietnam. And finally there is the problem caused by China claiming the entirety of the South China Sea which is heavily navigated water as it is the central leg of almost every trade route from Southern Asia to Western Asia, Hawaii, the Americas and the Panama Canal. Should either South Korea or Japan decide to go nuclear and develop nuclear arsenals, then the world will then contain two more nuclear armed nations and might spawn North Korea to expand their nuclear capabilities which would make the unpredictability of North Korean young, homicidal, vicious dictator Kim Jung Un even more threatening and of much greater concern for both Japan and the Philippines.
Taiwan has all of the same concerns as do Japan and the Philippines. The difference is that unlike the Philippines and Japan, Taiwan ranks mainland China as their greatest concern and threat. This is most likely due to the fact that China has already declared that Taiwan is simply another province of China which they intend to restore and place under Beijing’s control. One of the items which Taiwan was depending on was for the United States selling them a number of highly advanced submarines. Former President George W. Bush April 2001 offered Taiwan a substantial arms package which included eight diesel-electric submarines. Facing the problem that the United States has not designed or built diesel-electric submarines they faced a design problem which they were unable to solve simply by purchasing the plans and schematics of a European ally’s submarine but were turned down. After an exhaustive and determined search, come late 2004 the United States presented plans which included consideration for building the diesel-electric submarines for Taiwan from scratch. In early January of 2010, President Obama had his Defense Department announced a new offer of an arms package for Taiwan which did not include any submarines of any sort. This about-face greatly shocked and distressed the Taiwan defense officials. Taiwan’s reaction was to begin their own ability for building the most modern and advanced diesel-electric submarines on their own and have set out in that direction. The difficulty most nations reported in providing any military aid to Taiwan was their fear of provoking Chinese ire which has been growing in its potential recently.
Then there was the ready to be installed and promised placement of a radar and anti-missile battery system already agreed upon and the places were set aside in both Czech Republic and Poland. The reasons explained and guarantees given to Russia and the other nations in the area, that they were not the targeted areas, which would have been their primary concerns, but that the system was being placed in these two countries was for defense of any missiles launched from Iran towards Europe or even the United States and Canada. Russia was nervous but ready to accept the missile interceptors as the mere ten interceptors would be next to useless if they were to attempt to prevent an all-out Russian missile launch. By the end of President George W. Bush leaving office the only step left was to pack up the systems and ship them to be set up by American troops with aid from the two nations of Poland and the Czech Republic. President Obama took office and initially did not act or even press any steps to transit the systems to Europe. President Obama along with then Secretary of State Clinton were busy initially with the reset they were planning to reach with Russia. Finally, in September 2009, newly elected and still within his first year as President, Obama cancelled the entire system and promised to leave an AEGIS Destroyer in the eastern half of the Mediterranean Sea. This cancellation of the radar and anti-missile system was not taken well and considered to be a huge betrayal of their trust and as accepted allies. The promise of keeping a naval vessel to replace an entire system was seen an inadequate and less reliable as the ship, even one of the advanced and new AEGIS Destroyers, would not be capable of having its rockets placed in central Europe as there was no accessible body of water. This was also a broken trust and further proof that the United States has been basically changed and could no long trust the promises from one administration to the next administration as they could only take the promises of the President of the United States to have their weight and veracity disappear with the swearing-in ceremony of the next President.
And finally there is Israel where the changes signal an alignment change which they had best internalize if Israel has any plans for permanence. The changes in the United States relations with Israel were startling and shocked many an Israeli. The withholding of critical resupply of weapons and ammunition during the Gaza operation Defensive Shield was reminiscent of the delay in permitting resupply during the Yom Kippur War in October 1976 by President Nixon under the advice of Secretary of State Kissinger. The difference this time was the fact that President Obama added an additional review stage where it must be approved by the State Department after the Pentagon had cleared any supplies, provisions, replacement parts, weapon systems and even aircraft. Forcing any provisions of a military nature to also be granted the approval of the State Department places all military to military agreements and assurances given Israel all voided and allows for the Arabists who have infiltrated deeply into the State Department to interdict any resupply or even initial supply of armaments being shipped to Israel. Add into the mix the open hostility and animus shown to the Prime Minister of Israel as well as many Israeli politicians was another sign that all was not well between Jerusalem and Washington. Then there have been the silent demands on the leadership of Israel which has forced a silent building freeze, refraining security police and the IDF by insisting on Israeli rules of engagement, demanded that the Israeli government back away from any restrictions to Muslim access to the Temple Mount or in resolving the continuous rioting by Muslims while all the time refusing Jewish prayer and even access to the Temple Mount which is the most sacred place for Jews in the world and further demanded that Israel make concession in order to meet all of the demands of Mahmoud Abbas. These overt and far reaching plans by the United States to hamstring Israel and force them to all but surrender completely to the Palestinians demands and allow Muslims to act and enjoy every conceivable freedom even from the law while the Jews are to be treated as if they were Dhimmis within an Islamic state have even turned much of the Israeli public to question whether America is still an ally or has the good and solid relations become a memory from the distant past. There are those in Israel who now believe that the United States has turned on their homeland accusing them of taking the side of Israel’s enemies and joined their efforts to destroy Israel. The one place that thus far the United States has not betrayed the trust of Israel is the United Nations Security Council where the veto of the United States has very often been the savior required while much of the rest of the nations represented on the Security Council vote almost religiously to condemn Israel no matter what the charges or evidence. Should the United States ever break this trust, then the Israelis will know that there has been such a change that they can no longer count on anybody in the United Nations Security Council to mount sufficient, if any, opposition to the assaults upon Israel within that body just as nobody can save Israel from endless condemnations from every element of the United Nations. Potentially the worst entity when it comes to Israel would have to be the United Nations Human Rights Council which has as part of its operations a stipulation for them to issue a condemnation of Israel at the beginning of every session before they even conduct the reading of the minutes from the previous meeting. The one truth which is easily witnessed from as far as Jerusalem is the support and warmth of the feelings of the American people for Israel. This devotion and support for Israel is one of the things which has appeared to only grow as the Administration has slid further and further from Israel. Their support and devotion are highly treasured across all the lands and peoples of Israel.
The question in all of these nations’ minds is will the United States they knew return once it comes into new management with the next President. Then what jumps to the front of their minds is what are the possibilities that there may be President after President where the United States runs hot and cold in their treatment of each nation. Their greatest fear would be the United States not bouncing back to the familiar relations and traditional allies. The one probably permanent change caused to be implemented by the drastic changes experienced over the past six years has been the realization that even the most powerful nation which had been the greatest protector of freedoms, democracy, human rights and progress can falter and vanish for all intents and purposes leaving the world scrambling to cope with the collapse of what had appeared to be the natural order in the world. Now we do not have to imagine a world without the United States as we have been living in such a world where the United States was leading from behind rather than boldly going forth to support truth and justice, or at least profits, commerce and unfettered trade routes.
Beyond the Cusp
Beyond the Cusp 