Former UN ambassador John Bolton sees trouble ahead for America:

Canceling the Polish and Czech missile defense bases is understood in Moscow and Eastern European capitals as backing down in the face of Russian bluster and belligerence. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev threatened the day after our 2008 election to deploy missiles targeting these assets unless they were canceled, a threat duly noted by the Russian media when Obama canceled the sites. Given candidate Obama’s reaction to the 2008 Russia-Georgia war — calling on both sides to exercise restraint — there is little doubt that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s project to re-extend Russian hegemony over as much of the former Soviet Union as he can will continue apace…

Obama’s Middle East peace process has stalled, most recently because he set a target for an end to Israeli settlement expansion, couldn’t meet it and then proceeded as though he hadn’t meant what he said originally…

On nuclear nonproliferation, North Korea responded to the “open hand” of engagement by testing its second nuclear device, continuing an aggressive ballistic missile testing program, cooperating with other rogue states and kidnapping and holding hostage two American reporters…Iran is revealed to have been long constructing an undeclared, uninspected nuclear facility that makes a mockery of almost seven years of European Union negotiation efforts…

Obama’s agonizing, very public reappraisal of his own 7-month-old Afghanistan policy epitomizes indecisiveness. While there is no virtue in sustaining policy merely for continuity’s sake, neither is credit due for too-quickly adopting policies without appreciating the risks entailed and then fleeing precipitously when the risks become manifest. The administration’s stated reason for its policy re-evaluation was widespread fraud in Afghanistan’s Aug. 20 presidential election. But this explanation is simply not credible. Did not the administration’s generals and diplomats on the ground, not to mention United Nations observers, see the election mess coming?…

Weakness in American foreign policy in one region often invites challenges elsewhere, because our adversaries carefully follow diminished American resolve. Similarly, presidential indecisiveness, whether because of uncertainty or internal political struggles, signals that the United States may not respond to international challenges in clear and coherent ways.

Many people have commented on the self-referential nature of Obama’s speeches. But there is another interesting point to note. For example, in his Cairo speech, Obama not only referenced himself 68 times, but told other nations what they “must” do on 30 separate occasions.

David Axelrod says that Obama “sees the world through a writer’s eye.” There is little doubt that the President sees himself as a transformational world historical figure, given the scope of his ambitions. But what happens should other nations refuse to do what they “must do” — like characters in a book who go renegade from the author’s intended plotline? We shall see. (HT: Powerline)

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