Barack Hussein Obama and the New Retrenchment

Abstract

This chapter depicts how weariness with wars in Afghanistan and Iraq figured in Barrack Obama’s presidential election and his policies. By being the un-Bush president, Obama is seen reversing interventionism toward strategic detachment. It outlines the wholesale military withdrawal from Iraq, step up in drone airstrikes, and Pivot to Asia. Obama is seen striving to patch up relations with Iran to set the stage for a landmark nuclear deal in his second term. It explains the president’s Afghan disengagement plan to train an Afghan force, so the United States and allies can withdraw. He temporarily upped troop levels to almost 100,000 but set an 18-month deadline for withdrawing forces. At the end of his presidency, there remain only 8400 military personnel.

History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme. Mark Twain, reputedly

History is a cyclic poem written by time upon the memories of man. Percy Bysshe Shelley