Barack Obama: A Foreign Policy of Disengagement

Abstract

Henriksen analyzes how Obama was not only caught off guard by the Arab Spring but also he declined to mount a strategy capitalizing on opportunities or prepare for fallouts. Obama practiced a “leading from behind” stratagem to avoid Libya’s civil war. In Syria’s bloody cauldron, he refused to punish Bashar al Assad for crossing his “red line” by using chemical weapons. In line with his disengagement, he countered the Islamic States march deep into Iraq with incremental measures, contributing to refugees flocking into Europe and Russia’s intervention. Russia’s seizures of Crimea and eastern Ukraine were met with just sanctions and troop rotations. The Iran nuclear deal to halt arms production was premised on disentangling America from Middle East alliances and disengaging it from the region.

What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. Ecclesiastes

The further backward you look the further forward you can see. Winston Churchill