Let's get out, folks! Money has been running out, and the more we spend the stronger our creditors get.
Der Spiegel:
[...] following an extended Asia trip that produced no palpable results. The "first Pacific president," as Obama called himself, came as a friend and returned as a stranger. The Asians smiled but made no concessions.
Upon taking office, Obama said that he wanted to listen to the world, promising respect instead of arrogance. But Obama's currency isn't as strong as he had believed. Everyone wants respect, but hardly anyone is willing to pay for it. Interests, not emotions, dominate the world of realpolitik. The Asia trip revealed the limits of Washington's new foreign policy: Although Obama did not lose face in China and Japan, he did appear to have lost some of his initial stature.
Obama visited a new China, an economic power that is now making its own demands. America should clean up its government finances, and the weak dollar is unacceptable, the head of the Chinese banking authority said, just as Obama's plane was about to land.
Obama's new foreign policy has also been relatively unsuccessful elsewhere, with even friends like Israel leaving him high and dry. For the government of Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, peace is only conceivable under its terms. Netanyahu has rejected Obama's call for a complete moratorium on the construction of settlements. As a result, Obama has nothing to offer the Palestinians and the Syrians. "We thought we had some leverage," says Martin Indyk, a former ambassador to Israel under the Clinton administration and now an advisor to Obama. "But that proved to be an illusion."
Even the president seems to have lost his faith in a genial foreign policy. The approach that was being used in Afghanistan this spring, with its strong emphasis on civilian reconstruction, is already being changed. "We're searching for an exit strategy," said a staff member with the National Security Council on the sidelines of the Asia trip.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,662822,00.html
President Obama with his national security team to discuss Afghanistan in the Situation Room of the White House, Nov. 23, 2009
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Popular Posts
-
The 2nd installment of wikileaks, Cablegate , has been partially released, as in 1/000. The story behind the whole data-spill seems to hav... -
A recent NYTimes article informs us about the Chinese plan to redirect massive amounts of water to their dry north from their wet south. H...
-
Capitalism is itself an artifact, based on a fiction. Sooner or later, it runs out. Some of its plot elements are property, law, innovatio...
-
A little less than 3 years ago, I commented about the unfolding episode of WikLeaks . [...] a smart young man, driven by patriotism, enlis...
-
That Obama has overtaken Bush II is a fact that comes to show who's not in charge at the White House. So, as if doubling up in Afghani...
-
By Susanne Beyer and Lothar Gorris Italian novelist and semiotician Umberto Eco, who is curating a new exhibition at the Louvre in Paris, ta... -
"I hear these people saying he’s like George Bush. Those people ought to be drug tested," Gibbs said. "I mean, it's crazy...
-
Four months ago I challenged the LinkedIn community with a topic titled " Survival of Capitalism ." Last week, one of my LinkedIn...
-
This past winter, during a half-day stopover in Paris, I took to its streets, wandering more or less aimlessly. Near the Archives nationale...
-
I have been writing about the too big for our good capitalist entities for some time now (e.g., here ). The NewScientist features "a...
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment