Obama and his Bush-league Foreign Policy

Former US Ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, recently shared his feelings on “conservative foreign policy” in the Washington Times op-ed section. This policy is one that has been lacking over the past 9 years, though it was President Bush who campaigned on a humble foreign policy. That, like so much Gov. Bush claimed in the campaign, turned out to be a lie. Sadly, in the words of Bolton, “the Obama administration is a continuation of the second Bush term, only worse.” Like in the domestic arena, the “change” was not one of direction, but merely one of intensity, leading us quicker down the road to serfdom.

Thomas Jefferson in his first inaugural address called for, "Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations--entangling alliances with none,” as “the essential principles of our government, and consequently those which ought to shape its administration."

Regretfully, adherence to these principles has not been the case for much of America’s modern history, leading us and our liberty to severely suffer because of it. It was Jefferson again who prophesied these results.

Jefferson warned in a letter to James Monroe, "I have ever deemed it fundamental for the United States never to take active part in the quarrels of Europe [you can insert any foreign power and retain truth]. Their political interests are entirely distinct from ours. Their mutual jealousies, their balance of power, their complicated alliances, their forms and principles of government, are all foreign to us. They are nations of eternal war. All their energies are expended in the destruction of the labor, property and lives of their people."

Because of our willingness to disobey this Jeffersonian wisdom and seek entanglements with foreign powers, I believe, we have made ourselves a nation of “eternal war” and nation which is willing to subvert liberty and the Rule of Law in the name of “security.”

So what is the solution? The solution is to get back to a humble, constitutional foreign policy in which we worry about our own defense through our own strength and influence, not about our ability to offensively bring about military action or be involved in all corners of the world. That is what our enemies desire for us and from us. We must be different than the empires of the world because what makes America great is our exceptionalism…our commitment to individual freedom, not empire building.

What Bolton does well in his article is to note that Obama is merely continuing to make Bush’s mistakes, but perhaps doing so even more recklessly. He also does well to note that conservative foreign policy is not what we had under the Bush administration for:

“Conservative foreign policy is unabashedly pro-American, unashamed of American exceptionalism, unwilling to bend its knee to international organizations, and unapologetic about the need for the fullest range of dominant military capabilities. Its diplomacy is neither unilateralist nor multilateralist, but chooses its strategies, tactics, means and methods based on a hard-headed assessment of U.S. national interests, not on theologies about process. Most especially, conservatives understand that allies are different from adversaries, and that each should be treated accordingly.”

The policies we see in this and the past administration is not one of American self-interest. It is one of globalist imperialism clothed in the guise of America’s interest. At the end of the day, the only interest our current foreign policy serves is the interest of enemies of liberty.