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Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week
Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 30, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Secret to Immortality
Caroline B. Glick Silencing dissent in America
Oct. 29, 2009
Lini S. Kadaba: Do tactics avert flu or reduce humanity?
JWisdom.com We Must Revamp our Religious Vocabulary With Gavriel Aryeh Sanders ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 28, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Atheists in Bubbleland
JWisdom.com Why what we wear impacts who we are With Rabbis Mordechai Becher, Menachem Golberger and Aliza Bulow ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 27, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The United Nations Is Outraged Again, Or: Department of Mideast Static
JWisdom.com The Science of Love With Rabbi Jonathan Rietti ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 26, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Damaging disclosures with a twist
JWisdom.com Wisdom and Wonks With Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 23, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Are you ready for the ultimate pleasure?
JWisdom.com Watermark and oneness with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 4 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick Stop using limited powers in a way that expands our enemies' advantages over us
Oct. 22, 2009
Steven Emerson: Terror Cases Share Desire to Kill Americans
JWisdom.com No More More Family Fights --- Really? By Sarah Chana Radcliffe ( 5 minutes)
Oct. 21, 2009
Tonya Alanez: Holocaust denier sues survivor, calling Auschwitz memoir 'vicious lies'
JWisdom.com Meditating Jewishly: A Panacea for Success by Sarah Yoheved Rigler ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 20, 2009
Dennis Prager: Obama and Dalai Lama: Why Israel Worries about U.S. President
JWisdom.com Abraham was not religious By Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer ( 6 minutes)
Oct. 19, 2009
JWisdom.comWhy Good People Do Bad Things By Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 16, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Perfect Number
JWisdom.com Hearing Voices By Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick How Turkey was lost
Oct. 15, 2009
Jeff Jacoby: Peace vs. the 'peace process'
JWisdom.com: Former MTV producer and stand-up comedian Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff: Taming a Control Freak (A VERY fast 15 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review April 21, 2009 / 27 Nisan 5769

Back to the Future: Obama's Foreign Policy

By Michael Barone


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | As Barack Obama finishes up his second major foreign tour, a pattern in his approach to foreign policy seems to be emerging. On pressing matters of obvious importance, he has made responsible decisions that have not been far out of line with the policies of his predecessor and current necessities. But when it comes to setting priorities for the future, he has chosen to emphasize initiatives that seem more appropriate to situations America faced in his college years, the late 1970s and early 1980s, than to the threats America faces today.


Candidate Obama campaigned as the man who would lead us out of Iraq. President Obama, admitting belatedly and begrudgingly the success of George W. Bush's surge strategy, decided to keep large numbers of troops there for another 19 months and an unspecified number after that. Responsibly, he decided not to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. On Afghanistan, in line with his campaign rhetoric that this was the good war Bush was neglecting, he has decided to send in more troops, and his envoy Richard Holbrooke has pressed the Pakistani government to fight the Islamist terrorists, too.


On Easter week, confronted with the seizure of an American ship captain by Somali pirates, he authorized negotiations but apparently insisted that no ransom be paid and that the pirates not be set free. And he authorized the use of deadly force, with the happy result that three Navy Seal bullets killed three pirates and the captain was rescued. Some critics grumbled that he had no other course. But I give him credit here, as on Iraq and Afghanistan, for making responsible choices under considerable pressure.


His choice of priorities for the future is another thing. The climax of his European trip was his speech in Prague on April 5 (don't look for it on the White House Website; the latest speech text there is dated Feb. 27) on "the future of nuclear weapons in the 21st century" in which he called for "a world without nuclear weapons." A noble goal, and one shared incidentally by Ronald Reagan. And how did he propose to start? By negotiating a new nuclear arms control treaty with Russia, getting the Senate to ratify the nuclear test ban treaty and stopping U.S. production of fissile material.


That's all Cold War stuff. Disarmament talks with the Soviets were a central feature of American foreign policy from the late 1960s to the late 1980s, a time when a U.S.-Soviet nuclear war would have produced enormous destruction. But the prospect of a U.S.-Russian nuclear war today is pretty much nil. It's worthwhile to continue the Nunn-Lugar program of corralling Russia's loose nukes — one of the few issues Obama worked on as a senator — but making disarmament talks with Russia a first priority is a policy out of the distant past.


To be sure, Obama did talk about nuclear threats from North Korea and Iran, with talk being the operative word. But he promised to defend against the wayward states with "a missile defense system that is cost-effective and proven" — code words indicating that he shares most Democrats' hostility to missile defense left over from the Cold War era, when they feared it would destabilize the U.S.-Soviet balance of terror. The real need today is a system robust enough to repel and deter the much smaller but much likelier threats from North Korea and Iran.


And what was Obama's major policy announcement before embarking on his trip to Latin America? Lifting restrictions on travel and remittances to Cuba. In 1961, the year Obama was born, Cuba was a central preoccupation of American foreign policy. Today, Cuba (population 11 million) is not a major problem. Meanwhile, the Obama administration violates the NAFTA treaty by banning trucks from Mexico (population 109 million), refuses to ratify the free trade agreement with Colombia (population 44 million) and, despite our need for alternative fuels, makes no move to rescind the 54 cent tariff on sugar ethanol from Brazil (population 191 million).


Obama campaigned as the candidate of hope and change. But on pressing matters, he has, responsibly, not produced as much change as many of his supporters expected. And in setting priorities, he seems to be heading back to the distant past, to the disarmament debates of the 1970s and 1980s, to the frenzy over Cuba in 1961-62. Is that the change we need?

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JWR contributor Michael Barone is senior political analyst for The Washington Examiner.

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