Skip to main content

President Obama's foreign policy

Henry Kissinger.Image via Wikipedia
I miss the Nixon administration.


Yes, Nixon was a crook, no question about it. And I'm a conservative, and President Nixon definitely wasn't. (Disagree? We can debate that. He was clearly more liberal than his Democrat opponent Kennedy). But along with his sidekick Henry Kissinger, he had an encompassing, completely thought out, foreign policy.

Now, many conservatives didn't care for his policy - it was far too realpolitik for their convictions. And many if not most hated it, because it was a too confrontational to communism. I loved it then, and I love it more now. Look at successive administrations. Ford wasn't in long enough to matter. Carter was completely taken aback when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan and never recovered his bearings. Regan made some steps in the right direction and had a brilliant plan vis a vis the Soviets, but couldn't develop a theory for the rest of the world. Bush the elder was on course, I believe, to a comprehensive world policy, but became a one-term President. Clinton may have been the most qualified domestic policy President ever, but seemed largely disinterested in foreign policy, and, let's face it, Madeline Albright was generally clueless. Bush the younger lacked his father's wide-ranging international experience (e.g. CIA, diplomat) and, tied up with terrorism, two wars and debt crisis, didn't really create a policy.

That brings us to the current administration. Even members of President Obama's own party can't explain, much less support, our _______ (whatever you want to call it) in Libya. And what on earth triggered the decision to sell some oil from the strategic reserve? While I don't think for a minute that Hillary Clinton is Henry Kissinger, I do think she is reasonably talented. While our 10 year string of financial profligacy has badly reduced our power and influence, surely we can do far better than this.

I miss the Nixon administration.
Enhanced by Zemanta

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Book Review: What Matters Now by Gary Hamel

Interview of Eric Schmidt by Gary Hamel at the MLab dinner tonight. Google's Marissa Mayer and Hal Varian also joined the open dialog about Google's culture and management style, from chaos to arrogance. The video just went up on YouTube. It's quite entertaining. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Cover of The Future of Management My list of must-read business writers continues to expand.   Gary Hamel , however, author of What Matters Now , with the very long subtitle of How to Win in a World of Relentless Change, Ferocious Competition, and Unstoppable Innovation , has been on the list for quite some time.   Continuing his thesis on the need for a new approach to management introduced in his prior book The Future of Management , Hamel calls for a complete rethinking of how enterprises are run. Fundamental to his recommendation is that the practice of management is ossified in a command and control system that is now generations old and needs to be replaced with somethi

Manage Your Blood Pressure While Young to Have a Big Healthy Brain Later

Anatomy Refresher The brain accounts for around 2 percent of body weight but gets as much as twenty percent of blood pumped by the heart. There are about 370 miles of tiny “microvessels” in the brain. Those vessels deliver oxygen and nutrients throughout the brain. Blood Pressure and Brain Health Two recently-released studies reveal the importance of blood pressure management to brain health. More importantly, the researchers discovered the importance of managing blood pressure in one’s forties, or even younger. Dr. Matthew Pase, PhD, and Research Fellow in Neurology at the University of Boston School of Medicine, and Dr. Charles DeCarli, Professor of Neurology at the University of California Davis, presented a paper at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in July. (We’ve mentioned Pase in previous newsletters and posts. He used the highly-regarded Framingham Heart Study to produce the now famous, and famously disconcerting, study on the deleterious affe

Researchers Say Do This to Make Your Brain 10 Years Younger

Do your parents or grandparents keep a pot of coffee brewing all day? Do they spend the morning sipping a cup of coffee while working Jumble and the crossword puzzle in the newspaper? “Just because there is no evidence that it works doesn’t mean that it doesn’t work. It just means that no one has paid for research to determine whether or not it works.” That was my response to one of the earliest subscribers to our newsletter. He is fond of crossword puzzles and was hopeful that solving them would help build cognitive reserve. At that point we hadn’t seen any research that indicated that word puzzles were useful. Guess what: our subscriber and your family members are on to something. There now is research to support that individuals regularly working puzzles are building some serious brain strength. Crossword Puzzles and Fast Brains Here’s a quote from Professor Keith Wesnes at the University of Exeter Medical School: “We found direct relationships between the frequency