"Obama Can't Even Fake An Interest..."

According to one of those usual suspects, an unnamed well-placed, well-informed source, The Telegraph (UK) reports that "He (Obama)can't even fake an interest in foreign policy." The occasion for the remark was an analysis of the badly blundered summit meeting with Gordon Brown.

There is no doubt but the president and his people stiffed the British PM. Any number of reasons have been offered. The Man With the Smile was too preoccupied with the economic catastrophe. The Nice Young Man From Chicago was overloaded having never anticipated the workload which piles on the big desk in the Oval. The Big O should never have made the Health Nazi required pledge to quit smoking.

Then there was the unnamed person reputed to reside at the State Department who decried the very notion of a "special relationship" between the US and the UK. This faceless (and clueless) denizen of Foggy Bottom went on to aver that the UK was simply one of a "150 countries" with which the US does diplomatic business. Rarely, if ever, has a policy extending back three-quarters of a century at the least been tossed aside so cavalierly.

It's time for a change!

It's time for President Obama to go to the mountain and have an epiphany.

It's time for the Nice Young Man From Chicago to get a grip on a ground truth or two.

The first of these foundational realities is the economic catastrophe--or more properly the ambit of Obama's and Congress's of "solutions"--encompasses the world. The US cannot fund the awe inspiring deficits proposed without totally draining whatever investment pool might exist following the proposed tax changes. Even without this latter complication, the vast sums must come in large part from foreign investors including sovereign wealth funds and direct government purchases of our notes.

Of course, foreign ownership of US debt has the very real potential of--shall we say--influencing American foreign policy as to both goals and methods. The Remember-We-Hold-Your-Note ploy can have great and increasing power over whoever sits in the Oval or hangs out in Foggy Bottom.

The unpleasant reality which the President has to get a firm grip on is very simple. The world is full of sharks. The smoothest, most implacable, most lethal of these do not have offices on Wall Street. They sit in the plush chairs in the Kremlin, the Forbidden City, Whitehall, the centers of power in Germany, France, Turkey and even Iran.

These people have been circling in the deep and turbulent waters of international politics searching for the scent of blood, finding prey, avoiding attack for a long,long time. In many cases these sharks of diplomacy have been swimming, striking and evading fatal bits since President Obama was organising the "po folk" in Chicago.

Dealing effectively with interlocutors far more experienced than the Nice Young Man From Chicago requires careful preparation, meticulous planning, and a limited agenda. Even with these necessities firmly in place, the worst can happen.

Another nice young man, John Kennedy,discovered this one fine day in Vienna. He was eaten alive by Khrushchev. The prepared, planned, pragmatic, polished man from Harvard was so much fishbait in the mouth of the vastly experienced Soviet leader.

Arguably, the humiliation and anger JFK felt and expressed on the flight back to the US played a role in his later, unfortunately overly robust foreign policy gambits which not only brought the world very,very close to nuclear war, but dropped our little white butts into the deep kimchee of Vietnam.

Having not yet had either an epiphany or a humiliating defeat by one or more of the assorted land sharks from the chancelleries of the world, the Man With The Smile is about to undertake a dive into the shark pool which would have daunted men with the experience and aplomb of Dwight Eisenhower. In a week of flurry Obama is going to take on NATO, the G-20, the EU and, now, Turkey. Along the way the president is presumed to have one-on-ones with such as Brown and Medvedev (and presumably others as well lest Germany or France feel slighted.)

Now, Mr Obama may have warm, fuzzy memories of his Great European Tour last year. The crowds! The adulation! Weren't they just grand? Sure. So what?

Woodrow Wilson had crowds fainting at his feet in 1918. Babies and streets were named after him by the hundreds. The applause could be heard from Paris to Tokyo. Woody ate it up.

So what? The land sharks from the UK, France and even Italy ate the American president for lunch (and dinner, and, come to think about it, breakfast as well.) The upshots from Wilson's adventure in summit diplomacy ultimately brought the world, inter alia, World War II, the mess in the Mideast, the dissolution of Yugoslavia and sundry other more minor debacles.

Of course, Mr Obama cannot aspire to equal the Wilson record--yet.

It would behoove him, however, to consider carefully the record of the last president who could not "even fake" an interest in foreign affairs. He will not have to look far for a full briefing on it. His administration is littered by retreads from the Clinton Administration.

The Clinton record in foreign policy is far from splendid. Indeed the word "disaster" comes creeping into one's mind. His "successes" such as opening free trade with China have sucked money, manufacturing jobs and technology into the grasp of a country which wishes the US anything but good. NAFTA has not paid off any discernible benefits for either the US or Mexico although Canada may have garnered some.

Most notably, Clinton's weak responses to the emergence of al-Qaeda coupled with his all-too-rapid withdrawal of American forces from Somalia brought in their train the current messes in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Sudan. The misinterpreted success in Bosnia gave plausibility to "shock and awe" and adventures in regime change generally.

The Clinton Administration's concern with process over outcome assured that the North Korean problem would not only be unsolved in its earliest stage but would fester on becoming less amenable to solution with each passing year.

If the Geek could talk face-to-face with the Nice Young President, he would say, "Look, bucko, you have an agenda, I know. You want to change the US in many pertinent parts. That's OK. But, the world ain't going to leave you alone to carry out your Saul Alinsky inspired vision. To have a country which can exist as first among equals in the future you had best do one thing..."

The Geek imagines the dude interrupting, "Give it over, fast!"

"You had best not only fake an interest in foreign policy, you had best get a grip on the reality that foreign policy will in large measure dictate your overall success. Your place in history."

Then the Geek will light a cigarette. The president will eat his heart out.

The Geek Goes Off Message--Sort Of

Today the Geek read a post by a blogger for SFGate. (Sorry, the Geek lost the link, but as a button-pusher he is a fine tuba player.) The post well and truly rankled the usually easy going Geek.

In the estimate of the SFGate dude, the US and the world stand on the cusp of a genuinely world-historical moment. By this the writer meant the forthcoming election. Suffice it to aver that whatever the reasons may be, they have little if anything in common with Dr Martin Luther King's demand that Americans judge a man not by the color of his skin, but the content of his character.

It is true that the election of a man with a half African genome may serve to convince many Americans that the days of racism and exclusion are behind us. It is even more true that such is not the case. The celebration of the forthcoming world-historical moment is based on myth, not reality. Worse, it is a pernicious form of racism--giving a man a free pass on his character, ability, policies and proposed programs because of the color of his skin (and perhaps the charm of his smile)

The Geek will leave aside any commentary on the probable course of domestic policies under an Obama administration, particularly one backed by a solidly Democratic Congress much as he may fear the looming tidal wave of Progressive interventionism and the concomitant establishment of a run-by-the-experts "Nanny State." After all, the Geek's real area of interest and experience is foreign and national security affairs.

The bloviating Joe Biden, whose career as a "foreign policy expert" in the senate the Geek has watched with much mirth, was right when he opined that a President Obama would be tested in the first months or year in office. While contemporary public opinion polls may show that Obama is much loved outside the US and that many around the world expect that there will be vast changes in the relation between the US and other countries, there are more than a few sharp, able and sinister men waiting with long knives in hand to "test" the newby at the White House.

Even experienced and very able presidents have been tested, not by sinister design but by the normal course of world affairs. FDR was tested by the rise of expansive and aggressive Nazism. He knew he was being tested. He knew perfectly well that the Nazis represented a threat to core American strategic interests. Still, there was nothing he could do to ward the growth of the threat or even its breaking over the map of Europe with seismic force.

Harry Truman, another vastly experienced man, infinitely more experienced and able than either Senator Obama or Senator Biden, was caught flatfooted by the North Korean invasion of the south in June 1950. However, Truman's strength of character, well of experience and coterie of very able advisers allowed for the quick, effective and, in the short-term, very unpopular decision to go to war under the auspices of the United Nations.

Mr Truman's "police action" was widely condemned by the Republicans of the day. The war was unpopular--more unpopular than the Vietnam War during the worst days following Tet. It was decried as a "no-win" war, an endless war without point and without favorable result.

The long term view shows Truman was right. The war was "no-win" but, more importantly, it was the war that we did not lose. The outcome of the war established a paradigm useful today: the accomplishment of the minimum strategic goal of "not-losing."

When General Eisenhower defeated the loved one of American academics and liberals, Governor Stevenson of Illinois, those on the Left predicted horrors beyond count. The reality was different. Ike's military experience gave him both the moral authority at home and the stature overseas to take advantage of the death of Stalin and (with the accidental assistance of the South Korean government) end the Korean War.

Beyond that Ike's knowledge and ability allowed his administration to forge the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction which made the Cold War years stable (most of the time). Ike was tested in Southeast Asia and the Mideast and passed the tests not with an "A" perhaps but with at least a C+.

JFK, who in comparison with Obama was quite experienced, was tested multiple times. He failed the following: The Vienna Summit, The Bay of Pigs, the war in Laos, the war in Vietnam, the Hawk missile sale to Israel. If the Soviets had not proven more responsible than the jocks of the Kennedy administration, the world would still be recovering from the very narrowly averted nuclear exchange.

Flashing forward a few years, the Geek asks, "Do you remember the vastly inexperienced one time nuclear engineer turned Georgia governor and then president?"

You got it! Jimmy Carter. He was tested. As by the coming of the Iranian Revolution. He failed. Failed badly. Sure, the Shah was a less than lovable guy. His regime did violate human rights. But, is the aftermath, the mullahocracy an improvement?

Then there was the policy wonk from Little Rock (or Hope, if you prefer his boyhood home.) He was tested too. He failed. But, foreign policy was not his thing. You might recall that he was bigger on such matters as after dark basketball, school uniforms and Monica Lewinsky. Enough said.

The blogger in SFGate wrote one thing with which the Geek agrees completely. He characterised the past eight years of Bush/Cheney/neocon ninny regime as a "fetid swamp." It has been just that--at best. The current administration was tested and failed.

It failed because of ideology and willful ignorance. The failure of the current administration has been severely negative on the US and the world.

Senator Obama has no experience. He has little noticeable positive character. He does have much ambition. He possesses much capacity at building and playing to the myth of American racism and its bright shadow, inclusiveness.

Also the Senator embodies a great body of ideology. The Geek is impressed by the degree to which Obama is a True Believer in the Western European Left Democratic Socialist world view and political agenda.

The deadly combination of a miserable deficiency in character and experience and a hyper-abundance of ideology assures that when the long knives of test are drawn and sharpened, they will plunge deeply into the senator turned president--and the United States.

That may constitute world-historical moment. But, it won't be one to celebrate.