History is a valuable teacher. But if we don’t learn its lessons, we are
bound to repeat the mistakes of the past.
Ironically, it was near the beautiful
Crimean seaside resort of Yalta that a sick and soon-to-die President Roosevelt
failed to confront Joseph Stalin in 1945. Roosevelt said, “I think that if I give him
everything that I possibly can and ask nothing in return…he won’t try to annex
anything and will work for a world of democracy and peace.” Wishful thinking. Stalin went on to gobble up all of Eastern
Europe, which the Soviet Union kept in virtual slavery for the next
half-century.
Has President Obama learned anything from
mistakes of the past? Apparently
not. His weakness in the face of Russian
aggression in Ukraine mirrors that of his predecessor at Yalta. Stalin didn’t play nice. Neither will Putin.
But Obama’s weakness in his management
of America’s foreign policy is nothing new.
It began with the president’s embarrassing apology tour and his denial
of America’s exceptionalism, followed by scrapping plans for a missile defense program
in Poland and the Czech Republic, leading from behind in Libya, and multiple
failures of nerve in Egypt, Syria, and Iran.
Add to this the failure to secure a lasting peace in Iraq, the
resurgence of al Qaida, and the enormous waste of treasure and lives in
Afghanistan. And to top it off, we now
have proposals from the White House and the Pentagon to reduce our active military
to a pre-World War II level.
Meanwhile, we wince at the travails of
our quixotic Secretary of State (knight of the mournful countenance, as George
Will calls him) as he interrupts his bumbling diplomacy to tilt impotently at
climate change, an imaginary foe he proclaims is threatening the world with
mass destruction.
With this kind of leadership, is it
any wonder we face a world with enemies who do not fear us and allies who do not
trust us? Can adventurism in China and
North Korea be far behind?
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