In a recent article about his first meeting with Mike Lee, Gary Nuila of the Utah People’s Post expressed his disappointment with Mike Lee’s dislike of Barack Obama’s foreign policy.  Nuila’s disappointment came largely from the fact that Mike doesn’t agree with Obama’s apologizing for America.  In some sense I can agree with Nuila.  I have spoken with Mike a lot, and I have heard him speak a lot.  I don’t think it would hurt Mike at all to get a little more specific about his ideas regarding both foreign policy and free trade.  Even I, who wholeheartedly support Mike, would have asked Mike for a “little more” if he had given me a similar answer that he gave Nuila.

Later in the article Nuila states the following:

I invite you to not only read the selected passages from these [Barack Obama's foreign policy related] speeches, I invite you to read these speeches in their entireties (they are linked at the bottom of the page through the previous link). If after doing so, you can come back to me and with a straight face look me in the eye (or write a comment below or submit an opinion piece to UPP) and tell me you think any of these speeches convey a sense of shame about America, a sense of subservience to others, or lack of pride in country, then I’ll gladly pull $10 out of my pocket and give it to the first person who does so, or send it in the mail to a listed address (yeah, yeah, low amount, I know, but we’re still in “start-up” phase here.)

I believe I will take Nuila up on his offer by writing what I think Mike should have said.  Before I get started, if getting the ten dollars actually requires me to read a bunch of Barack Obama speeches, then I guess I’ll forgo the prize.  Ultimately, speeches are not the same thing as policy, and in my opinion the more ubiquitous Obama’s speeches become the less meaningful they are.  So rather than focus on how Obama’s speeches convey a sense of shame, subservience, and lack of pride, I will demonstrate how his actual policies in foreign relations have been equally problematic.

Let’s assume Nuila’s question was something like this: So what do you think of Obama’s foreign policy?

My answer if I was Mike:

That is an interesting question, because it is based on a faulty assumption: that Obama has a recognizable foreign policy.  He has been so focused on domestic issues like the failed stimulus plan, a year-long health care debate, and cap and trade that what is traditionally considered foreign policy in most presidencies is something that has been tangential for Obama.  Aside from a round of meaningless speeches, Obama’s pursuit of American interests on the international stage has been largely an after thought to pressing domestic issues.

This doesn’t mean that he hasn’t made and executed foreign policy decisions.  However, there doesn’t seem to be a clear and coherent paradigm that informs the decisions he does make.  From the best we can tell, his desire from the onset of his election was to equate foreign policy with some kind of savvy PR campaign where he could go abroad and through rapturous rhetoric he could rebrand America.  Where Obama’s intentions might be good, and I imagine this approach makes his loyal constituents feel good, the problem with this approach is that Obama clearly doesn’t understand America’s geopolitical reality.

According to George Friedman, America’s geopolitical grand strategy involves 5 goals.  Notice that I am talking grand strategy here.  Geopolitical grand strategy is largely defined by geography, history, and to a lesser extent politics.  In this sense, a nation’s grand strategy isn’t necessarily something that is going to be determined by the legislative efforts of politicians.  Moral codes are even less relevant.  The United States’ five goals are the following:

1. Control North America
2. Control the Western Hemisphere
3. Control the maritime approaches to its shores, so the homeland can’t be subject to invasion by foreign naval power.
4. Control the international trading system by exerting control of all of the ocean’s sea lanes through projection of naval power.
5. Prevent the emergence of regional powers that could threaten America’s hegemonic superpower status.

Since the end of World War II America has been able to maintain the major objectives of its grand strategy.  As a result, America currently enjoys amazing power and freedom to act in the international arena.  Since accomplishing these five objectives are the source of American power, freedom, and wealth, we can judge a president’s foreign policy by how well it accomplishes these objectives.  If a foreign policy is accomplishing these objectives, then it is “right.”  Any discussion of traditional morality or concepts of right or wrong are at best atmospheric diversions, and have little to do with the actual substance of the hyper-rational world of geo-politics.  Accordingly, I do not think it is important that America spends much time apologizing for past “wrongs” if those “wrongs” helped America maintain its geopolitical grand strategy.  Most of the “wrongs” that typical apologists for America obsess over from Hiroshima to Iraq actually enabled America to fulfill its grand strategy and are therefore hard to label as “wrong” from a strictly rational perspective.  Think of a chess board.  There is no morality.  There are only smart moves and mistakes.

The biggest problem with Obama’s PR campaign to re-brand America, aside from the fact that it does nothing to promote America’s grand strategy, is that it is based on the assumption that a recognition of fault and an apology are good enough.  However, an apology that isn’t followed by a change in action is pretty meaningless.  Obama cannot change the geographic and historical realities that inform American grand strategy, so the political options he has at his disposal to match policy/action with atmospherics are limited.  This doesn’t mean he hasn’t tried to do this, and the results have been overwhelmingly negative.

After a few weeks in office, Obama sent a weird hybrid of a Youtube-video-meets-Hallmark-card to the Iranians wishing them a Happy Nowruz.  Iranians responded by essentially saying, “talk is nice, but as far as we can tell, nothing has changed.”  Things have only deteriorated since then.  After all, leaders of nations hostile to America receive briefings every week telling them that Obama is weak, and that now is the time to press their advantage.  This is exactly what they are doing.  If the person you are trying to apologize to doesn’t care, then the act of an apology is simply a selfish attempt to relieve guilt.

It is difficult to argue that Obama’s series of foreign policy speeches have been relevant at all.  It would be practically impossible for someone read some of the speeches he has presented on the international stage and point to any instance where these speeches have advanced America’s geopolitical interests.

The next major arena where Obama’s foreign policy is a complete failure is his engagement Russia.  Early in his presidency, he sent a diplomatic envoy to Russia bearing a clever gift: A plastic reset button.  Where it is easy to argue that Obama’s speeches are irrelevant, this symbolic gesture of apology should leave anyone who cares about America’s standing in the world scratching their head.

What are we supposed to be apologizing to Russia for?  Did we meddle to much in the affairs of former Soviet satellites by encouraging democracy (a la the Ukraine and Georgia).

At what historical point in Russo-American relations are we wanting to return?  The assumption for the United States would be the period right after the collapse of the Soviet Union, but to suggest to Russians that we want to return to a time in our relationship when they were falling apart and not projecting their power is both laughable and insulting.  It is no wonder that the Russians have little respect for Obama.  Unfortunately this weakness comes at a time when America needs to be keeping the Russians in check.  Instead, we are selling out our allies in Eastern Europe to try to get Russia to lever sanctions against Iran.  So far, we have made concession after concession to the Russians, yet no progress whatsoever has been made towards advancing American interests regarding Iran.

The evident negligence in protecting American interests in both the Iranian and Russian situations at the very least compromises the fifth objective of America’s geopolitical grand strategy.  The consequences of Iran and Russia having the ability to reshape the geopolitical relations in their regions will not be ideal for America.  These will be problems that speeches won’t be able to solve, nor apologies for that matter.  To echo George Friedman, “The Arab states in the region rely on the United States to protect them from Iran, so U.S. acquiescence in the face of Iranian nuclear weapons would reshape U.S. relations in the region far more than a hundred Cairo speeches.”

If we add to this the war zone on the US/Mexican Border, the German consolidation of power in the European Union, Roiling Chinese trade relations to appease unions, bowing to foreign leaders, the little situation in Honduras, dithering over Afghanistan, blowing off several trips abroad to “focus on healthcare,” increasing the national deficit to a point that threatens our ability to fund our defense budget, and jinxing the US Hockey Team, I have a hard time finding anything positive about Obama’s foreign policy.  The last thing we need is a group of apologists, distracted by speeches, trying to sympathize with Obama’s foreign policy failures.