Sorry, Washington: "Not Everything in the World Is about America"

Sorry, Washington: "Not Everything in the World Is about America"

08/11/14

Doug Bandow

The Presidency, Grand Strategy, Foreign Policy, United States

"President Barack Obama’s foreign policy doesn’t impress. But not for lack of 'will' or 'credibility.'”

The foreign-policy meme is firmly fixed that President Barack Obama is weak and virtually every ill around the globe is a result thereof. The Chinese, Egyptians, Iranians, Russians, Syrians and assorted terrorists are all running wild and committing violent misdeeds because the administration exhibited a lack of resolve and failed to enforce U.S. dictates. The world would be quiescent if only Sen. John McCain had won in 2008 and since then had been sending American bombers hither and yon to suppress the slightest resistance to America’s will.

It’s hard for the denizens of Washington to accept, but not everything in the world is about America. People elsewhere around the globe have interests, aspirations, ambitions, and dreams. And like the obstreperous British colonists in North America more than two centuries ago, other peoples are willing to take big risks, undertake enormous sacrifices, and defy major powers in order to achieve their ends. What the U.S. president says often isn’t of much interest to foreigners, other than to antagonize and inflame.

Government and guerrilla leaders may worry more about what Washington thinks, but they judge the likelihood that American leaders will follow through on the latter’s promises and threats. And that is based far more on a perception of U.S. interests and relative costs and benefits than abstract “credibility” derived from past behavior in dissimilar circumstances.

Read full articlehttp://nationalinterest.org/feature/sorry-washington-not-everything-the-world-about-america-11047