Is the U.S. losing its grip on foreign policy as China rises?

April 25, 2015 

http://atimes.com/2015/04/is-the-u-s-losing-its-grip-on-foreign-policy-as-china-rises/

By Francesco Sisci
In recent months, the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama scored two modest international successes involving Cuba and Iran.
The first was the decision to establish diplomatic ties with Cuba after a freeze that lasted over half a century. The second was the decision to come to an agreement with Iran on its nuclear program.
In either case, the U.S. didn’t come up with ideal solutions. But it has grabbed some positive, short-term benefits that don’t exacerbate existing foreign policy worries. Washington fell short of its desired regime change in these two countries. Cuba has lasted with and without Soviet support, and the U.S. has failed to topple Castro’s government. The Iran nuke deal, while controversial, doesn’t carry many negative side effects. Nor were there feasible alternatives.
At the same time, these two initiatives are fell short of what might be considered American successes. However, they now cast the U.S. in a better light following the unfortunate events and policy mishaps going back many years. The key problems were the failures of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq during the George W. Bush administration The succeeding Obama administration didn’t fare much better as it tried to change some Muslim countries through semi-peaceful revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Syria. With the exception of Tunisia, the rest of Obama’s efforts were utter failures: Libya is barely a country, Egypt has reverted to some sort of strong-man politics, and Syria has basically dissolved into Iraq. All this is the culmination of some 14 years of U.S. foreign-policy failure.http://atimes.com/2015/04/is-the-u-s-losing-its-grip-on-foreign-policy-as-china-rises/