Posted 9:26 AM by steve

Robert Kagan says Obama is a foreign policy idealist of the Woodrow Wilson variety, that "... if other nations have refused to cooperate with us, it is because they perceive the United States as aggressive or evil".

And this in a nutshell illustrates how utterly naive and, yes, stupid, Obama is think and act this way.

Countries either cooperate or don't cooperate with us on any given issue because they think it is in their national interests to do so.... and whether an American President is perceived as arrogant and hostile (Bush) or warm and fuzzy and all apologetic (Obama) is so far down the list of items a country considers that it might as well not even be on the list.

Is a country going to abandon a program that will improve its security because an Obama asks them nicely to do so? Will a country fail to take actions that will improve its economy because Bush doesn't go about asking them in a nice enough way? The answer to both is so obviously no that any one who argues to the contrary has by definition disqualified themselves from being taken seriously in any setting outside of a third grade civics class.

Iran is not pursuing nuclear weapons because Bush didn't ask them nicely to stop... and they won't stop because Obama says please. If China hasn't been sufficiently helpful with North Korea, it hasn't been because of Bush, it has been because China doesn't see an upside in doing so. France and Germany didn't refuse to send troops to Iraq because they thought Bush wasn't deferential enough, they wouldn't have sent troops if Obama had gotten down on his knees and begged them to. China and India aren't refusing to join climate control efforts because Bush was mean, they're doing so because they think doing so would run counter to their economic interests and they're not going to change their minds because Obama apologizes for American 'arrogance'.

The real 'arrogance' lies with Obama thinking that the rest of the world looks first to how we act before deciding for themselves what they should do. If Obama were truly respectful of other countries, he would realize that we are less important to them than Obama thinks we are, that the leaders of France and England and Germany and China don't wake up every morning first thinking about what the United States is up to.