Barack Obama and Neosocialism
The last couple of weeks in the U.S. foreign policy have been truly very strange. It first started on September 17, when Barack Obama officially announced his decision to terminate the anti-missile defense shield in Poland and the Czech Republic. A decision so unexpected that it even bewildered many U.S. think tanks, which previously have vigorously supported Obama’s vision of international relations. Some called it a strategic blunder of the U.S., the others viewed it as a single most significant success of Russian foreign policy since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Obama’s September decision is perhaps more interesting if one considers his overall performance in the foreign affairs field. During the last several major international crises, the Obama Administration has almost always landed on the wrong side of the history.
In the Honduran crisis, the support this Administration gave to the fallen Manuel Zelaya has been unprecedented in the history of the U.S. foreign policy. Never before has the U.S. so openly supported a far left, Marxism-leaning, leader of a foreign country. That escalated to a curious situation, when Hillary Clinton announced that America would not recognize a democratically elected government of Honduras after its forthcoming November elections. Obviously, such a move would be a complete disregard of the will of the whole Honduran nation, including its Supreme Court’s rulings, and a smack in a face of all those people, who believe in a principle that the governments around the world should be democratically elected, regardless whether they are leftist of rightist, in Honduras or in America.
Ironically, this same Administration has remained completely silent and given no political support to the opposition fighters in the obviously rigged presidential elections in Iran, in June this year, when Mir Hussein Mousavi was ripped of his election victory. The Obama Administration signalized no problems in recognizing the Ahmadinejad’s theft of power in Iran but it flexed its muscles against the Honduran Supreme Court, which authorized the ousting of Manuel Zelaya. Does that make sense?
But that’s not the end of the story. The U.S. has been strenuously working on improving bilateral relations with far leftist Latin American dictators of Venezuela and Cuba. Hillary Clinton has called Hugo Chavez a “sociable” man and she totally disregarded the fact that Hugo Chavez is the biggest single facilitator of drug trafficking in the United States. Chavez may be a true enemy of the United States, but ideologically he is on the same side of a political spectrum as the Washington’s Democrats, so he is being given political support of previously unprecedented proportions. Moreover, he publically called George Bush “a devil” so in the eyes of many Obamanites he is a genuine “hero”.
In the meantime, the Obama Administration has been giving a cold shoulder to almost all the nations, which in the past made meaningful deals with the Bush Administration, including the Great Britain, Israel and now the New Europe.
Considering the above, Obama’s decision to terminate the antimissile shield in Poland is more indicative of this Administration’s political ideology, rather than strategic outlook. Obama has injected in his foreign policies a philosophy of neosocialism, which basically aims at wiping out any strategic decisions previously made by conservative policy makers, a philosophy that aims at supporting and improving relations with leftist governments around the globe and schooling all foreign countries, which in the past made deals with the Republicans and the Bush Administration.
It is best visible in the context of the antimissile shield because never before in the history of the U.S. foreign policy, has this country reversed its course by 180 degrees in such a short period of time, on such a major issue. The New Europe, and Poland especially, is the first victim of Obama Administration’s neosocialism. But a bigger number of different victims is almost certain to come … and rather sooner than later.
