This long-time Washington reporter and analyst has worked for some of the biggest names in news, and appeared on countless news programs. Known for a quiet style and a 20-degree port side list, here’s what he had to say about Professor Ditherton Wiggleroom’s foreign policy:
Obama’s woes are complicated by a sense — denied by the White House — of American disengagement.
“The perception of American withdrawal is palpable,” says Stephen Hadley, the national security adviser to George W. Bush.“The Europeans and the Gulf states think that we’re leaving,” says Bill Cohen, who served as defense secretary under President Bill Clinton. “The Asian countries think we’re not coming.”
Moreover, the president is caught in a contradictory, and unfair, squeeze. On issues such as Syria and Russia, he’s depicted as insufficiently aggressive or tough. At the same time, the American public, turned off by the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, wants no part of more aggressive foreign entanglements. Even some Republicans are taking cues from Senator Rand Paul’s quasi-isolationists stance.
Some of the specifics seem bleak and intractable. The Syrian civil war is deteriorating, affecting the entire region, and the dictator, Assad, is getting stronger, even as the administration says he must leave power. Despite the valiant efforts of Secretary of State John Kerry, the Israeli-Palestinian peace process is barely on life support.
Give up?
That’s Bloomberg’s own Al Hunt!
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