By Daniel Greenfield ——Bio and Archives--November 16, 2009
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"'Strategic reassurance' seems to chart a different course. Senior officials liken the policy to the British accommodation of a rising United States at the end of the 19th century, which entailed ceding the Western Hemisphere to American hegemony. Lingering behind this concept is an assumption of America's inevitable decline."That assumption is of course the engine behind the White House's policymaking that consists of selling out allies to enemies in the hopes of stability. This was the sum total of British foreign policy before and after WW2, a policy that gave us an Arab Socialist Middle East, a Southeast Asia in turmoil and Africa under the boots of murderous dictators. And Obama is now working to replicate that same policy on a far larger scale. Obama's international tour of bowing only highlights his weakness. His global popularity is as shallow as that of any celebrity, and only serves to signal America's weakness. Each of Obama's fumbling speeches has failed to achieve any tangible result except to express America's helplessness and willingness to concede on every front. Buzzwords like "New Relationship", "Multilateralism" and "Strategic Reassurance" are the ways in which Obama and his foreign policy minions phrase their "New Incompetence". America which once served as a global shield, is being transformed into a paper tiger. And the result is emboldening both old enemies, such as Russia and China, as well as smaller but more aggressive genocidal regimes, such as North Korea and Iran, who have begun pushing a new wave of confrontations with American allies. Obama has sold out every American ally to every American enemy, from Latin America to Eastern Europe to Asia to the Middle East. The message repeated over and over again is that not only can America no longer help free nations, but that the people in power in D.C. will actively sell out free nations to tyrannies in the name of multilateralism, and to buy ourselves some time before the implosion comes. The New York Times article on Obama's visit to China describes his visit as, "assuming the role of profligate spender coming to pay his respects to his banker" and sketched an image of American domestic policy having to gain approval from China.
In a July meeting, Chinese officials asked their American counterparts detailed questions about the health care legislation making its way through Congress. The president’s budget director, Peter R. Orszag, answered most of their questions. But the Chinese were not particularly interested in the public option or universal care for all Americans. “They wanted to know, in painstaking detail, how the health care plan would affect the deficit,” one participant in the conversation recalled. Chinese officials expect that they will help finance whatever Congress and the White House settle on, mostly through buying Treasury debt, and like any banker, they wanted evidence that the United States had a plan to pay them back. It is a long way from the days when President George W. Bush hectored China about currency manipulation, or when President Bill Clinton exhorted the Chinese to improve human rights.Obama's socialist spending spree does not simply come at the expense of America freedoms, it explicitly puts China in charge of American policy. The price for universal health care will not simply be paid by Americans, it will be paid for by American allies in Asia. Furthermore as the United States continues to borrow from China in order to fund Obama's deficit spending, much of the interest paid back will in turn go to fund China's military machine.
Unfortunately, that is not the reality in Asia. Contrary to optimistic predictions just a decade ago, China is behaving exactly as one would expect a great power to behave. As it has grown richer, China has used its wealth to build a stronger and more capable military. As its military power has grown, so have its ambitions... Yet the new head of the U.S. Pacific Command, Adm. Robert Willard, noted last month that "in the past decade or so, China has exceeded most of our intelligence estimates of their military capability. . . . They've grown at an unprecedented rate." Defense Secretary Robert Gates recently warned that China's military modernization program could undermine U.S. military power in the Pacific.Which means that the next naval war in the Pacific will see the US Navy coping with a Chinese Navy paid for by US tax dollars used to pay off Obama's debts and made of US scrap metal resold to China.
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Daniel Greenfield is a New York City writer and columnist. He is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and his articles appears at its Front Page Magazine site.