OPINION:
How quickly Washington forgets that Ronald Reagan’s forthright stand against Soviet totalitarianism and the tyranny of Communist China was the object of derision at the time. The elites sniffed and scoffed at the cowboy president. He was so unsophisticated. The late Clark Clifford, expensive lawyer, fixer and tutor of the elites, called him “an amiable dunce.”
Now senior officials of the Obama administration, exposed as Keystone Kops in pursuit of a foreign policy, are eager to say nice things about the Gipper and yearn to equate President Obama’s flailing about abroad with the kind of robust successes of the Gipper. Mr. Reagan’s courage won the hearts of the American people, and their ballots, for his success in reversing earlier policies and contributed to the final implosion of the Soviet Union. Communism died on the Reagan watch, and it was not an unassisted death.
In recent remarks at the Reagan Defense Forum, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter said the Reagan era “saw a generational revitalization of American defense strength.” Now the portents grow ominous again. “Russia appears intent to play spoiler by flouting these principles and the international community,” he says. “Meanwhile, China is a rising power, and growing more ambitious in its objectives and capabilities.”
The Obama administration backs away from duty in the face of what Mr. Carter correctly sees as threats. He uses the usual artifice of saying he cannot discuss measures which the Obama administration is taking to meet the challenge, and that may be because there aren’t any. He sees the dangers clearly enough. “Most disturbing, Moscow’s nuclear saber-rattling raises questions about Russia’s leaders’ commitment to strategic stability, their respect for norms against the use of nuclear weapons, and whether they respect the profound caution nuclear-age leaders showed with regard to the brandishing of nuclear weapons.”
Mr. Obama has challenged both Russia and China with tough talk and implied threats, and then makes a humiliating retreat. The American military is by far the strongest in the world, with resources larger than the resources of all the major powers combined, and Mr. Obama seeks to change that by reducing the commitment.
The American public is weary. Two long and inconclusive wars in the Middle East have sapped the will to lead a worldwide alliance for peace and stability. But true leadership means not paying court to momentary popular trends, but to undertake and sell the long-term strategies and tactics necessary to maintain such leadership. America is No. 1 and must remain No. 1.
Mr. Obama campaigned on the belief that the United States is overcommitted abroad, that America had made many mistakes in the past, and he would change that. What he didn’t say out loud was that retreat and withdrawal were the most important elements of his strategy. He has kept true to that course. But whether in Cuba, in Ukraine and the Baltic States, or in the East and South China Sea, it has become abundantly clear that pulling back of American power has not produced a lessening of pressure from adversaries and enemies who continue to plot against the West.
In the final months of his presidency, Mr. Obama has been forced to change these policies, reluctantly and incrementally. In the Middle East, the administration reluctantly accelerates a modest and ineffective effort to destroy the Islamic State and its dream to create a worldwide Islamic caliphate. Nothing he does resembles a forthright Reaganesque thrust. There’s only a plea for “a more nuanced understanding” of a complicated world. Nuances never frightened the Gipper, and they terrify this administration.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.