Dangerous Doctrine: How Obama's Grand Strategy Weakened America

About this book

Much like Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan President Barack Obama came to office as a politician who emphasized conviction rather than consensus. During his 2008 presidential campaign he pledged to transform the role of the United States abroad. His ambitious foreign policy goals included a global climate treaty the peaceful withdrawal of American military forces from Iraq and Afghanistan and a new relationship with Iran. Throughout Obamas tenure pundits and scholars have offered competing interpretations of his "grand strategy " while others have maintained that his policies were incoherent or at best ad hoc. In Dangerous Doctrine political scientist Robert G. Kaufman argues that the forty-fourth president has indeed articulated a clear consistent national security policy and has pursued it with remarkable fidelity. Yet Kaufman contends that President Obama has imprudently abandoned the muscular internationalism that has marked US foreign policy since the end of World War II. Drawing on international relations theory and American diplomatic history Kaufman presents a robust critique of the Obama doctrine as he situates the presidents use of power within the traditions of American strategic practice. Focusing on the pivotal regions of Europe the Middle East and Asia this provocative study demonstrates how current executive branch leadership threatens Americas role as a superpower weakening its ability to spread democracy and counter threats to geopolitical order in increasingly unstable times. Kaufman proposes a return to the grand strategy of moral democratic realism as practiced by presidents such as Harry S. Truman Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush with the hope of reestablishing the United States as the worlds dominant power.