It’s Starting to Look As If The Obama Administration Has Learned Nothing from Its First Year

Barry Rubin

The Rubin Report

14 January '10

In the United States, about half the population and most of the policy elite thinks that President Barack Obama’s administration is a great success internationally. The other half doesn’t. A key reason for the first group’s attitude is its obsession with the highly visible popularity issue, the idea that America is more liked in the world. The problem is that, at the same time, it is less respected and that is the factor that counts.

As we move into 2010, with the administration’s first, “learning,” year behind it, a turn toward learning the lessons of that experience is not yet visible. This is especially so on the two most high-profile Middle East issue.

Originally, the administration suggested that it would raise sanctions against Iran in September 2009 if engagement yielded no fruit. Then that was pushed back to the end of 2009. Now we have a new estimate: July 2010. Maybe. And we also have the defining of those sanctions long in advance as ineffective, narrowly—and symbolically—focused on a ruling elite which will never feel any pain as a result.

This, then, is the way the Obama Administration views threats, which will make its adversaries see them as hollow. In a Brussels speech, U.S. ambassador to the European Union William Kennard explained:

"You'll hear over the next six months a lot more about our efforts on sanctions."

Hear about them? Haven’t we been hearing about them for a year? And at the end of six months will we actually see them?

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