A corrective: Will American foreign policy change under Obama?

David E. Sanger, the chief Washington correspondent for The New York Times, has a new book out and in it, he suggests that we all should take a pill if we think CHANGE is coming so far as America's stance towards the world …

In this sense, even the title of David Sanger’s quick-paced chronicle, The Inheritance, offers a corrective: Obama will not craft anew; he will inherit. “The world he is inheriting from Bush will constrain his choices more than he has acknowledged, and certainly more than the throngs of supporters believed as they waved their signs proclaiming CHANGE,” Sanger writes, with justifiable asperity.

Will American normalcy be restored? Absolutely not. It is “illusion” to imagine that “with George W. Bush retired in Texas, America will now sheath the Big Stick.” Will there be a respite abroad? Probably not. Only a naïf “thinks the Iranians will give up their nuclear program without the lingering concern that bombers may appear over the skies” of their reactors. Can nothing budge the habits of American statecraft? Not really, given that “the crises may be too plentiful and the accompanying expectations may be too high” for Obama to steer an honestly new course. His more excitable lieutenants, with a conviction that things are the other way around, are just as likely to perpetuate Washington’s strategic bankruptcy.

Really? I'm looking forward to reading Sanger's book and so I don't want to take issue with him based on this review (even if the review is by Lawrence F. Kaplan). But if Sanger is suggesting Obama will have trouble fighting Bush's inertia when it comes to foreign policy, then how was it that Bush (II) was able to take American foreign policy in such a new direction after Clinton? Was 9/11 such an enabler for Bush? Is Obama constricted on foreign policy without a similar enabling event? Is his enabling event the fact that his ascension to the White House such a historically significant event because of his skin colour? Is Obama's enabling event the global hope/interest/pressure that accompanied his election?

Technorati Tags: United States – Foreign Policy