“Obama and Romney Bristle From Start Over Foreign Policy,” The New York Times reported on the debate in Boca Raton on October 22. But as Chronicles' Foreign Affairs Editor notes, we were treated to a vacuous, choreographed, and scripted conversation instead.
The circumstances surrounding the arrest of the wartime commander of the Bosnian Serb Army, General Ratko Mladić, seem puzzling. In the closing months of his life. he will now have to endure a show trial at The Hague, where his guilt for genocide, crimes against humanity etc. is treated as a long-established fact.
The problem with President Barack Obama’s foreign policy is that he combines the broad ideological assumptions of liberal interventionists with a leadership style that allows people more doctrinaire than he to dominate the internal debate and decision-making process. Libya is the product of his disinclination to reject interventionism in principle, and his simultaneous inability to oppose the liberal hawks in practice.
