SPIEGEL: You famously coined the term "Reagan Doctrine" to describe Ronald Reagan's foreign policy. What is the "Obama Doctrine?"
Krauthammer: I would say his vision of the world appears to me to be so naïve that I am not even sure he's able to develop a doctrine. He has a view of the world as regulated by self-enforcing international norms, where the peace is kept by some kind of vague international consensus, something called the international community, which to me is a fiction, acting through obviously inadequate and worthless international agencies. I wouldn't elevate that kind of thinking to a doctrine because I have too much respect for the word doctrine.
3 comments:
What was the "Reagan Doctrine"? Was it to cut and run in Lebanon and teach the bad guys a valuable lesson? Blow up the Americans and they will quit?
Or was it to run up massive deficits in times of growth? "Deficits are big enough to take care of themselves!" Ho ho! I guess the joke is on us.
If you say it was to fight the Soviet Union through proxies, that too would be correct. The best defense is a good offense.
I wonder if Krauthammer will acknowledge that Dutch left office with a mixed legacy. I doubt it...
From Wikipedia for your education Rich: The Reagan Doctrine was a strategy orchestrated and implemented by the United States under the Reagan Administration to oppose the global influence of the Soviet Union during the final years of the Cold War. While the doctrine lasted less than a decade, it was the centerpiece of United States foreign policy from the early 1980s until the end of the Cold War in 1991.
Under the Reagan Doctrine, the U.S. provided overt and covert aid to right-wing guerrillas and resistance movements in an effort to "rollback" Soviet-backed left-wing governments in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The doctrine was designed to serve the dual purposes of diminishing Soviet influence in these regions, while also potentially opening the door for capitalism (and sometimes liberal democracy) in nations that were largely being governed by Soviet-supported socialist governments.
So in answer to your post No to your first paragraph, No to your second paragraph and somewhat yes to your third paragraph.
I am sure that Krauthammer would acknowledge that it was a mistake to pull out of Lebanon like that.
Lets talk about deficits though. Here you criticize Reagan for running them up but we have yet to see you start to worry about the gargantuan ones that the Democratic party is running up right now. you are the biggest hypocrite I have ever come across.
Mark -
Thank you for your Wiki quote. Yes - I am aware of the conventional meaning of the Reagan Doctrine. I actually supported it (as my third paragraph suggests).
I was merely pointing to the mixed record of the revered Republican icon.
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