Neoliberalism and Foreign Policy in the Obama Adminisration

Undoubtedly the Obama Administration inherited a complete mess from the prior administration covering both the economy and foreign policy. And true to form, he in many respects has continued the aforesaid policies of the former president from the bail out of the Auto industry, TARP, extending the Bush tax cuts and even Bush’s neoconservative foreign policy undertakings. In the classic sense, a large assemblage would propose that Obama’s foreign policy strategy is diametrically opposite to the neoconservative hawks of the prior administration. Maybe, but in the verity of evidence suggest that the present administration has only morphed neoconservative dogma into neoliberal dogma.

This case can be made singularly by presenting the current Obama administration policies regarding Iran, Israel, Libya, and even tertiary nations like Nigeria, Somalia and the Congo, IT IS NOT FAR FETCHED TO draw the aforementioned parallel within a historical context. As a nation the foreign policy approach of the Obama administration to be fair, remains in the tradition of the fallacy of the first crusades which resulted in the capture of Jerusalem from the Seljuk Turks in 1099. This remains to be the premise of what we see between the west (US and Europe) and the East (Arabs, Persians and Asians).

What do I mean you may ask? Well today as then, the US is a representation of the crusader state – meaning that our goals through foreign policy are to promote a universal culture of values “that must be spread throughout the world in the righteous cause of peace.” This is the basic tenant of Wilsonian idealism the way I have understood political history and put in action by both Obama and Bush. Neoconservative appears to be conservative yet support and favor big government, interventionism, and hostility to religion in politics and government.

Neoconservatives played a small role in the Ronald Reagan Administration, but came out the closet during the George W. Bush Administration after 2001. In comparison, the same can be said of Obama whose primary foreign policy goal demonstrates zeal to expand world peace and preserve American exceptionalism at any cost.

As I recall, Obama campaigned against President Bush’s policies, yet he continues most of these policies today. Like Bush, he has increased funding for U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) and has quadrupled overseas deployments. In Somalia for example, the Obama administration “has put in place policies to limit food aid to the region, using food as a weapon of war and killing hundreds of civilians weekly via its use of US drone strikes. Recently he has sent US troops to oil rich Uganda (Uganda has yet to produce a single barrel of oil) to intervene militarily to help Uganda fight the rebels of the LRA who are currently in the Central African Republic. Recently, more information has surfaced asserting that the U.S. Army has been making “preparations for possible direct military intervention in Nigeria.”

All I am saying is that the manner in which many pundits attacked neoconservative foreign policy was appropriate and the same amount of scrutiny needs to be directed at this new neoliberal foreign policy of Obama. The only difference between the two is not idealism but rather methodological. Bush proffered a less technological approach than Obama currently employs.

Although the present administration is providing the appearance of getting of Iraq and Afghanistan, Obama continues to stay the of Bush neoconservative policy in the Middle East pushing out longtime rulers, as was the case in Libya and as he is attempting to do in Syria. Albeit his first act as President was signing an executive order to close the facility holding terrorist detainees at Guantanamo Bay within a year, he still maintains the policy of the former administration as well as has continued a version of the Bush practice of renditions. I wonder how essential it was to hold and water boarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a secret prison in Eastern Europe to help get info to identify Osama bin Laden’s couriers?

Also, Obama in concert with Eric Holder continue the practice of indefinite detentions and continue to trample the civil liberties of US citizens just as Bush did with the Patriot Act and the FBI’s ability to obtain certain phone records without warrants. The Obama’s Justice Department has given legal authority for the continuation of these policies.

Now I did not get a chance to speak on the example of Ira and Israel, but I will and soon, just not here. The only point I wanted to try and make that the neoconservative philosophy many conservatives applaud today has not been removed from the current Whitehouse. In fact it has changed and mutated into a more vile policy perspective, that has taken us even further back to the times of the crusades, one which says to the world it is our way or the high way. My only concern is that other nations don’t forget the pangs of neocolonial practices they see make nations like the US richer, while they barely have food to eat and water to drink.