(Photo Credit: Peter Soutza/White House Photostream)
The American Prospect Senior Correspondent and The Washington Independent Senior Reporter Spencer Ackerman has a thoughtful piece on the Obama administration’s foreign policy in the current issue of The American Prospect.
Rather than providing a typical rundown of the state of play on key global issues, Ackerman organizes his article around two key themes – the Obama administration’s goal of promoting dignity around the world and its effort to reduce the politics of fear here at home.
This style is refreshing and the conclusions are succinct: thumbs up on promoting dignity, thumbs down on lessening the politics of fear. Hopefully that will come later.
In his words:
On dignity promotion, the administration has racked up real successes and set the stage for several more. Obama has proved that the world is prepared for positive-sum American leadership — whether it’s by restructuring U.S. global economic partnerships through the G-20 instead of the more restricted G-8 set of powerful nations; whether it’s resetting relationships with great and rising powers like Russia and China over contentious issues like Iran and climate change; whether it’s explaining to the Muslim world that America’s commitment to its well-being reaches far beyond securing its cooperation in the fight against terrorism. Dignity promotion, a new twist on the very old idea of liberal internationalism, is still taking shape. But the early evidence is that it’s working — for America and for the world.
Where Obama hasn’t made nearly as much progress, to the disappointment of his supporters, is on confronting the politics of fear. The first days — literally — of the administration were defined by sweeping pledges to end torture, close the detention facility at Guant
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