Congressional Republicans were looking for the president to articulate one chief foreign policy aim in his last State of the Union address; namely, a comprehensive strategy to defeat the Islamic State. They were disappointed, but not surprised.
While the president rightly spent more time on defeating ISIS and other terrorism threats than on any other foreign policy priority, he again made clear what he’s stated previously, including in his recent December 2015 speech from the Oval Office: his current approach is sound and it’s not going to change.
President Obama used his last State of the Union as an opportunity to help shape, clarify, and solidify what he hopes will be his foreign policy legacy of caution, fewer military solutions, and operating only in global coalitions in a limited fashion and for a short duration.
By listing America’s approach to the civil war and refugee crisis in Syria as a model for future leadership and internationalism, President Obama ensures a partisan legacy in foreign policy that even members of his own party will disavow as a true or lasting success.
The president has also shown that he’s proud of his military legacy, including America’s drawdown—not merely the drawdown from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also the defense budget drawdown that has shrunk the size of our fighting forces and left our military technological superiority in tatters. It is doubtful the majority of his own party will line up to tout this as any sort of success, given a more chaotic and dangerous world and a bipartisan consensus in Washington that actually agrees the military should be rebuilt.
By equating our military power with the size of our defense budget, the president showed tonight that he is just as prone to using simplistic and inaccurate talking points as the GOP that he repeatedly rebuked in the State of the Union for doing the same. If sheer volume (e.g., economy, purchasing power, population, etc.) equals power, then China is by default the most powerful nation earth as a result of its massive population. Or: Russia is the most powerful nation because it has more nuclear weapons than any other nation on earth.
These points are obviously much more complicated and nuanced, but only one party makes TV-friendly sound bite arguments, according to the president. This failure invalidates Obama’s own plea at the end of his final State of the Union for partisan comity and unity.
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