WAPO OPED … President Barack Obama’s Foreign Policy is Based on Fantasy … Hmm, Isn’t Everything?

My name is Barack Obama, “Welcome to Fantasy Island” …

A scorching OPED from the not so conservative Washington Post … President Obama’s foreign policy is based on Fantasy. What, you mean its a bad thing to have a foreign and domestic policy based on Unicorns and Pixie dust? Hey Barack, how are those rose-colored glasses fitting these days?

FOR FIVE YEARS, President Obama has led a foreign policy based more on how he thinks the world should operate than on reality. It was a world in which “the tide of war is receding” and the United States could, without much risk, radically reduce the size of its armed forces. Other leaders, in this vision, would behave rationally and in the interest of their people and the world. Invasions, brute force, great-power games and shifting alliances — these were things of the past. Secretary of State John F. Kerry displayed this mindset on ABC’s “This Week” Sunday when he said, of Russia’s invasion of neighboring Ukraine, “It’s a 19th century act in the 21st century.”

That’s a nice thought, and we all know what he means. A country’s standing is no longer measured in throw-weight or battalions. The world is too interconnected to break into blocs. A small country that plugs into cyberspace can deliver more prosperity to its people (think Singapore or Estonia) than a giant with natural resources and standing armies.

Unfortunately, Russian President Vladimir Putin has not received the memo on 21st-century behavior. Neither has China’s president, Xi Jinping, who is engaging in gunboat diplomacy against Japan and the weaker nations of Southeast Asia. Syrian president Bashar al-Assad is waging a very 20th-century war against his own people, sending helicopters to drop exploding barrels full of screws, nails and other shrapnel onto apartment buildings where families cower in basements. These men will not be deterred by the disapproval of their peers, the weight of world opinion or even disinvestment by Silicon Valley companies. They are concerned primarily with maintaining their holds on power.

The Heritage Foundation reminds us that this is exactly what Heritage’s James Carafano and Kim Holmes warned about early in the Obama presidency.

“The tenets of the Obama Doctrine… do not reflect history or the threats we face,” said Carafano, the E. W. Richardson Fellow, and Holmes, author of Liberty’s Best Hope: American Leadership for the 21st Century. “They will serve to undermine America’s strengths and make it more difficult for friends and allies to figure out where we stand or how we might act in critical times.”

Carafano and Holmes predicted in 2010: “The Obama Doctrine, by seeking to remake America to please others, will fail because, in the end, no one will like the instability, vulnerability, and economic stagnation that follow from a weaker America.”

As the Jawa Report opines, “When you’ve lost the Washington Post, you’ve pretty much lost all foreign policy credibility.”