QOTD

Columnist Charles Krauthammer on the Obama Administration's foreign policy, especially Secretary Clinton's urging the U.K. to negotiate with Argentina over the Falkland Islands, in Friday's Washington Post:

[G]iven how the administration has treated other allies, perhaps we shouldn't be so surprised.

-- Obama visits China and soon Indonesia, skipping India, our natural and rising ally in the region -- common language, common democracy, common jihadist enemy. Indeed, in his enthusiasm for China, Obama suggests a Chinese interest in peace and stability in South Asia, a gratuitous denigration of Indian power and legitimacy in favor of a regional rival with hegemonic ambitions.

-- Poland and the Czech Republic have their legs cut out from under them when Obama unilaterally revokes a missile defense agreement, acquiescing to pressure from Russia with its dreams of regional hegemony over Eastern Europe.

-- The Hondurans still can't figure out why the United States supported a Hugo Chávez ally seeking illegal extension of his presidency against the pillars of civil society -- Honduras's Congress, Supreme Court, church and army -- that had deposed him consistent with Article 239 of their constitution.

But the Brits, our most venerable, most reliable ally, are the most disoriented. "We British not only speak the same language. We tend to think in the same way. We are more likely than anyone else to provide tea, sympathy and troops," writes Bruce Anderson in London's Independent, summarizing with admirable concision the fundamental basis of the U.S.-British special relationship.

Well, said David Manning, a former British ambassador to the United States, to a House of Commons committee reporting on that very relationship: "[Obama] is an American who grew up in Hawaii, whose foreign experience was of Indonesia and who had a Kenyan father. The sentimental reflexes, if you like, are not there."

I'm not personally inclined to neuropsychiatric diagnoses, but Manning's guess is as good as anyone's. How can you explain a policy toward Britain that makes no strategic or moral sense? And even if you can, how do you explain the gratuitous slaps to the Czechs, Poles, Indians and others? Perhaps when an Obama Doctrine is finally worked out, we shall learn whether it was pique, principle or mere carelessness.

Siding with Argentina in this dispute is nuts--Falkland Islanders are overwhelmingly (95 percent) British subjects, and repeatedly have rejected Argentine citizenship/sovereignty: they have "nothing in common with Argentina -- culturally, linguistically, historically or politically." And current Argentine President Ms Fernández de Kirchner "hasn't shrunk from playing to anti-American sentiment around the region." But that doesn't stop Obama from "slapping allies" and apologizing to anti-American governments.

This is a terrible policy, especially from the candidate who critiqued Bush for ruining foreign relations.