Great Expectations of 'Hope 'n Change' in our foreign policy

Victor Davis Hanson discusses those expectations currently held by Dems/Lefties/"Progressives" at home and abroad.

The expectations:

"There is great hope that President-elect Obama will change the course of U.S. foreign policy, create far greater goodwill toward America, and thereby ease world tensions. Such optimism is not based on former Sen. Obama’s foreign-policy experience. In essence, he has none.

Nor does improvement hinge on Obama’s past career in Chicago politics or his U.S. Senate tenure — the former was problematic at best, the latter cursory.

Instead, our great expectations derive from four rosy, but heretofore unquestioned assumptions:


1) Most of the current Bush policies are not merely wrong, but inflammatory: ipsis factis being against them is wise and will bring dividends overseas;

2) Obama’s singular eloquence, youth, charisma, and 'presence' will win over the world in the manner it swept the American electorate, providing a welcome change from the “smoke ’em out” Texas global turn-off of the past;

3) Obama’s exotic name, his multiracial background, the Muslim faith of his father, and his dalliance with hard-left politics as a student and community-organizer will all coalesce to sort of “flip” the image (if not the reality) of the U.S., as the world’s superpower transmogrifies from an oppressive to a sympathetic international player;

4) The reemergence of Clintonites such as Hillary, Emanuel, Panetta, Podesta, Susan Rice, and others will bring back successful advocates of 'soft power,' 'multilateralism,' and 'engagement,' who reflect Obama’s worldview, but bring a gritty realism to the implementation of an often heretofore utopian rhetoric."

Tne realities:

"What should we then expect?

As some point, perhaps in his first few months in office, President Obama, as Joe Biden predicted, will be tested by the rogue oil-producing states. Most — like Iran, Russia, and Venezuela — will soon be facing bankruptcy if oil prices stay flat, as their only source of foreign exchange largely vanishes.

Expect all in multifarious ways to test America, in part to humiliate the United States, but more likely simply to cause enough tension to create panic among speculators and restore their windfall profits. Anyone can dream up scenarios — a move on Georgia, a cutoff of natural gas entirely to Europe, a brazen announcement of an Iranian bomb with a dare to Israel to stop it, a suicide attack on a tanker or warship in the Straits of Hormuz, flagrant violation of the Monroe Doctrine by home porting Russian vessels in Venezuela, simultaneous rocket barrages from Lebanon, Gaza, and Syria, etc. For such countries, any disruption is good in the sense that it creates panic, and panic in turn spikes oil prices.

Expect Pakistani-based terrorists to renew terrorist assaults on India, on the premise that Pakistan enjoys both nuclear exemption and deniability of culpability. In the multilateral world to come, European NATO countries may praise Obama to the skies as they quietly begin to leave Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda remnants in Iraq may think even a tenth of its former suicide attacks could now pay real dividends, on the assumption that once U.S. troops leave Iraq, under no circumstances will they ever come back.

All Americans in bipartisan fashion should hope that Obama will get though successfully the perilous first six months at a time when the U.S. economy is shaky, the Commander-in-chief unproven, and our enemies eager to test our president’s mettle. "

That's based on the assumption that Obama is the "empirical pragmatist" that many Usual Suspects are currently labeling him, in an attempt to deflect criticism from their own ranks about the disappointment Obama has already given The Faithful before he actually takes office.

The realities will most likely be starkly different from the successful Bush policies, unless most of the major decisions in this area will be made by real "empirical pragmatists" in positions of power and influence.

I think it's a safe bet that most Libthinkers will NOT be amused if that scenario actually does come to pass.