rEALISM IS BAD ENOUGH...:

White House disputes Mubarak's peace plan claim (Jon Ward, August 19, 2009, Washington Times)

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak left an Oval Office meeting with President Obama on Tuesday claiming that the U.S. administration has committed to presenting a comprehensive blueprint for Middle East peace talks next month - a characterization the White House disputed.

Mr. Mubarak's first trip to the United States in six years focused on the effort to restart talks between the Israelis and Palestinians. But the visit by Mr. Mubarak, 81, also raised questions from critics about whether the White House has abandoned attempts begun by the George W. Bush administration to challenge the aging leader on human rights and democratic governance inside his country.

Obama's Latest Foreign Slip (Leslie H. Gelb, 8/18/09, Daily Beast)

Any time Washington makes a truly dumb foreign policy move, it generally looks plausible on the surface. So when the Pentagon announced that Georgia would dispatch 750 troops to Afghanistan to fight terrorists at America’s side, it sounded just fine. Besides, these Georgians would actually be empowered to fight, unlike most of our mandate-restricted NATO allies. It all seemed like such a no-brainer that only The New York Times and a few others even bothered to report the good news.

But like too many foreign policy no-brainers, this one was fraught with potential perils and bad omens. Moscow will surely stew over American interference in its nasty relations with its Georgian neighbor. And this will surely retard Obama administration efforts to “reset” ties with Russia to allow for cooperation on key issues like Iran. And it might even cause Georgians to miscalculate American military support against Russia and foolishly provoke Moscow. And because it puts all these things at risk for token help in Afghanistan, it sets off alarm bells about the Obama team’s understanding of priorities and strategy. [...]

It’s hard to predict how irksome this issue will become in Russian-American relations. It might derail serious conversation for a long stretch. At a minimum, it will delay critical cooperation on Iran. But what’s truly troubling about this story is what it reveals, once again, about President Obama’s misunderstanding of strategy and priorities, or at the very least, his lack of appreciation for exactly what it takes to accomplish big priorities. To reset relations with Russia requires a host of key decisions, and it’s not clear that all or most of them have been made.

...without being so inept when you're sucking up to our enemies.

Posted by Orrin Judd at August 19, 2009 6:15 AM