Barbara Kay: Obama’s Carter-esque foreign policy deployed to Egypt
[Barbara Kay is a columnist with the National Post.]
In November, 1979, Richard V. Allen, Ronald Reagan’s foreign policy advisor, commended a just-published magazine article to his boss’s attention. “What you gave me to read was extraordinary!” Reagan told Allen. “Who is this guy Jeane Kirkpatrick?”
The “guy,” a political science professor at Georgetown University and a Democrat of the muscularly anti-Communist school, went on to become president Reagan’s ambassador to the UN.
Jeane Kirkpatrick’s influential Commentary magazine article, “Dictatorships and Double Standards,” assesses Jimmy Carter’s hypocrisy in foreign affairs, a hypocrisy that led to a betrayal of America’s real interests. She viewed Carter as the quintessence of a romantically cosmopolitan mentality that wrongly perceives all change as progress toward a happy ending. Re-reading the article last week, I found that if I substituted the word “Islamism” for “Communism” and “Obama” for “Carter,” much of Kirkpatrick’s insightful essay is helpful to understanding the current situation in Egypt.
Kirkpatrick contrasted (a) Carter’s moralistic dudgeon toward regimes that were autocratic and repressive but generally Western-friendly, with (b) his cultivated insouciance toward communist regimes that were outright totalitarian. Carter made overtures of “normalization” to Vietnam, Cuba and the Chinese People’s Republic, all hostile to America; but cooled relations with South Korea, South Africa and the Phillipines, countries friendly to America.
Similarly, before being soundly rebuffed, Obama made “reaching out” to anti-Western, Islamist Iran a key plank in his platform. He routinely offers encouraging words to Islamist or Islamizing countries, like jihad-peddling Saudi Arabia and Israel-baiting Turkey, while shaming pro-America, democratic Israel...
Read entire article at National Post
In November, 1979, Richard V. Allen, Ronald Reagan’s foreign policy advisor, commended a just-published magazine article to his boss’s attention. “What you gave me to read was extraordinary!” Reagan told Allen. “Who is this guy Jeane Kirkpatrick?”
The “guy,” a political science professor at Georgetown University and a Democrat of the muscularly anti-Communist school, went on to become president Reagan’s ambassador to the UN.
Jeane Kirkpatrick’s influential Commentary magazine article, “Dictatorships and Double Standards,” assesses Jimmy Carter’s hypocrisy in foreign affairs, a hypocrisy that led to a betrayal of America’s real interests. She viewed Carter as the quintessence of a romantically cosmopolitan mentality that wrongly perceives all change as progress toward a happy ending. Re-reading the article last week, I found that if I substituted the word “Islamism” for “Communism” and “Obama” for “Carter,” much of Kirkpatrick’s insightful essay is helpful to understanding the current situation in Egypt.
Kirkpatrick contrasted (a) Carter’s moralistic dudgeon toward regimes that were autocratic and repressive but generally Western-friendly, with (b) his cultivated insouciance toward communist regimes that were outright totalitarian. Carter made overtures of “normalization” to Vietnam, Cuba and the Chinese People’s Republic, all hostile to America; but cooled relations with South Korea, South Africa and the Phillipines, countries friendly to America.
Similarly, before being soundly rebuffed, Obama made “reaching out” to anti-Western, Islamist Iran a key plank in his platform. He routinely offers encouraging words to Islamist or Islamizing countries, like jihad-peddling Saudi Arabia and Israel-baiting Turkey, while shaming pro-America, democratic Israel...