Politics
Understanding the Obama Doctrine: How Obama redefines U.S. Foreign policy
U.S. President Barack Obama. PHOTO/JEWEL SAMAD/AFP/Getty Images
While the media has focused on the Republican presidential primaries, offstage the greatest revolution in American foreign policy in a generation has occurred, with little discussion or debate surrounding its announcement last week by President Obama.
The relative lack of controversy marks a contrast with the last great transformation of American foreign policy, which took place at the end of the Cold War. Even before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, it was clear that the Soviet-American conflict that had structured U.S. foreign policy since the late 1940s was coming to an end. For several years there was a vigorous debate in the mainstream media as well as expert circles about what should replace the Cold War strategy of containment of communism as the basis of American grand strategy.
