'Amateurishness, Wrapped in Naivete, Inside Credulity'

Charles Krauthammer gets his disdain on over Obama's foreign policy

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AUTHOR: Charles Krauthammer in the Washington Post


THESIS: You can't call Obama's Nobel prize "premature," because that would imply Obama's foreign policy would some day be anything other than dreadful


BAD THINGS THAT ARE OBAMA'S FAULT: Iran's nuclear program, an intransigent China, Israel-Palestine (generally), Russia not budging on sanctions for Iran (despite the U.S. having scrapped the missile shield)


WHAT OBAMA HAS DONE RIGHT SO FAR: Nothing


PEOPLE WHO APPROVE OF OBAMA'S FOREIGN POLICY: "dreamy adolescent[s] (preferably Scandinavian and ... member[s] of the Socialist International) or ... indiscriminate imbiber[s] of White House talking points"


WHAT RUSSIANS REALIZE: "[W]hen the Obama team clownishly rushes in bearing gifts and "reset" buttons, there is nothing ulterior, diabolical, clever or even serious behind it." He's just stupid.


THE FINAL SNEER:


Henry Kissinger once said that the main job of Anatoly Dobrynin, the perennial Soviet ambassador to Washington, was to tell the Kremlin leadership that whenever they received a proposal from the United States that appeared disadvantageous to the United States, not to assume it was a trick.

No need for a Dobrynin today. The Russian leadership, hardly believing its luck, needs no interpreter to understand that when the Obama team clownishly rushes in bearing gifts and "reset" buttons, there is nothing ulterior, diabolical, clever or even serious behind it. It is amateurishness, wrapped in naivete, inside credulity. In short, the very stuff of Nobels.


This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.