By mid-2015, the Obama presidency will be entering its final stages, and the race among the successors in both parties will be well underway. And while experts have already formed a provisional understanding of the Obama administration's foreign policy goals, the shape of the "Obama Doctrine" is finally coming into full view. It has been consistently cautious since Obama was inaugurated in 2009, but recent events in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and the Far East have led an increasingly large number of foreign policy experts to conclude that caution has transformed into weakness. In The Obama Doctrine, Colin Dueck analyzes and explains what the Obama Doctrine in foreign policy actually is, and maps out the competing visions on offer from the Republican Party. Dueck, a leading scholar of US foreign policy, contends it is now becoming clear that Obama's policy of international retrenchment is in large part a function of his emphasis on achieving domestic policy goals. There have been some successes in the approach, but there have also been costs. For instance, much of the world no longer trusts the US to exert its will in international politics, and America's adversaries overseas have asserted themselves with increasing frequency. The Republican Party will target these perceived weaknesses in the 2016 presidential campaign and develop competing counter-doctrines in the process. Dueck explains that within the Republican Party, there are two basic impulses vying with each other: neo-isolationism and forceful internationalism. Dueck subdivides each impulse into the specific agenda of the various factions within the party: Tea Party nationalism, neoconservatism, conservative internationalism, and neo-isolationism. He favors a realistic but forceful US internationalism, and sees the willingness to disengage from the world by some elements of the party as dangerous. After dissecting the various strands, he articulates an agenda of forward-leaning American realism--that is, a policy in which the US engages with the world and is willing to use threats of force for realist ends. The Obama Doctrine not only provides a sharp appraisal of foreign policy in the Obama era; it lays out an alternative approach to marshaling American power that will help shape the foreign policy debate in the run-up to the 2016 elections.

This book analyzes Obama's foreign policy in the Americas, focusing on major security-related issues such as drug trafficking, organized crime, and terrorism. This book is meant not only for academics and students but also for policy analysts.

With the work of reporters under fire worldwide, this year’s anthology of National Magazine Award finalists and winners is a timely reminder of the power of journalism. The pieces included here explore the fault lines in American society. Shane Bauer’s visceral “My Four Months as a Private Prison Guard” (Mother Jones) and Sarah Stillman’s depiction of the havoc wreaked on young people’s lives when they are put on sex-offender registries (The New Yorker) examine controversial criminal-justice practices. And responses to the shocks of the recent election include Matt Taibbi’s irreverent dispatches from the campaign trail (Rolling Stone), George Saunders’s transfixing account of Trump’s rallies (The New Yorker), and Andrew Sullivan’s fears for the future of democracy (New York). In other considerations of the political scene, Jeffrey Goldberg talks through Obama’s foreign-policy legacy with the former president (The Atlantic), and Gabriel Sherman analyzes how Roger Ailes’s fall sheds light on conservative media (New York). Linking personal stories to the course of history, Nikole Hannah-Jones looks for a school for her daughter in a rapidly changing, racially divided Brooklyn (New York Times Magazine), and Pamela Colloff explores how the 1966 University of Texas Tower mass shooting changed the course of one survivor’s life (Texas Monthly). A selection of Rebecca Solnit’s Harper’s commentary ranges from a writer on death row to the isolation at the heart of conservatism. Becca Rothfeld ponders women waiting on love from the Odyssey to Tinder (Hedgehog Review). Siddhartha Mukherjee depicts the art and agony of oncology (New York Times Magazine). David Quammen ventures to Yellowstone to consider the future of wild places (National Geographic), and Mac McClelland follows a deranged expedition to Cuba in search of the ivory-billed woodpecker (Audubon). The collection concludes with Zandria Robinson’s eloquent portrait of her father as reflected in the music he loved (Oxford American).

President Obama’s first term in office was subject to intense criticism; not only did many feel that he had failed to live up to his leadership potential, but that he had actually continued the foreign policy framework of the George W. Bush era he was supposed to have abandoned. This edited volume examines whether these issues of continuity have been equally as prevalent during the president’s second term as his first. Is Obama still acting within the foreign policy shadow of Bush, or has he been able to establish his own approach towards international affairs, distinct from his predecessor? Within this context, the volume also addresses the idea of legacy and whether Obama has succeeded in establishing his own distinct foreign policy doctrine. In addressing these questions, the chapters explore continuity and change from a range of perspectives in International Relations and Foreign Policy Analysis, which are broadly representative of a spectrum of theoretical positions. With contributions from a range of US foreign policy experts, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of US foreign policy, Foreign Policy Analysis and American politics.

Much like Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, President Barack Obama came to office as a politician who emphasized conviction rather than consensus. During his 2008 presidential campaign, he pledged to transform the role of the United States abroad. His ambitious foreign policy goals included a global climate treaty, the peaceful withdrawal of American military forces from Iraq and Afghanistan, and a new relationship with Iran. Throughout Obama's tenure, pundits and scholars have offered competing interpretations of his "grand strategy," while others have maintained that his policies were incoherent or, at best, ad hoc. In Dangerous Doctrine, political scientist Robert G. Kaufman argues that the forty-fourth president has indeed articulated a clear, consistent national security policy and has pursued it with remarkable fidelity. Yet Kaufman contends that President Obama has imprudently abandoned the muscular internationalism that has marked US foreign policy since the end of World War II. Drawing on international relations theory and American diplomatic history, Kaufman presents a robust critique of the Obama doctrine as he situates the president's use of power within the traditions of American strategic practice. Focusing on the pivotal regions of Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, this provocative study demonstrates how current executive branch leadership threatens America's role as a superpower, weakening its ability to spread democracy and counter threats to geopolitical order in increasingly unstable times. Kaufman proposes a return to the grand strategy of moral democratic realism, as practiced by presidents such as Harry S. Truman, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush, with the hope of reestablishing the United States as the world's dominant power.

This volume examines the foreign policy transition from George W. Bush to Barack H. Obama in relation to the countries of the Americas. In this work, contributors consider the major defining features of their respective policies in dealing with security-related issues. Specifically, they examine whether major differences or continuities truly exist between the foreign policies of Bush and Obama, especially given the perception of American decline. The volume highlights Obama’s foreign policy in the Americas, focusing on issue areas that threaten international security, such as drug trafficking, organized crime, and terrorism. This work provides both theoretical and policy insights for academics and policy analysts interested in foreign affairs.

A hard-hitting assessment of Obama's current foreign policy and a sweeping look at the future of the Middle East The 2011 Arab Spring upended the status quo in the Middle East and poses new challenges for the United States. Here, Fawaz Gerges, one of the world's top Middle East scholars, delivers a full picture of US relations with the region. He reaches back to the post-World War II era to explain the issues that have challenged the Obama administration and examines the president's responses, from his negotiations with Israel and Palestine to his drawdown from Afghanistan and withdrawal from Iraq. Evaluating the president's engagement with the Arab Spring, his decision to order the death of Osama bin Laden, his intervention in Libya, his relations with Iran, and other key policy matters, Gerges highlights what must change in order to improve US outcomes in the region. Gerges' conclusion is sobering: the United States is near the end of its moment in the Middle East. The cynically realist policy it has employed since World War II-continued by the Obama administration--is at the root of current bitterness and mistrust, and it is time to remake American foreign policy.