{"id":1867,"date":"2009-11-05T17:48:05","date_gmt":"2009-11-05T22:48:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=1867"},"modified":"2009-11-05T22:06:46","modified_gmt":"2009-11-06T03:06:46","slug":"more-oval-office-dithering","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/1867\/more-oval-office-dithering\/","title":{"rendered":"More Oval Office Dithering?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>What if suddenly, after eight years of a \u201ccowboy presidency\u201d and the election of a worldly, foreign policy-hesitant President, America\u2019s biggest nemesis voluntarily offered to deescalate tensions? As the Obama Administration waits for such a breakthrough moment with North Korea, Iran, Hamas, Sudan, Venezuela, and others, a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.foreignpolicy.com\/articles\/2009\/11\/04\/1989_the_lost_year?page=0,1\" target=\"_blank\">new article in <em>Foreign Policy<\/em> by David E. Hoffman<\/a> analyzes the actions of a different man in a similar moment.<\/p>\n<p>Hoffman\u2019s primary criticism of President George H. W. Bush during the tumultuous year of 1989 is that he failed to appreciate the scale and speed of change inside the Soviet Union. On more than one occasion, Bush took a cautious, wait-and-see approach when evaluating Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev\u2019s liberalization programs of <em>perestroika<\/em> and <em>glasnost<\/em>. It literally took the Berlin Wall falling down before Bush convinced himself that Gorbachev was serious about implementing fundamental changes both inside and outside Russia.<\/p>\n<p>The title of the article, \u201c1989: The Lost Year,\u201d reflects the missed opportunities that, if realized and acted on, could have led to a much smoother Soviet transition from orthodox communism. Would President Obama be able to distinguish real reforms from empty platitudes, or would he make the same mistakes as Bush Senior? For all of the current president\u2019s stubbornness in ramming through his domestic agenda, he\u2019s shown a conspicuous lack of clarity when it comes to foreign affairs. From <a href=\"http:\/\/firstread.msnbc.msn.com\/archive\/2008\/08\/08\/1255737.aspx\" target=\"_blank\">urging restraint<\/a> during the Russian invasion of Georgia to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.shortnews.com\/start.cfm?id=81306\" target=\"_blank\">dithering on Afghanistan<\/a> troop levels, Obama shows signs of being caught off guard in the unlikely event his overtures to America\u2019s enemies actually work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What if suddenly, after eight years of a \u201ccowboy presidency\u201d and the election of a worldly, foreign policy-hesitant President, America\u2019s biggest nemesis voluntarily offered to deescalate tensions? As the Obama Administration waits for such a breakthrough moment with North Korea, Iran, Hamas, Sudan, Venezuela, and others, a new article in Foreign Policy by David E. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[138,143,327,444,216,445,446,129],"class_list":["post-1867","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-afghanistan","tag-barack-obama","tag-berlin-wall","tag-david-hoffman","tag-foreign-policy","tag-george-h-w-bush","tag-mikhail-gorbachev","tag-soviet-union"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1867"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1867\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1874,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1867\/revisions\/1874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}