President Obama’s foreign policy is making the world a more dangerous place, according to Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX). The freshman Senator, seen as a leader of the Tea Party movement, appeared on Tuesday’s Ben Shapiro Show and pointed to the president’s handling of the current crisis in Ukraine and his recent remarks “excoriating” the nation of Israel as support for his blistering indictment.
The Obama administration seems, as an ideological matter, not to believe in US leadership, to believe that US leadership in the world is fundamentally illegitimate. That is the only thing that explains their stated philosophy of leading from behind and receding and allowing others to lead as well. That is a view that is common in the faculty lounge of very liberal universities, but it is not a view that has ever been manifested in the White House prior to this administration.
The Senator attributed a range of overseas crises, from Russia’s invasion of Ukrainian territory to the deteriorating situation in Syria, to this failure of American leadership.
America has receded in leadership across the world and into that vacuum have stepped nations like Russia and Iran and China…
Cruz blasted the president’s weak response to Russian aggression, remarking that the Russian stock market actually “jumped roughly three percent” upon news of “weak and ineffective” western sanctions.
While the senator offered several responses to Russia’s expansion, from supplying Poland with anti-ballistic missile batteries to exporting liquid natural gas to Ukraine, the suggestion that undergirded the entire interview was simply that President Obama learn to tell friend from foe.
I wish the president could use a fraction of the bellicosity he shows toward Israel toward the nations that are actually our enemy. I mean, we’ve truly gone through the looking glass when the president is condemning our friend Israel and at the same time is showing weakness to nations like Iran and Russia.
According to Cruz, President Obama and the last two Democratic Secretaries of State seem unable to do that.
They seem not to understand one of the simplest and most irrefutable principals of foreign policy since time immemorial which is that bullies and thugs don’t respect weakness and appeasement. The only language they understand is strength. And that is something that is fundamentally inconsistent with the Obama foreign policy, with Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy, with John Kerry’s foreign policy… They have instead followed the path of appeasing our enemies and it isn’t working. It’s making the world more dangerous.
