The war has started again. Four years after George W. Bush’s departure from the White House, the U.S. commitments in Afghanistan and Iraq still remain at the core of the upcoming U.S. presidential elections. The war was definitely an issue this past Saturday, in Virginia, during President Barack Obama’s first official campaign event. Furthermore, for electoral reasons, the tenant of the White House has made a quick, unexpected visit to Kabul.
Obama, the pacifist, the leader of the Cairo talks for reconciliation with Islam, the anti-Bush and -- even better -- the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize recipient, will eventually be seen throughout his presidency as the War Chief. He ordered the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq and promised they would depart Afghanistan by 2014. Yet Obama ordered more air strikes than there had ever been before in Pakistan – four days in a row, every 40 days -- and in Yemen. Washington’s support in Libya was decisive, despite what has been said. Finally, with great determination Obama successfully led the operation to hunt down bin Laden where Clinton and Bush had previously failed for lack of will and judgment.
If the President of the United States behaves primarily as the chief negotiator for corporate America, then alliances themselves become contingent commodities.
European autonomy - military, technological, economic, and financial - is beginning to take shape as Europe hedges against current and future fluctuations in [U.S.] policy.