All of the Candidates Are Obama?

Despite its characterization within the United States, the attention of the American presidential race has, until now, been notable for the absence of traditional foreign policy issues on the part of both parties’ candidates — pointing to a continuation of the current policies laid down by President Barack Obama.

In a confrontation that occurred on March 10 between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders (and one primarily earmarked for an audience of Latin American descent), both of the candidates who are striving for the Democratic Party nomination expressed approval for Obama’s policies in domestic affairs, his openness toward South America, and his settlement with Cuba.

As for the Republican contender, Donald Trump, it seems that his approach to foreign policy more closely resembles the climate of isolationism in America that preceded World War II. Although his attitudes toward Muslims and Mexicans, and his call to “build a great, great wall” on the southern U.S. border, don’t stand in great contrast to the Obama administration’s persistent, forceful deportations of immigrants who entered the U.S. illegally from the south.

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In this sense, the foreign policy presence in the primaries is reduced to two issues — immigration and terrorism — notwithstanding the possibility that other international issues gain prominence once the Republican and Democratic parties choose their candidates at the conventions this summer. However, believing that one could formulate a foreign policy for America in the same manner that existed in the era of George W. Bush or Ronald Reagan is a belief misplaced.

Gone, never to return, are the days of direct, intensive American intervention in international politics. Thus, a new political direction has started to redefine American interests, which are now centered on South America and Asia, as confirmed by Obama during a lengthy interview published in The Atlantic on March 10. The article is sound in its calculation of Obama’s theoretical foundation for his views on foreign affairs, and it is likely that his successor in the White House, regardless of name or party, will also adopt them, or at the very least work in accordance with their broader framework.

This is quite possibly the most frank and lucid press interview ever given by Obama with regard to the Middle East and its ongoing conflicts. In it, the U.S. president expresses his despair related to achieving solutions or settlements to those conflicts. He also expresses his view that the nations of the region are governed by violent, ruinous ideologies in both politics and wider society, which makes any concern for these places a mere waste of time. Accordingly, he invests his concern in the promising regions of Asia, Africa and South America, where young people “are not thinking about how to kill Americans. What they’re thinking about is ‘How do I get a better education? How do I create something of value?’” He points out that the lack of attention brought to these promising young people springs from the U.S. preoccupation with “figuring out how to destroy or cordon off or control the malicious, nihilistic, violent parts of humanity,” in reference to the Middle East.

As for his opinion on a settlement for the Arab-Iranian conflict, it lies in the Gulf countries learning to “share” with Iran in presiding over the region — without him clarifying what it means to preside over the region, or the basis upon which that could happen.

It’s most likely that this diagnosis for the region’s ills and the present situation in the Middle East will continue with the next administration. That administration will place its principal concern on multifaceted, escalating social issues, like inequality between the rich and the poor (Trump’s attitude toward this issue seems to lie to the left of Clinton, who appears completely willing to disregard the entrenchment of big corporations in the U.S.); and also immigration, which is considered an independent issue and not a result of the collapse of societies and nations in disaster-stricken parts of the world. As such, it seems that the racism of which Trump is accused, for example, is more simply an expression of the worries of the everyday American; and that talk of human rights, spreading democracy, and defending international values is dwindling, or disappearing entirely.