There has never been much substance to the claims that Obama has been betraying allies in order to â??appeaseâ? Russia, but then the people making this charge have never really understood what Obama has been trying to do in working with Russia, and many of them have been comically wrong in their assessment of Russian goals. Now that Kyrgyzstan is melting down, it is a good thing that Moscow and Washington have built up enough trust that both our governments can cooperate to limit the damage from the violence that erupted across the south of the country this week.There are two cases of allied governments being hung out to dry, so to speak, and these are Japan and Turkey. - Daniel Larison
The strange thing about this particular line of criticism against Obama is not that his administration hasn't mishandled allies - they have. As Larison points out, they've fudged ties with Japan for sure and may be botching Turkey as well. The administration has taken some meaningless and thoughtless swipes at Britain, for instance, and the timing (though not the substance) of the announcement of missile defenses in Poland was insensitive.
No, the strange thing is that it's being voiced by many of the same people who positively gloried in the idea of unilateralism when it was a Republican president doing the spurning. They thrilled when Donald Rumsfeld derisively dismissed our core European allies as "old Europe" because they wouldn't toe the American line on Iraq. They exulted in the "Cowboy Diplomacy" of the Bush administration and wore America's alienation from the rest of the world as a sign that the country was doing something right.
Could it be that the champions of American unilateralism have had a change of heart?
