America, I thought we were friends?
While the domestic policies of the Obama administration have been dominating most of the headlines since his inauguration, raising very real concern and even dissent at home, foreign policy has quietly been taking shape behind the scenes. While Americans focus on the spectacle of a ballooning deficit as it’s government has taken unprecedented steps to control of the banking, automotive, and healthcare sectors, other countries have been asking the question “What does this administration mean to us?”
A month ago, the heroic leaders of Eastern Europe got down on their knees and begged Obama not to renege on George W. Bush’s promise to give them a missile defense system and not to give in to Russian threats and remonstrations, which were obviously designed to keep the former Soviet slave states within Russia’s imperial reach. Having seen Russian tanks rolling into Georgia, who can doubt that the Putin regime has long-term goals of reacquiring the “sphere of influence” that brought so much terror and loss of life to Eastern Europe just a few decades ago?
With the financial means to exert meaningful influence on the international stage now significantly compromised by out-of-control domestic spending programs, combined with this administration’s apparent desire to apologize for past “American imperialist sins”, historical Western allies do have reason for concern.
—-
Update: Eastern European concerns go unheard:
WARSAW, Poland – Poles and Czechs voiced deep concern Friday at President Barack Obama’s decision to scrap a Bush-era missile defense shield planned for their countries.
“Betrayal! The U.S. sold us to Russia and stabbed us in the back,” the Polish tabloid Fakt declared on its front page.
Polish President Lech Kaczynski said he was concerned that Obama’s new strategy leaves Poland in a dangerous “gray zone” between Western Europe and the old Soviet sphere.
