He was accused of ceding too much ground to allies in Libya, but this week’s events show he’s FDR’s heir.
Michael Fullilove is the director of the global issues program at the Lowy Institute in Sydney, Australia and a nonresident senior fellow in foreign policy at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. A lawyer and historian by training, he was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford and served as an adviser to the Australian prime minister. Fullilove’s next book, on the Second World War, will be published by The Penguin Press. You can follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/mfullilove.
At the U.N. this week, President Obama will promote a foreign policy straight out of the community organizer's playbook: one that demands progressivism, accountability—and engagement of the enemy.
The administration’s postponed trip to Australia and Indonesia, in order to focus on U.S. health care, has caused tittering in Asian capitals. Such concerns are misguided. From background to focus to tactics, Michael Fullilove writes from Sydney, Obama has a chance to become the first truly Pacific president.
The Nobel Prize was not the only indication that America’s popularity is on the rebound. Michael Fullilove sifts the global poll numbers, and reports the Bush era is officially over.
The same diplomatic velvet glove that has flummoxed leaders from Cuba to Al Qaeda, reports Michael Fullilove, has also sown confusion among his conservative critics.
Both candidates want to be the “realist” that Kissinger was, but neither of them will be.