Pakistan Disaster Reveals Obama Doctrine

When a NATO helicopter accidentally killed 24 Pakistani soldiers last week, most commentators declared it a disastrous military mistake. But The Daily Beast’s Peter Beinart sees a clear foreign policy doctrine finally emerging from the White House. The airstrike was obviously a mistake, but Obama gave up long ago on trying to remake Pakistan and Afghanistan. The Obama doctrine appears to be to ditch expensive nation-building in favor of combating enemies with naval and air power. This approach is less brazen, but it tends to reemerge “when the money and bravado have run out.”