Obama's Russia trip: just another stop on the apology tour

One of my acquaintances from my days at the London School of Economics is Michael McFaul -- a professor at Stanford and now one of Obama's senior advisers at the National Security Council for Russia. McFaul was front and center on the recent Obama visit to Moscow -- and though I like Mike a lot, I must nevertheless say that the trip was a total disaster. Like many of Obama's senior aides, McFaul believes that Obama is smart, thoughtful and capable of the kind of "deep, nuanced" thinking that issues of foreign and national security policy require. In this view, intellectual curiosity and brain power will enable Obama to eventually come to the right conclusion on issues. The issue of experience -- of instinct -- is less important than the ability to noodle out complex issues in search of the right path.

Unfortunately, McFaul's faith in Obama's intellectual abilities can't avoid a more Central, dangerous issue: the weakness that comes from lacking core beliefs. The biggest problem with Obama is that he doesn't stand for anything. His handling of most issues -- save climate change, perhaps -- seems purely intellectual, based on a belief system that assumes there is no right answer to any given question. The left, of course, loves this kind of relativism -- it's the core of the kind of "postmodern" world they are trying to create. Intellectuals -- and academics, in particular -- savor the kind of multi-dimensional thinking that examines every angle, but studiously avoiding the passing of judgment. Passing judgment is just not consistent with the secular world that science (or pseudo science, anyway) inhabit. That's part of the reason why George Bush was so reviled in the salons that have so thoroughly embraced Obama. Bush was so unsophisticated. So uneducated. So...so...certain. The left hates certitude -- for it means that there aren't a million alternative explanations that will sanction doing nothing. Unless its climate change -- and then progressives want to do everything. But the really tough issues? Like Iranian nuclear weapons or ethnic cleansing in Darfur? Forget about it.

So, in Obama we have a double danger: a very smart man who utterly and completely lacks conviction. This is the worst kind of progressive -- someone who acts with his head, but without a gut (or a heart) to tell him when to stop. The power grab since January 20, 2009 has been dazzling in its breadth and depth, because Obama's intellect is telling him that America is broken and needs to be fixed. We need to save the planet, insure everyone, save GM, bail out the banks and then some. We also need to engage the Iranians, punish the Israelis and embrace dictators and despots wherever possible. And why not? Let's not make any value judgments about our friends and foes. Let's just get down to some business. We are all human beings right? We all want the same things, right (see above: universal health care, healing the planet, etc.)

In the case of the Russia trip -- it was just another stop on the Obama apology tour. He made amends for the Bush years by listening carefully and freely complimenting Putin and Medvedev. He struck a deal to reduce nuclear weapons, while asking for very little in return. In the end, his visit allowed the Russian media to portray his visit as a reaffirmation that Russia is -- again -- a global superpower. One can only imagine what Vladimir Putin is thinking in the picture below, looking at Obama on the edge of his seat, thinking that life in the Soviet Union -- er, Russia -- has never been so good. Gone is the immediate condemnation that Bush gave the Russians for invading Georgia. Gone is the hard line the U.S. took on Russian relations with Iran. Gone is the hard line that Bush took on missile defense. In its stead is a young Obama, eager to please -- eager to make a deal.

Sorry, Mike -- but you are now part of the problem, not the solution. BTW -- that's my friend Mike McFaul taking notes, partially obscured by Putin's head.


And so it goes. As I've noted in my last post, America is slowly waking up to the dangers of a return to progressivism here at home and realism abroad. We have traded the certitude -- for good and for bad -- of George W. Bush, for the wandering rationality of Barack Obama. Where it stops? Nobody -- not even Obama himself -- knows. Because it's open to interpretation -- today, tomorrow and always.

I'll take an order of certitude with my gut instinct, thank you very much.