I’ve been hearing this, or a variation of it, quite a bit from my family and others from my hometown which means it has been a popular mantra on both Fox News and/or conservative talk radio. It’s also; from a professional and academic standpoint, completely false.
President Obama is more of a neo-Liberal when it comes to International Relations Theory (in his actions at least), with a tinge of realism which has been so pervasive in our historical domestic foreign policy formulation and discourse. To this end, president Obama tends to favor (with some exceptions as mentioned above) a generally multilateral approach to foreign engagement, he likes to work through international institutions, is a much stronger wielder of soft power, and prefers a more nuanced foreign policy approach than many of his predecessors (especially neoconservatives) who often relied on straightforward / simple, unilateral realist approaches.
This can be seen in most of his foreign relations dealings during his two terms here (save for our Israeli, and to a lesser extent: Egyptian policies, which is where that realist twinge comes into play).
His approach to Libya is a good example, where he went through the UN Security Council, worked with NATO and kept a limited engagement policy, preferring to work with and through other actors including the Arab League.
What website do I go to in order to get all this information about what we're doing in the world? If there was a newsletter I would read it often. This stuff is important and it is almost completely unknown to Americans.
Also, while I don't see you advocating it, I wonder how you would address someone who equated neoliberal foreign policy with, not necessarily "nonexistent" foreign policy (which for some reason seems to be a relatively new Fox News trope?) - but maybe a "weak" foreign policy.
To put it a bit differently: is neoliberal foreign policy compatible with American Exceptionalism so to speak? (I think the latter is pretty dangerous, but my feeling is that it isn't going anywhere anytime soon.)
Unfortunately isn't one source. A couple that I use though to keep up to date on international affairs are as follows (you can pick and choose):
1.) Reuters: (a decent place to get general overviews of world news, go to their world section and click on the 'more world news' link on the center of the page).
2.) Relief Web: is a UN sponsored news aggregation site that deals with both conflict and natural disasters / disease. you can search by country, or what I do is simply read through their 'Updates' section every day).
3.) Institute for the Study of War: carries updates on Iraq and Syria (including updated maps)
4.) The Long War Journal: Is a bit more neoconservative in its opinions, but posts updates on the global war on terror (so mostly Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and Pakistan). They also report SITE Intelligence findings which is a good way to stay up to date without having to pay hundreds of dollars for the SITE subscription.
5.) IRIN: is linked to the UN and is updated a couple of times per week with in depth humanitarian news.
6.) The Jamestown Foundation: has a couple of publications, a daily one about China, a daily one about Russia / Europe, a weekly one about the Caucuses, a bi monthly one involving terrorism analysis, and a publication on terrorist leader profiles.
7.) Combating Terrorism Center: produces a monthly PDF on reports concerning terrorist theory and activities and the occasional in depth longer report on a specific topic.
8.) Foreign Affairs: The name pretty much speaks for itself. if you register you can get a couple of articles free every month, otherwise you have to pay for it.
9.) Africa Confidential: A publication that the Bureau of African Affairs receives with updates on key issues in Sub-Saharan Africa.
10.) International Crisis Group: I mostly read their longer published reports which tend to be quite good.
11.) Human Rights Watch: Humanitarian news updates, I skim them and mostly read their in depth reports / PDFs.
12.) Amnesty International: Same as Human Rights Watch
13.) BBC News: Decent world news source, ok reputation, a little slow sometimes to update though.
14.) Al Jazeera English: Pretty similar to BBC description, only this is influenced by Qatar
15.) Al Arabiya: Saudi Arabia's version of Al Jazeera English
16.) IHS Janes: Security analysis, some stuff free, some requires a subscription.
17.) Economist Intelligence Unit: In depth analysis of different countries, you can usually find some of their material online for free after it's been published for a while, otherwise a subscription is required.
18.) Council on Foreign Relations: General foreign relations content.
19.) Brookings Institute: Same.
20.) Foreign Policy Magazine: Self explanatory, requires a subscription though, like Foreign Affairs you can register for free to read a couple of free articles every month.
21.) UN News: Self explanatory, you can also explore other UN pages.
22.) AllAfrica: African news
22.) Local news sites: Reading local news sites also helps since they tend to report on both the details of what is going on and on how the United states is interacting with them. Some I use include: Radio Dabanga (Sudan), Sudan Tribune, Radio Tamazuj (South Sudan), Radio Okapi (DRC), Daslan Radio (Somalia), Sabahi (Horn of Africa), Shabelle (Somalia), Yemen Times, Bangkok Post (Thailand), Irrawaddy (Burma), Democratic Voice of Burma, Karen News (Burma), Sahara Press Service (Western Sahara), Haaretz (Israel), B'Tselem (Israel), Times of India, etc.
I added a bunch of your recommendations to my read list on Google Play Newsstand. It's been good reading so far. I appreciate the list good sir.
