With Friends Like Obama, Who Needs Enemies?

Barack Obama promised to make the world love America once more — but seven years after assuming office, not only do our enemies still hate us, but our allies do too.

Obama will head to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on Wednesday as he embarks on the first of his international “farewell tours.” This one, however, is shaping up to be more of an apology tour. But unlike his 2008 “apology tour” in which he groveled before foreign leaders and apologized for George W. Bush’s legacy, this time around the legacy for which he will apologize is his own.

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“I think the trip is to reassure Arab allies that the United States is there for the long run and not cutting and running,” said David Ottaway, a Middle East expert at the Wilson Center told the Associated Press.

Of course, one can hardly blame American allies like Saudi Arabia for thinking that the U.S. has abandoned them. In an interview with The Atlantic at the beginning of April, Obama appeared to call countries who relied on their military alliance with the U.S. for protection as “free riders.”

In the same interview, he suggested that the Saudis need to “need to find an effective way to share the neighborhood and institute some sort of cold peace” with Iran. Of course, Shia Iran is the Sunni Saudis’ sworn enemy —antipathy between the Saudis and Iranians may even be stronger than the antipathy between the Israelis and Iranians.

To lecture the Saudis and Iranians on the state of their relationship is not only an act of supreme arrogance, but also displays a stunning ignorance — willful or otherwise — of the geopolitical realities of the region. Obama’s legacy in the Middle East has not been a good one. In addition to alienating our Sunni allies in Saudi Arabia, his administration may have done irreparable damage to U.S.-Egyptian relations when it decided to support the installation of an Islamist government helmed by the Muslim Brotherhood.

In 2008, 22 percent of Egyptians had a favorable view of the U.S., according the Pew’s Global Attitudes Survey. By 2014, that number had dropped to only 10 percent. Other Arab nations in the Middle East that look upon the U.S. more unfavorably than they did when Obama took office are Jordan and Lebanon. Clearly people there view collateral damage unfavorably, regardless if by plane or drone.

[lz_table title=”The Obama Effect” source=”Pew, note: 2015 data for some countries unavailable”]Percentage of Egyptians viewed U.S. favorably
2008,22%
2014,10%
|Percentage of Lebanese viewed U.S. favorably
2008,51%
2015,39%
|Percentage of Jordanians viewed U.S. favorably
2008,19%
2015,14%
|Percentage of Russians viewed U.S. favorably
2008,46%
2015,15%
[/lz_table]

Then there’s Israel. Obama has seemingly taken every opportunity possible to alienate the only liberal democracy in the Middle East. Seventy-one percent of Israelis in 2014 said they were confident in Obama’s leadership of international affairs, according to Pew. By the spring of 2015, less than half of Israelis were confident in his abilities.

After Obama is finished making excuses to the Saudis for burying his foot deep within his mouth, he will jet off to Europe, where he will lecture the British and Germans about why they shouldn’t be able control their own countries’ futures — a move sure to win him more fans there.

One European country he will most certainly not be visiting is Russia. Indeed, instead of the “reset” with Russia Obama promised when he assumed office, he gave the West a new cold war. In 2008, 46 percent of Russians viewed the U.S. favorably. Only 15 percent of Russians viewed the U.S. favorably by the spring of 2015.

In Germany, Obama will defend Chancellor Merkel’s support of a U.S.-European Union trade deal (the TTIP) as well as her immigration policies. The prospective deal is incredibly unpopular in Germany, where Germans — much like Americans skeptical of the TPP — fear the long term effects of the deal on German sovereignty.

Only 27 percent of Germans support the deal, compared to an EU average of 53 percent, an EU-wide survey conducted in 2015 showed. “Germans are not against trade in general, but they oppose restrictions imposed by TTIP that could infringe on democracy,” said Sven Giegold, a German MEP from the Greens party.

“We see the deal in its current state as a risk to our society’s standards,” Giegold said. “If they don’t change the approach, which frankly I can’t see at the moment, this will become an issue in the German elections as well as in other European countries,” he noted.

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Obama’s defense of Merkel’s immigration policy is also sure to be about as welcome in Germany as a pig roast at an Orthodox Jewish wedding. Merkel is almost single-handedly responsible for the hordes of Muslim migrants which began to overrun Europe in early 2015, as millions of them answered her open call to come to Germany.

These migrants have brought with them an epidemic of violent sexual assault, and it is doubtful that a patronizing lecture from Obama on why the German people should accept such a state of affairs will be taken positively in that country.

In Britain, Obama is expected to advocate for Britain’s staying in the EU. The country will vote in a referendum on its independence from the EU in June. The British government’s efforts at bolstering the “remain” argument have been met with widespread ridicule in that country, so it is highly unlikely Obama will fare any better.

His planned intrusion into the question of British sovereignty is already drawing rebuke from British politicians. It “is plainly hypocritical for America to urge us to sacrifice control — of our laws, our sovereignty, our money and our democracy — when they would not dream of ever doing the same,” said Mayor of London Boris Johnson.

Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mog went even further. “I think for somebody to use their office as the head of state of a foreign country to interfere in domestic elections is diplomatically abnormal,” he said in an interview with the British press.

“I can’t think the British people will want to be told what to do by a rather unsuccessful American president who has had one of the least successful foreign policies in modern history,” he said.