Former Vice President Cheney was not alone when he wondered what on earth had possessed President Obama to pursue a deal with Iran.
This is, indeed, an interesting question, especially since most commentators in the media are offering only superficial, and mostly irrelevant, answers. Yes, of course, like every president, Obama is concerned with his legacy. He views himself as a contemporary of Ronald Reagan, who significantly influenced the country beyond his two terms in office. In defending the agreement with Tehran, Obama claimed Reagan as an example in negotiating weapon reduction agreements with the hostile Soviet Union, when defending his own determination of reaching a “verifiable” agreement with Iran.
Obama is, however, historically wrong in comparing his Iran deal to either Reagan’s negotiations with the Soviets or to Nixon’s decision to develop a relationship with Mao Zedong’s China. While both, indeed, were hostile countries to the U.S., neither:
– supported worldwide terrorism
– held U.S. hostages
– publically threatened to exterminate another member state to the United Nations/close ally of the U.S.
– generated a street mob yelling “death to America” while negotiations took place
A much better analogy for Obama’s deal with the Iranian ayatollahs is, therefore, Chamberlain giving up the Czech Sudetenland to Hitler. History, of course, recorded the tragic consequences of Chamberlain’s appeasement of Nazi-Germany in the “name of peace.”
So, why would an obviously intelligent president who, one can hope, is aware of history, make such a tragically wrong decision?
The Canary’s has attempted to analyze President Obama’s psychological makeup based on his upbringing, ideological roots and formative teachers in previous posts. This approach allowed us to correctly predict his future behavior on a good number of occasions. A similar analysis, indeed, offers compelling explanations for his outrageous behavior in reaching the recent agreement with Tehran.
Before Obama’s reelection we suggested that though he was trying to obfuscate many of his true ideological believes to get reelected, Obama was basically a third-world multinationalist. Many colleagues, scholars and pundits strongly disagreed with our analysis, though by now, a good number among them have reached similar conclusions. Re-elected and facing a Republican-controlled Congress, Obama has since shaken off the restrictive shackles of an election-driven, political middle ground, and is increasingly willing to “come out of the closet” as the Afrocentric, multi-nationalistic, Marxist ideologue he is.
We also previously noted that in unique contrast to almost every president before him, Obama does not want as stronger, more self-assured America. He despises the fact that, since the Soviet Union’s collapse, America has become the only dominant world power. He was brought up to believe that a dominant America is a mortal threat to the rest of the world, especially the developing world. A principal goal of his foreign policy has been to “diminish America’s footprint” in the world.
For this reason, his administration established the policy of “leading from behind,” which explains why the U.S. military is facing unprecedented levels of military budget cuts.
To weaken the U.S. is, however, not enough if America’s footprint is to be significantly diminished: Other powers have to be concomitantly strengthened if competing power centers to the U.S. are to arise in the world. Internationalists like Obama and Secretary John Kerry, therefore, not only don’t mind that Iran will, ultimately, go nuclear and grow more powerful politically and militarily. They actually welcome a more powerful Iran with nuclear capabilities in the Middle East as a potential balancing force to what they currently perceive as the excessive power of the U.S.
Since the Soviet Union collapsed, scholars of international relations almost uniformly agree that the previously bipolar world has become unipolar, dominated by the unmatched economic and military power of the U.S. This can only be changed if the U.S. is weakened and other nations are given the opportunity to ascend. The ascent of an U.S. ally, like Israel, would be unsatisfactory. A multipolar world can only be reestablished through the ascent of nations inherently hostile to U.S. power.
This explains not only the otherwise completely irrational agreement with Iran but also the administration’s timid behavior towards an increasingly belligerent Russia and an overreaching China: both, of course, also future contenders for newly arising power centers. And it also explains why the Obama administration heavily invests in relations with Communist Cuba and Socialist Venezuela and Nicaragua.
Obama’s views himself as a visionary internationalist who is helping to establish a new world order that benefits the poor and oppressed all over the globe. In doing so, he not only attempts to match but also to exceed Ronald Reagan’s increasing historical importance as the U.S. president primarily responsible for the collapse of the Soviet Union and the subsequent rise of the U.S. as the world’s single dominant power. Obama’s real goal for his presidency is, therefore, to outdo President Reagan’s achievements by reversing them and, in doing so, re-establish a multi-centric global power structure.
With such a worldview, the Iran deal, indeed, makes perfect sense. Time to realize what President Barack Hussein Obama’s foreign policy goals really are before it may be too late!