The Politics of United States Foreign Policy under Barack Obama

Summary

I devote most of this essay to the task of placing Obama’s presidency in long-run historical context. Obama’s election comes at a critical moment in American political history, at the end of one political era and on the edge of another. What matters in such circumstances, I will argue, is more what Obama is against than what he is for. We also need to take careful account of the political constraints on what he is and is not able to do. As the great American baseball player Yogi Berra is supposed to have said, “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”