Renewing American Leadership

Welcome to my blog, where I hope to write (well, more like aggregate and comment on information from other sources) on foreign policy under the new (at this point, not yet installed) Obama Administration. I thought it would be appropriate to kick things off by linking to the article written by then-Senator Barack Obama in Foreign Affairs, part of a series of foreign policy pieces written by the then-contenders for the White House, in which the Senator outlined a muscular but responsible foreign policy, touching on three issues dear to my heart: the foreign policy implications of climate change, the growing threat of nuclear proliferation (state-based and non), and the importance of placing conditions on U.S. foreign assistance. If there is a unifying theme, it is the idea that the United States must stop defining its foreign policy by what it is against and start enunciating - and embodying - a better vision of what it stands for. Here is a quote:

"Finally, to renew American leadership in the world, I will strengthen our common security by investing in our common humanity. Our global engagement cannot be defined by what we are against; it must be guided by a clear sense of what we stand for. We have a significant stake in ensuring that those who live in fear and want today can live with dignity and opportunity tomorrow."

Over the coming months, one of my aims will be to track how the administration's policy decisions play out against the vision the Senator described in this article, the opening salvo of his foreign policy as a candidate for the presidency.