The Death Rattle of Obama’s Reputation

"Even as early as March of 2017, it was clear that the Obama administration’s foreign-policy professionals were quite insecure about how posterity would remember their stewardship of American interests abroad. They had every reason to be."

Commentary Magazine

. . . "It’s no coincidence that these overheated condemnations accompany abundant evidence that the Trump administration is finding its legs. As the last administration’s undeserved reputation as sober-minded foreign policy rationalists is dismantled one retrospective report at a time, its jilted members are lashing out.

"[Susan] Rice’s attacks on the Republican administration deserve the most attention, if only because they are the most apoplectic. Donald Trump’s recently released national-security review paints a “dark,” “almost dystopian” vision of the world, Rice contended. His world is full of “hostile states and lurking threats.” Rice claimed that there is “no common good” in Trump’s worldview. What’s more, there is no “international community” and no “universal values.” There are just “American values.”

"Rice takes a theatrically dim view of what is essentially a restatement of the bedrock principle of almost all international-relations theory: The international environment is anarchic. " . . .

Charles Krauthammer, 2016: The Stillborn Legacy of Barack Obama