Colucci on Obama’s lack of decisive action

Lamont Colucci, associate professor and chair of politics and government and interim director of the Center for Politics and the People at Ripon College, wrote an opinion piece criticizing President Obama’s national security strategy that was published by U.S. News & World Report. Click here to read the full article.

He writes that with President Barack Obama’s most recent National Security Strategy, “few have asked the question at the deep end of the pool: Does this administration have a strategic set of goals to advance American interests in its waning days?

“This goes well beyond any single issue, such as the Islamic State group, China or counterterrorism. It asks the important question of grand strategy that every occupant of the White House must confront, no matter how wrongly obsessed they are about domestic issues: Has my presidency created the conditions for American survival, prosperity, primacy and respect on the international scene? These four fundamentals are the critical questions a president must answer before anything else.”

Colucci writes that the Obama doctrine is a poorly synthesized amalgamation of strategies of four previous presidents, but “the one area that is truly Obama’s own is his hesitancy in strategy and action. … Obama has been called the post-American president, and he has often been heartily criticized for not demonstrating an adherence to American exceptionalism. However, perhaps this misses the profounder point. The president must ensure American power and fortune, but his inability or unwillingness to take difficult and decisive action makes this impossible. Perhaps his real moniker should be the post-strategy president.”