The foreign policy legacy of barack obama: a long game harried by tactical

When Obama took over the presidency there were certain important issues in the foreign policy that needed his immediate attention. United States of America was engaged in to wars started by his predecessor and there was a threat of another war looming large. He knew he needed to pay heed to the situation in order to prevent the losses caused by these wars on American economy. On top of that, it was the time of global financial crises, and even the financially were stable country like the USA was feeling the crunch. The expense required keeping their troops in Afghanistan and iran had become very expensive and USA economy was on its knee. When Obama took over the office, his first visit to Pentagon. This visit was done to set the direction of his foreign policy. Obana describe himself to the USA armed forces as a man who sit back and take and empty stop in the parking than wishing to get his favorite spot on the street. In other words, he described himself as someone who would be happy to take the position that is offered to him rather than a person who will try to impose his wishes on the world. Obama foreign policy had direction for creating peace and stability all over the world.

Obama foreign policy on a whole can be described as moderately succeful. Despite many people claiming that his era was the worse in terms of foreign policy, it had its ups as well. Obama also achieved what his predecessors couldn’t achieve. That is why we cannot totally say that his tenure was a total disaster.

Obama’s most immediate priority was to bring an end to war in Iraq. He wanted to reduce the number of US troops participating in awrs in different parts of the world. He also wanted to reduce the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and wanted to stop the spread of weapon of mass destruction. Obama was partly successful in Iraq and Afghanistan foreign policies. Although Obama wanted to withdraw his troops from this region, but he realized that withdrawing his troops from Afghanistan will mean that all the gains attained by the US armed forces will be lost. Therefore, he tried to minimize the troop’s reduction programme from Afghanistan and instead focused on redeployment of troops in Afghanistan in a way that would stop terriosm from countries around Afghanistan like Pakistan. However, he was able to withdraw his troops form Iraq and within three years the number of troops came down from one hundred and sixty thousand to only fifty thousand.

Obama knew that region of Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and other adjoining countries was full of shia-sunni conflicts. He appointed a special envoy for the region who tried to discourage this kind of conflict on the basis of religion and sectarianism. This showed that Obama’s foreign policy took special notice of conflicts occurring due to religion and sectarianism. He wanted the region to be united as that was the only way the forces like al-qaeda and other armed terriorists could be defeated.