The president set out to chart a more pacific and humane foreign policy after the Trump years but at some point he and his team of advisers lost the plot.
The administration may be staffed with the best and the brightest, but I fear they are beholden to outdated assumptions and misreading the politics at home.
Its diplomatic feat of restoring relations in the Middle East reflects less its position as a rising power than the startling decline of American regional credibility.
The decline in U.S. diplomatic influence in the Middle East reflects not just Chinese initiatives, writes Juan Cole, but Washington’s incompetence, arrogance and double-dealing over three decades in the region.
By Juan Cole
TomDispatch.com
A photo Beijing released on March 6 delivered a