| Publication |
2014.
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| Summary/Abstract |
WHEN HE RAN for president in 2008, Barack Obama promised a new era of restraint in U.S. foreign policy. And in some respects, he has indeed been more restrained than his predecessor. But those looking for a reconsideration of America's universalist ambitions have been disappointed by Obama's record. Where it has mattered, there has been no retreat from the revolutionary ends to which George W. Bush committed the United States in his second inaugural address in 2005. Thus Obama (after much agonizing) threw in his lot with those seeking to overthrow Libya's Muammar el-Qaddafi by force. Thus Obama called for Bashar al-Assad to leave, encouraged "allied" efforts to overthrow him and made negotiations to end the civil war in Syria dependent on his departure. And thus the Obama administration (with the president himself curiously in the shade) played a key role in supporting the Maidan's overthrow of Ukraine's elected president, Viktor Yanukovych
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