If Obama had met his stated goals in Afghanistan … if the Russia “reset” had worked … if Iran talks were indeed producing nuclear disarmament … if the president's “red line” in Syria was not being crossed and recrossed like center-ice in an exciting hockey game … if his Libyan intervention had not resulted in Libya becoming a more violent and unstable place … if his administration had sustained the progress toward peace in Iraq achieved during George W. Bush’s second term—if all this had been the case, the president would have been content to simply present his impressive record. But it is not the case.
Obama’s core defense of his record is this:
[B]y most measures, America has rarely been stronger relative to the rest of the world. Those who argue otherwise—who suggest that America is in decline, or has seen its global leadership slip away—are either misreading history or engaged in partisan politics. Think about it. Our military has no peer. The odds of a direct threat against us by any nation are low, and do not come close to the dangers we faced during the Cold War.
Here, Obama is offering not a false alternative but a false claim. In 2014, China will overtake the United States as the world’s largest economy, as measured in terms of purchasing power parity. Measured in nominal currency terms, the overtaking may be postponed until the 2020s. However measured, the economic primacy the U.S. has maintained since the 1890s is rapidly nearing its end. Rarely stronger relative to the rest of the world? No.
Notice too the slippery, multi-conditional form of the president's boast about national security. “The odds of a
direct threat against
us by any nation are low.” That statement reveals the imprint of editing by aides who understand that
indirect threats (such as the implosion of Western-oriented Arab regimes since 2010),
threats against allies (such as the Russian threat to the Baltic republics or the Iranian threat to Israel),
and threats by subnational actors (including all those al-Qaeda affiliates that attacked the U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya)
are all worse today than they were when the president took office.....
At West Point, Obama opened his discussion of Iran by claiming credit for the sanctions regime against Tehran. “[A]t the beginning of my presidency, we built a coalition that imposed sanctions on the Iranian economy,” he said. Yet the most effective of those sanctions—
the Kirk-Menendez measures that isolated Iran from the international-payments system—were strenuously opposed by this president. He signed them into law only after the Senate attached them to the 2012 defense-authorization bill by a vote of 100-0.
