In this post to the progressive site Foreign Policy in Focus, John Feffer examines Obama’s first 100 days of foreign policy with a reference to Twitter (practically unavoidable these days) inspired brevity:
The score for foreign policy isn’t so clear-cut. In TwitterWorld, the temptation is to evaluate change on the basis of headlines and rhetorical flourishes. Accordingly, the new president would seem to have sharply broken with the international policies of the last administration. Obama issued executive orders to close the Guantánamo Bay prison in a year and end the U.S. use of torture. He stopped using the phrase “Global War on Terror” (GWOT). He promised to remove all U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of 2011. He embraced the agenda of nuclear abolition. He has shaken Hugo Chávez’s hand. That’s five tweets right there, each under 140 characters.
He goes on to delve deeper and notes Obama’s remarkable continuity with Bush foreign policy and fears among the left and hopes among the right that Obama is actually a closet neocon. Only the next 100 days will tell the tale.
