I recently authored a post regarding the crisis in Kyrgyzstan, and it has come to my attention that the piece could be interpreted somewhat differently than I intended. A clarification is in order.
Courtesy: Google Images; Daily Mirror
What I was trying to suggest was that U.S. intervention would have been pretty much out of the question no matter who the president was or what the philosophical bent of their foreign policy program happened to be. Any president would have had to defer to Russia’s handling of the crisis, at least initially, and that this is especially true of President Obama on account of his ongoing effort to keep Russo-American relations on an amicable footing. Stratfor has a great assessment of the politics of the crisis from the Russian perspective here; it is not the kind of pool into which the U.S. government would want to wade, and any intervention would have diverted attention from Afghanistan at a key juncture.
Also, my post could also be understood to characterize Obama as a member of the realist school; my actual view is that his foreign policy agenda thus far reflects a blend of approaches that include, but are not limited to, realism. My reference was in regard to the general perception of his foreign policy.
