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INTRODUCTION

When Russia annexed Crimea and invaded Ukraine in February and March of 2014, I immediately thought back to Christmas Eve 1979, when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. This was the first direct use of Soviet troops outside the Eastern Bloc since World War II, “a watershed event of the Cold War.”¹¹ Much like the Obama administration today, the Carter administration was already reeling from a series of foreign policy failures. As historian John Lewis Gaddis wrote, the invasion was “only the most dramatic of a series of humiliations for the United States.”²² The Soviets had deployed nuclear missiles to Europe in 1977 and Soviet-backed Cuban troops had intervened in Angola in 1975 and Ethiopia and Zaire in 1977. The Iranian revolution and subsequent hostage crisis, the rise of the Soviet-backed Sandinistas in Nicaragua, and the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia added to the general sense of crisis.

US Department of State, Office of the Historian, “Milestones: 1977–1980” (Washington, DC: US Department of State, October 31, 2013), https://history.state.gov/milestones/1977-1980/soviet-invasion-afghanistan.

John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of American National Security Policy during the Cold War (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1982), http://www.amazon.com/Strategies-Containment-Critical-Appraisal-American/dp/019517447X.

In a preview of President Obama’s wishful-thinking foreign policy approach, President Carter initially refused to confront Soviet aggression. Just a year before the invasion, a communist coup in Kabul had ended hopes of a more constructive relationship between the United States and Afghanistan. Carter’s National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, recommended cutting diplomatic ties, but Carter rejected his advice and, siding with the State Department, recognized the new pro-Soviet government. Shortly thereafter, the new US ambassador to Afghanistan was assassinated in February 1979. (The next United States ambassador to be assassinated would be J. Christopher Stevens in Benghazi, Libya on September 11, 2012.) Yet President Carter was still holding on to the hopes of détente. He was determined, as he had earlier told Leonid Brezhnev, “to improve relations with the Soviet Union on the basis of reciprocity, mutual respect, and advantage.”³³

“Carter-Brezhnev Letters, January–February 1977,” http://astro.temple.edu/~rimmerma/Carter_Brezhnev_letters.htm.

Portions of this introduction appeared in the National Interest, December 26, 2015.

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan shocked Carter into changing course. Six days after the invasion, Carter admitted that his “opinion of the Russians has changed more drastically in the last week than even the previous two and a half years before that.” Addressing Congress the following month, Carter described the Soviet move as the “most serious threat to peace since the Second World War.”⁴⁴ Carter authorized increased lethal military support to the Afghan mujahedeen, withdrew the SALT II treaty from Senate consideration, cancelled grain exports to the Soviet Union, restricted trade in strategic items, led a controversial boycott of the Moscow Olympics, and articulated the “Carter Doctrine” to protect the Persian Gulf from outside (i.e., Soviet) interference. Most importantly, Carter began a defense buildup that was further accelerated by Ronald Reagan.

President Jimmy Carter, “State of the Union Address” (The American Presidency Project, January 23, 1980), http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=33079.

Today, Republicans often call President Obama the worst foreign policy president since Jimmy Carter. But it is increasingly clear this comparison is unfair to Carter. Faced with a series of foreign policy challenges, Carter was willing to admit his previous approach was not working and take steps, in his words, to “make the Soviets pay for their unwarranted aggression.”⁵⁵

Keren Yarki-Milo, Knowing the Adversary: Leaders, Intelligence, and Assessment of Intentions in International Relations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014), http://tinyurl.com/gnftgsu.

President Obama has shown no such urgency or adaptability. Faced with a resurgent Russia, an assertive China that has claimed sovereignty over an entire swath of the Pacific Ocean, the rise of ISIS, the related “apocalyptic disaster” in Syria,⁶⁶ a nuclear-threshold Iran, and increasing threats to the homeland from radical Islamic terrorism, President Obama simply refuses to change course. Instead, the president labels his critics “neocons,”⁷⁷ sets up a straw-man choice between his “lead from behind” policies and all-out war, distances himself from key allies, and apologizes to or weakly negotiates with our adversaries.

Christopher M. Blanchard et al., “Armed Conflict in Syria: Overview and US Response” (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, October 9, 2015), https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/RL33487.pdf.

President Barack Obama, “Press Conference,” Antalya, Turkey, November 16, 2015, https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/11/16/press-conference-president-obama-antalya-turkey.

Asked in August 2015 what lessons he’d learned from recent crises, President Obama said, “There’s no doubt that, after six and a half years, I am that much more confident in the assessments I make and can probably see around the corners faster than I did when I first came into office.” He went on: “And I am confirmed in my belief that much of the time, we are making judgments based on percentages, and . . . there are always going to be some complications . . . so maybe at the same time as I’m more confident today, I’m also more humble.”

During that same six-and-a-half years, I have warned about the growing threats to America and her allies. Section 1 of this book considers the consequences of President Obama’s “lead from behind” isolationist foreign policy. Sadly, friend and foe alike can only conclude that America is currently a nation in retreat. Sections 2 and 3 focus on the decline in the nation’s military capability under this president’s defense sequestration program, especially as it relates to the United States Navy, America’s primary tool for maintaining “presence” and projecting power throughout the world. While disarmament has long been a goal of the “blame America first” crowd, there can be no doubt that abandonment of a “peace through strength” military posture has made the world a more dangerous place. Section 4 discusses the rise of America’s closest “peer competitor”—China. Taking advantage of a United States that is in retreat and intent on cutting its military budget, China is positioning itself to become a superpower. Section 5 reviews several discrete aspects of the global war on terror—a war that President Obama refuses to acknowledge is a war and which he had naïvely hoped to end through a series of apologies and retreats. Section 6 provides encouragement to the Grand Old Party showing that, notwithstanding the drumbeat from the mainstream media that demographics give the Democrats a lock on the White House, there is a bright future for Republicans. In an epilogue, I outline several policies that the new president can implement to return America to its rightful and critical role as the leader of the free world.

Following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, President Carter told the nation on January 4, 1980: “History teaches, perhaps, very few clear lessons. But surely one such lesson learned by the world at great cost is that aggression, unopposed, becomes a contagious disease.”⁸⁸ President Ronald Reagan, Carter’s successor, understood that lesson well. Through strong leadership, close collaboration with American allies and like-minded leaders such as Prime Minister Thatcher and Pope John Paul II, and by rebuilding the United States military to forcefully deter aggression, he won the Cold War, bringing freedom to millions of people around the world.

President Jimmy Carter, “Address to the Nation on the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan” (The American Presidency Project, January 4, 1980), http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=33079. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=32911.

Sadly, in the face of Russian aggression, Chinese expansionism, and Islamic extremism from both ISIS and the Islamic Republic of Iran, this is a lesson that President Obama refuses to learn. His successor will inherit a world in crisis that will require robust and strategic American leadership. The good news is that while America slept during the Obama years, a new president, willing to lead, can usher in another “morning in America.” That is good for our country and for the world.

1 US Department of State, Office of the Historian, “Milestones: 1977–1980” (Washington, DC: US Department of State, October 31, 2013), https://history.state.gov/milestones/1977-1980/soviet-invasion-afghanistan.

2 John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of American National Security Policy during the Cold War (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1982), http://www.amazon.com/Strategies-Containment-Critical-Appraisal-American/dp/019517447X.

3 “Carter-Brezhnev Letters, January–February 1977,” http://astro.temple.edu/~rimmerma/Carter_Brezhnev_letters.htm.

4 President Jimmy Carter, “State of the Union Address” (The American Presidency Project, January 23, 1980), http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=33079.

5 Keren Yarki-Milo, Knowing the Adversary: Leaders, Intelligence, and Assessment of Intentions in International Relations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014), http://tinyurl.com/gnftgsu.

6 Christopher M. Blanchard et al., “Armed Conflict in Syria: Overview and US Response” (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, October 9, 2015), https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/RL33487.pdf.

7 President Barack Obama, “Press Conference,” Antalya, Turkey, November 16, 2015, https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/11/16/press-conference-president-obama-antalya-turkey.

8 President Jimmy Carter, “Address to the Nation on the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan” (The American Presidency Project, January 4, 1980), http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=33079. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=32911.