President Obama’s Foreign Policy Legacy as He Sees It

President Obama’s Foreign Policy Legacy as He Sees It
President Barack Obama walks back to the Oval Office of the White House, Washington, March 14, 2016 (AP photo by Pablo Martinez Monsivais).

The American foreign policy community is abuzz over the remarkable essay by The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg on President Barack Obama’s legacy. The article provides ample evidence that Obama is a fine conceptual thinker with great insight into the evolution of international politics away from America’s “unipolar moment.” His successors may try to reverse or slow down the trends Obama identifies, but in the long run, they will find themselves following his path.

As the remaining months of his presidency reach the single digits, Obama has offered us the first draft of his foreign policy legacy. In a wonderfully rich article based on multiple interviews, Goldberg presents the president as a strategic thinker who has worked to guide the huge machine of American national security in new directions. In his mind, he is not trapped by the past and is working to goad and persuade an often reluctant system to rethink when and how to apply American power to the daunting list of international problems it faces.

The president has been animated by a few broad principles throughout his tenure. The unipolar moment of the immediate post-Cold War period has ended, and the U.S. must adjust to an international system where it shares power and responsibility with other countries. Those countries, to be sure, have undeveloped and uneven capacities for global leadership, so the United States still has a disproportionate role in world affairs. But it has to be agile and smart in enabling others to do their fair share. Obama’s worldview is sophisticated and forward-looking; he is not focused on preserving the status quo, but envisioning the world beyond it.

Keep reading for free!

Get instant access to the rest of this article by submitting your email address below. You'll also get access to three articles of your choice each month and our free newsletter:

Or, Subscribe now to get full access.

Already a subscriber? Log in here .

What you’ll get with an All-Access subscription to World Politics Review:

A WPR subscription is like no other resource — it’s like having a personal curator and expert analyst of global affairs news. Subscribe now, and you’ll get:

  • Immediate and instant access to the full searchable library of tens of thousands of articles.
  • Daily articles with original analysis, written by leading topic experts, delivered to you every weekday.
  • Regular in-depth articles with deep dives into important issues and countries.
  • The Daily Review email, with our take on the day’s most important news, the latest WPR analysis, what’s on our radar, and more.
  • The Weekly Review email, with quick summaries of the week’s most important coverage, and what’s to come.
  • Completely ad-free reading.

And all of this is available to you when you subscribe today.

More World Politics Review