Yves Smith — What Drives Obama’s Foreign Policy?

It has become commonplace to depict Obama as weak and overly reactive to Republican and media pressure. But that view conveniently ignores that Obama is a Republican in Democratic clothing.

I would not put it exactly that way. I would say that the US is a one party system with two factions that differ only slightly on most major issues and are pretty much in agreement on others, especially foreign policy.

I welcome reader input on how banking plays in, if at all, in the US shift to a more aggressive foreign policy posture.

Following Michael Hudson's analysis, one of the major pillars of globalization under Western hegemony is through financialization dominated by Western finance capital, in particular Wall Street and the City of London. Military conquest and colonization are a things of the past. Under globalization, the purpose of the military is "making the world safe for democracy," read dominance by Western capital and its cronies in the ROW. Under neoliberalism in contrast to classical liberalism, warfare is economic and financial, colonialism becomes neocolonialism, and imperialism becomes neo-imperialism. The chief arms of empire are no longer military power but economic and financial power imposed through Western dominated international institutions, in particular the BIS, IMF, World Bank, and G7. The BRICS are now beginning to revolt against this order and establish a new order. This is leading to conflict that will almost certainly result in war at some point if the US pushes unilateralism as the only acceptable option.

What drives Obama's foreign policy?

The publicly declared US foreign and military policy is global hegemony, including the warning that the US will not to permit any challenge to either American economic superiority or military superiority.

This puts the US on a collision course with a rising China and requires regime change in Russia and Iran to put these energy producers in the Western camp along with the rest of the Middle East and North Africa. Energy became the basis of the Great Game at the time of WWI, and it still is.

Realpolitik is the basis for explaining geopolicy and geostrategy.

Naked Capitalism
What Drives Obama’s Foreign Policy?
Yves Smith