“Speak softly and carry a big stick” -- Theodore Roosevelt

This seems to sum up President Obama’s foreign policy. Apparently, he believes/hopes that by speaking softly he will bring more nations together to oppose those who threaten the world. So far we have repeatedly heard him speaking softly (Cairo comes to mind), but we have yet to see any evidence that he is carrying that big stick. 

Of course, all US presidents have a “big stick” at their disposal, the US military. But, having a big stick in the closet is different than carrying it. When you take it out of the closet and walk with it on your shoulder, there is at a minimum the implication that you are prepared to use the stick.

Foreign policy, like almost everything else, really comes down to personal relationships -- how the leader of one nation perceives the leader of another. Neville Chamberlain was seen as weak – Hitler attacked. Nikita Khrushchev thought JFK was young, inexperienced and weak – the Cuban missile crisis. Saddam Hussein thought George Bush was bluffing – the Iraq War.

History is littered with corpses of people who paid the price for the perception that their leader was unwilling to use the big stick. We can only pray that speaking softly will carry the day.

“My job to the Muslim world is to communicate that the Americans are not your enemy”, President Obama said in an interview with the Dubai-based Al-Arabiya Network on January 26, 2009.

Did Americans attack the USS Cole? Did they attack Kuwait? Did they attack the Muslim world on 9-11?

It may seem fine to present “a humble and conciliatory face of America to the Islamic world” (Politico), but it is not without risks. A similarly young and inexperienced American president, John F. Kennedy, met with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev and held out the humble hand of reconciliation to him.

As recounted in The New York Times (May 22, 2008):

Paul Nitze, the assistant secretary of defense, said the meeting was “just a disaster.”

Khrushchev agreed, noting that the youthful Kennedy was “too intelligent and too weak.”

Kennedy’s assessment of his own performance was no less severe…“He just beat the hell out of me. I’ve got a terrible problem if he thinks I’m inexperienced and have no guts. Until we remove those ideas we won’t get anywhere with him.”

Unfortunately, especially from America, being humble, kind and conciliatory is often seen as being weak.