“In light of the Cultural Revolution’s horrors, Nixon’s meeting with Mao appeared inexcusable—and yet it surely helped set China on a path where millions of its citizens have been lifted from poverty and connected to open societies,” Obama declared in accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009. “[W]e must try as best we can to balance isolation and engagement, pressure and incentives.” Such logic helps explain why Obama has said, in reference to the Iran nuclear agreement, that “you don’t make deals like this with your friends,” and why, during a visit to Havana, he emphasized the importance of diplomacy despite his many differences with the Cuban government.
By contrast, Obama seems to believe that the United States and its allies should—in an ideal world, at least—share interests and values. When an ally acts in ways he disapproves of, Obama has been more willing than his recent predecessors to publicly criticize or marginalize it. Often this takes the form of Obama suggesting that while the ally ultimately wants what the U.S. wants, it is going about things the wrong way. Hence Obama’s claim that he and Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte share a desire to crack down on drug trafficking, but that Duterte isn’t doing it “the right way;” or his assertion that steadfast U.S. support for Saudi Arabia against Iran isn’t good for the Saudis, even though they think it is; or his advice, as a “friend and partner of Turkey’s,” that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan avoid an anti-democratic “overreaction” after a failed coup attempt.
Nowhere has this tendency been more evident than in Obama’s relations with Israel, and specifically his longstanding disagreements with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the nuclear deal with Iran and the construction of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
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