"The Quiet Grand Strategy Of Barack Obama"

++In the American Conservative by Alfred McCoy,Jr. 

++John Kerry will be meeting with the Iranians in New York to discuss Syria. President Obama will meet with President Putin on Monday to discuss Syria and Russia's military surge in that country. 

++Meanwhile in Washington, President Obama and President Xi have agreed to a cease and desist policy of cyber-hacking on corporations.

++So it behooves us to interpret the tea leaves. Alfred McCoy,Jr. has an article in the American Conservative, which had appeared on September 15 in TomsDispatch  and enlightens us on President Obama as a grand strategist.

++Unlike Paul Wolfowitz and the Committee for a New American Century, McCoy thinks Obama has his grand strategy right. In fact, he ranks Obama with Elihu Root and Zbig in terms of geopolitical brilliance. McCoy believes that you will see Obama's strategy play out over the next twenty years and that it will enhance America's geopolitical power through this century.

++McCoy sees the international competition as between China and America. He points to China's massive investment in securing the Euroasian land mass through infrastructure building and energy projects. He sees their strategy has trying to link Africa to the Euroasian land mass through massive aid packages.

++He says that Obama's Asian pivot has been real and shouldn't be dismissed as TPP,normalization of relations with Burma show. He believes that TPP and the European Trade Pact is about power projection even if it hurts American democracy. You might through in the climate change agreement this December.

++McCoy argues that Obama has had to clean up the messes left from the Cold War,particularly in the normalization of relations with Cuba and the Iran Nuclear Pact. Then he has used his last years in office to cement the deals to move forward.

++McCoy says that Obama purposively left China out of TPP and is enacting a policy of economic and military encirclement of China. McCoy then says we don't know whether this will be successful or whether it will lead to war.

++McCoy comes at this from a Cold War perspective and compares President Obama to the Cold War geostrategists. Henry Kissinger is found lacking in McCoy's book even though he possessed the appropriate cold-bloodedness. He cites Kissinger prolonging the Vietnam War for four years as a black mark on Henry. McCoy approves of President Obama avoiding getting mired in the Middle East like george W did because it doesn't serve a broader geopolitical purpose. You might recall that Wolfowitz and Cheney believed that you create an energy empire to block China's access to oil. It didn't work out so great.

++McCoy says that President Obama's grand strategy is clearly evident in the last two years. Why else do we have secret operations going on in over 135 countries right now?  It is very interesting to see McCoy deal with the critics of Obama like John McCain and Donald Trump who liken him to Jimmy Carter. 

++As an observer,I have noticed a cold-bloodedness in President Obama's foreign policy, not the "cluelessness" the GOP maintains. McCoy deals with the antagonism of the Democrats to the TPP as the price we and President Obama will pay for his strategy. As a cautionary note,McCoy pointed to the disastrous covert actions under Ike which led to President Obama's remedial actions. 

++I guess it is comforting that someone is thinking long-term. The worry is that his successors won't read the memo.