Barrel Strength

The lack of economic policy to address the financial crisis might be due to the fact that Obama administration is busy undoing the foreign policy initiatives of the previous Bush administration.  And what an effort it is!

News stories abound today about UK planning a rift with US which is obviously a pushback by the Obama administration to earlier comments by the head of the civil service in UK, Sir Gus O’Donnell:

In an extraordinary blunder, the usually-guarded Sir Gus said no-one in the U.S. Treasury department was answering telephone calls.

He said it meant the Government was finding it ‘unbelievably difficult’ to hold discussions ahead of the meeting of world leaders in London.

Even though the world was in the grip of the worst economic crisis in decades – top of the G20 agenda – Number 10 was having trouble getting in touch with key personnel, said the Cabinet Secretary.

‘There is nobody there,’ he told a civil service conference in Gateshead.

‘You cannot believe how difficult it is.’

There seems to be a trend in this administration in picking fights with allies.  Whether it is free trade with South Korea or abrogating a defense agreement with India.  The latter is interesting given the scope of rejection, involving UK and Australia, as well as the fact that Bush administration worked hard to make India an ally.

The Indian Navy chose to power its indigenously designed, cutting-edge stealth warship, the INS Shivalik, with gas turbines from American company General Electric (GE). But even as the Shivalik readies for sea trials, the US State Department has ordered GE to stop all work on the turbines it has supplied….

GE has told MDL that there could be up to three months delay, while the new US administration reviews its military relations with several countries. India is not alone in facing this ban; GE has been told to stop work even with close US allies like the UK and Australia.

The rejection of allies and the corresponding attempts to improve relations with countries hostile to US interests, such as Syria, Russia and Iran, is bizarre and contrary to Political Realism which this administration was suppose to spawn, when it rejected neoconservative foreign policy.  In the real word is there such thing as a moderate Taliban?  Is it any wonder that the Chinese are testing the US mettle in South China Sea and North Korea is doing the same in the Korean peninsula?