Steven Pifer and John E. Herbst: The Obama Doctrine and Ukraine
US President Barack Obama speaks with Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko after the family picture at the COP21 World Climate Change Conference in Le Bourget, north of Paris, on Nov. 30.
In an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic, President Obama laid out key elements of his approach to foreign policy. There is much in it with which one can agree. “Don’t do stupid s——” makes sense as an axiom of foreign policy—or of any policy, for that matter—as does taking deliberate and strategic decisions about when to engage American military power.
