Ike and Obama: Is crisis avoidance the dominant foreign policy trait of both?

During the summer, the Best Defense is in
re-runs. Here are some favorites that ran in late 2012 and in 2013. This item originally
ran on Feb. 18, 2013.

I was in a
discussion the other day of the Obama administration's foreign policy. The more
I listened, the more President Obama began to remind me of President
Eisenhower.

There is indeed a
long list of foreign crises pending right now:

getting out of
Afghanistan




Syria




Iran/nukes




Af/Pak




Pakistan vs.
India




China vs. Japan




slow collapse
of North Korea




global warming




European
economic situation




advent of
cyber-warfare

But as I listened
to the discussion, I thought of President Eisenhower, who took office and set
to getting us out of the Korean War, as Obama did with Iraq. He also worked
hard to keep us out of the French war in Vietnam, overriding the Joint Chiefs'
desire to use nukes to help the French. He also rejected pleas of many to
intervene in the Hungarian Revolution. And he had the Suez Crisis, with the
French and British. Then there were issues of Stalin's successors in the Soviet
Union, which was rapidly building its nuclear arsenal.

I suspect that
Obama's dominant impulse is to keep us out of the problems he sees overseas,
just as Ike sought to keep us out of Vietnam and Hungary. Many people disagreed
with his decisions. But he was a successful president.