Obama's Foreign Policy in a Nutshell: Arm Twisting

Lauding the rule-based system to emerge in the post-World War II era [in a long-ranging Vox interview], Obama admitted it wasn’t perfect, but argued “the UN, the IMF, and a whole host of treaties and rules and norms that were established really helped to stabilize the world in ways that it wouldn't otherwise be.”

He argued, however, that the efficacy of this idealistic, Wilsonian, rule-based system was severely tested by the fact that “there are bad people out there who are trying to do us harm.”

  RT

And this is the interview he said was for “braniac nerds.” I wonder how he’d talk to three-year-olds.

Obama argues that the US doesn’t have “military solutions” to all the challenges in the modern world, though he goes on to add that “we don’t have a peer” in terms of states that could attack or provoke the United States.

“The closest we have, obviously, is Russia, with its nuclear arsenal, but generally speaking they can't project the way we can around the world. China can't, either. We spend more on our military than the next 10 countries combined,” he said.

[...]

“American leadership, in part, comes out of our can-do spirit. We're the largest, most powerful country on Earth. As I said previously in speeches: when problems happen, they don't call Beijing. They don't call Moscow. They call us.”

Ghostbusters!

So, he’s still talking to braniac nerds, is he?

Obama further says that “we occasionally have to twist the arms of countries that wouldn't do what we need them to do if it weren't for the various economic or diplomatic or, in some cases, military leverage that we had — if we didn't have that dose of realism, we wouldn't get anything done, either.”

Do three-year-olds understand arm-twisting, or has he raised the bar to kindergarten level?

The Vox Interview transcript (videos available).

Yeah, I'm not going to read it.  Or listen.  Knock yourself out.