Abstract

Barack Obama finishes his second term with a mixed but positive foreign policy legacy. America’s global standing is much improved from the waning days of the George W. Bush administration eight years ago. Obama’s most notable achievements were the international agreement slowing Iran’s progress toward nuclear weapons capability and diplomatic normalisation with Cuba. On the other side of the ledger were his failure to extricate America from military overextension in the greater Mideast and from the global policing mindset that produced that overextension. Also marring his record was his incoherent response to Syria’s deadly civil war and Libya’s collapse into anarchy following the 2011 international intervention.