Jeffrey Goldberg, Columnist

Obama's Real Foreign-Policy Problem

President Barack Obama -- who today at West Point offered a recalibration of his foreign policy -- has made no catastrophic missteps in that realm over his term-and-a-half in office.

May 28, 2014 at 5:25 PM UTC

By Jeffrey Goldberg

Jeffrey Goldberg is a columnist for Bloomberg View writing about the Middle East, U.S. foreign policy and national affairs. He is a national correspondent for the Atlantic, the author of "Prisoners: A Story of Friendship and Terror" and a winner of the National Magazine Award for reporting. He has also covered the Middle East as a staff writer for the New Yorker. Goldberg began his career at the Washington Post. He later wrote a column for the Jerusalem Post, covered the Mafia for New York magazine, and wrote for several years for the New York Times Magazine. He has been a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and a fellow of the Jerusalem Foundation. He was born in New York, and now lives in Washington with his wife and three children.

Commander in chief, not analyst in chief.  Photographer: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images — Commander in chief, not analyst in chief. Photographer: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images

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President Barack Obama -- who today at West Point offered a recalibration of his foreign policy -- has made no catastrophic missteps in his conduct of foreign policy over his term-and-a-half in office. (Yes, I know -- Benghazi. Thank you.)

The Middle East peace process was mishandled, particularly during Obama's first term, but it's hard to blame Israeli-Palestinian dysfunction on any American president. Syria may turn into a national-security calamity for the U.S. (It's already a moral calamity for the entire civilized world.) But American troops aren't dying, and Syrian chemical weapons aren't being used against American allies.