The Foreign Policy Legacy of Barack Obama

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.     

Obama's Legacy The Foreign Policy of the Late-Term Obama Administration

The year 2014 was a tipping point for the Barack Obama Administration-that was the year when it strove to forge a legacy of the Obama era but came up against challenges arising from major changes that were taking place internationally and domestically.The Administration was then focused on maintaining a fragile balance between creating this legacy and responding to these challenges.Obama stuck to his fundamental principles when dealing with overseas affairs,but he also came up with new responses.The dynamic balance struck between these two formed the basis of the global strategy of the late-term Obama Administration.The Administration's focus at this time highlights the dilemma it faced in forging a legacy.Further,the foreign policy of Obama and Trump are actually not so different;they both supported some degree of isolationism with a focus on domestic issues.     

The Danzig Question in British Foreign Policy, 1918-1920

Among the many and often bitter territorial disputes following the collapse of Germany and Russia in Central and Eastern Europe — to mention only the questions of Vilna, Memel, Teschen, or Lemberg — the problem of the Polish sea access was particularly explosive and became the most vexing territorial problem of the whole conference. This paper examines the question of Danzig and the lower Vistula within the context of contradicting Polish, German and Western, mainly British ambitions and preferences. The author shows that the proclamation of the Free City of Danzig and the creation of the Polish Corridor, dividing Germany into two parts, was a compromise not liked in Warsaw and Berlin and one the British, always fearing fatal repercussions to future stability, only considered to be the lesser choice of evils.