Cohen insightfully applies a theory designed for urban improvement to the world stage. He shows how by being passive, by not putting out small fires, President Obama encouraged big fires to be set.
I hope you find Cohen's thinking as persuasive as I do.
President Obama eschewed a broken windows approach to foreign relations. He treated every crisis as an isolated event or problem unrelated to anything bigger. He did not understand that by doing so, the world's bad guys felt that no one was watching.Americans may hate being the world's policemen, but when we take a vacation from that role as the President has done, the worldwide "neighborhood" goes to hell in the ways Cohen details. When every place in the world is no more than a one day plane flight from every other place, isolationism doesn't work.
(The) Obama administration has contributed a lexicon of passivity to international relations -- "leading from behind," "we don't have a strategy yet" and the hardly Churchillian "don't do stupid stuff."
Sorry, Libertarians, it isn't true that folks will leave us alone if we leave them alone. ISIS won't be happy until every one of us bows toward Mecca five times a day and gives up pork and alcohol, things I choose not to do.
