Obama, Us Foreign Policy and the Dilemmas of Intervention

This timely study explores the dilemmas of US intervention within the broad context of the history of foreign policy in America and with a specific focus on the Obama administration. Framed by three dominant US narratives centred on the desire to feel good, safe, and strong, Ryan and Fitzgerald analyse the tactical use of language and 'lessons' of history and how these have shaped Washington's decisions, discourses, policies and interventions in particular ways.

Using landscape as a metaphor, the book contrasts the impressionistic depiction of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria against the more granular actuality of internal dynamics, people and forces, to reveal how the gaps between American understanding, necessarily centred on the beholder's view of the landscape and local realities, frequently undermine US strategies and interests.

David Fitzgerald is Lecturer in International Politics in University College Cork, Ireland and specializes in the history of counterinsurgency and the history of American military culture.
 
David Ryan is Chair of Modern History in University College Cork, Ireland and has published extensively on contemporary history and US foreign policy concentrating on the interventions in the post-Vietnam era.

1. Good, Safe, Strong: Obama and the Impossible Reconciliation
2. Obama and Iraq: the 'Dumb' War
3. Afghanistan, Escalation and the 'Good War'
4. Afghan 'Good Enough'
5. The Libya Exception
6. Syria and the Dilemmas of Intervention
Conclusion