Last week, A.P. reporter Steven Hurst published an article on Barack Obama’s significant changes to American foreign policy, “Analysis: Obama gores foreign policy ox.” In the article, Hurst favorably compares Obama to Mikhail Gorbachev. For Gorbachev realigned the Soviet Union’s longstanding foreign policy just as Obama has rejected the United States’ preceding fifty years (according to Hurst) of international relations policy.
I wondered while I read Hurst’s article if he expects his readers to connect the dots—or if he himself is oblivious to the obvious. Gorbachev did, indeed, transform the Soviet Union’s foreign relations as well as its domestic character—he presided through its collapse.
One wonders about the parallels . . .