Part 1 of this seven-part series is here; part 2 here; part 3 here: part 4 here; and part 5 here.
Barrel bomb attack in west Ghouta region, Syria, September 2015 (Photo: Stringer/Anadolu Agency/Getty)
Long before Jeffrey Goldberg gentrified the ‘Obama doctrine’, the US president’s approach to foreign policy occupied a somewhat coarser neighbourhood apparently called ‘don’t do stupid shit’.
Obama’s reduction of US foreign policy to a glib aphorism was widely criticised, including by his one-time Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton. And while some would argue that the real organising principle of Obama’s foreign policy, at least in the Middle …read more