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
Middle East in 2016 (Part 6): Don’t sell matches to pyromaniacs
