President Obama delivered a speech in Cairo today. In it, the President of the United States outlined what could well be called the Obama Doctrine. Yet, for those hoping for significant change from past administrations, there was much lacking.

Despite what some have claimed, the speech did not outline a new beginning. While a few of the details have changed, President Obama has reiterated the flawed Wilsonian idealism that caused his predecessor so much trouble. Distancing his administration from the excesses of that previous is the right approach for President Obama to take, but the fundamentals of what he preaches are in-line with what has been said before; the United States remains committed to pushing democracy in the region. In reiterating this point of view, however, President Obama simply misses the point of why his country remains so unpopular in much of the world.

Constant interference in the affairs of western Asia has contributed the threat of international terrorism and economic uncertainty at home. While there is credibility to the argument that a failure to rebuild Afghanistan after the proxy war there during the Carter and Reagan years has contributed the problems faced by it and Pakistan, it is not the principal cause of hostility to the United States in the region. Rather, using other lands for our own short-term interests before ultimately ignoring the resulting problems is what has fermented so much discontent and ill will in the region. Within the context of the times and the challenges, involvement in Afghanistan may have been the correct decision in the midst of the wider ideological and geopolitical contest with the forces of Soviet authoritarianism. Indeed, much like how the failure to tie up loose ends in Afghanistan in 1989 helped to give rise to the Taliban, the failure to topple the warmonger Saddam Hussein following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait has contributed to enduring conflicts and challenges throughout Western Asia. However, the world has changed since 1991 and the long-overdue end of Soviet Communism.

With the cessation of the Cold War, and the demise (if delayed) of its malcontents and instigators, the U.S. foreign policy focus on interventionism should have similarly ceased. When it became clear that the forces of capitalism had won, economic liberalization, rather than force of arms, should have arisen as the focus of foreign policy for the United States.

Instead, President Clinton stirred up anti-American sentiment with his interventions in the Balkans that remain without firm resolution. Ironically, supporters of these wars of choice complained the loudest when the younger George Bush sought to use interventionism as a means of spreading American values while eliminating regional security threats in both western Asia and western Africa. While history and time will judge both men more accurately than anyone can at present, both failed to one extent or another to take the focus of American foreign policy away from interventionism and towards free trade. Now, it seems, despite his calls for hope and change, the current President of the United States is conducting his foreign policy similarly.

To be clear, President Obama outlined some good proposals in his Cairo speech. The President is right to end American and coalition involvement in Iraq gradually now that the latter is governable. Similarly, President Obama is correct in his call for the West to help fight the spread of preventable disease throughout western Asia. Likewise, President Obama was right in his statements regarding Iran, where a presidential election is set to soon occur. Furthermore, the President was right to commit the United States to assisting in the nonviolent development of a lasting peace between Israel, the Palestinians, and the wider Arab world, even if his exact perspective on the dispute is flawed. Fundamentally, however, the President showed no real commitment to actual change. Indeed, personal liberty and constitutional democracy will only take hold in the areas of the world where these notions remain absent when only when capitalism is embraced.

It has now been twenty years since the nominally Communist government of the People’s Republic of China cracked down on demonstrators seeking democratic reforms in the country. But, since that time, it has become more evident for the leadership there that capitalist prosperity requires a high degree of personal liberty. As such, the liberalization of China continues rather gradually.

Yet, the free market of ideas rightly embraced by so many thinkers and politicians of our time requires a free market of goods and services. Only then can a world truly reflective of the best American values actually emerge. Only with a broader focus on the spread of trade and commerce among the peoples and polities of the world can a real change emerge in how the government of the United States is perceived. Sadly, to offer such would run contrary to the statist, interventionist focus President Obama has proposed and enacted domestically.

Last 5 posts by James Kane

• A November to Remember - November 8th, 2010
• On hope and fear - October 18th, 2010
• Expecting Different Results - September 12th, 2010
• A glaring omission on Iraq - August 31st, 2010
• Employing a losing strategy - August 7th, 2010