On balance, Obama's foreign policy has done more harm than good

I look forward to an exciting debate.The best way to show that a collective foreign policy is “good” is that it leaves the American people better off than before. As foreign policy is defined as a state’s dealings with other states (Google), a good foreign policy should logically produce situations favorable to us in other states; a harmful foreign policy should produce unfavorable conditions. As I think this is mostly common sense, I will not provide an in-depth justification unless my opponent challenges this view, and will instead focus entirely on case-building in this round. I will make efforts to present counterplans in each example that would have substantially reduced the harm caused by Obama’s foreign policies.I will focus on one geographical area for this round, and will bring up other areas in future rounds.In Anticipation of the “Bush” ArgumentBefore I begin, I’d like to address what constitutes the consequences of Bush’s foreign policy, rather than Obama’s. Obviously, the War on Terror cannot be blamed on Obama. The best measure for determining whether something can be considered a failure of Obama’s foreign policy is this: For a policy to be a failure of Obama’s, it must be something that Obama had the capacity for changing while in office. The withdrawal from Iraq and its resultant consequences could arguably be Bush’s fault, as Bush signed the Status of Forces agreement. Yet, as I will show, Obama had the capacity to renegotiate the time frame for withdrawal and did not; therefore, Obama shares the blame for the consequences of withdrawal from Iraq. On the other hand. Obama is not responsible for, say, California having a drought, because the weather is beyond his control. With that established, let's get this party started.The Middle East - Drone WarfareAs this area is the most unstable, and has presented the greatest risks to national security, it shall be the first focus of my arguments. In 2008, Obama ran on a platform of withdrawal from the area, correctly assessing that our toppling of Saddam Hussein was a mistake, and incorrectly assessing that the War on Terror was almost over. During the first term of his presidency, he withdrew troops from Iraq, and began the slow process of withdrawing from Afghanistan (1), The areas vulnerable to terrorism are now largely being hit by targeted drone strikes, rather than patrolled. There are two major problems with the approach: 1) The still imprecise nature of drone strikes has prevented them from crippling Daesh (commonly ISIS in the US), and 2) The many civilian casualties of drones fuel anti-US sentiment to create more terrorists and make cooperation with governments in the area more difficult. While drone strikes have been improving in their precision, between 10-20% of drone strike deaths are civilians (3). The damage has already been done. In Pakistan, where arguably the first major drone campaign took place, more than half of Pakistanis view the US as an enemy (2). This line of thinking increases susceptibility to terrorist groups. Now, it is true that drone warfare is more accurate than more conventional aerial weapons have been. However, that’s like saying that a particular brand of Lima beans is better than the others; they’re all not desirable.Counterplan to Drone WarfareThere are two ways in which these negative consequences could have been avoided. One, the US could have “investigated reported errors and compensated survivors, as the U.S. military has done routinely since 2005 whenever it mistakenly kills civilians in Afghanistan.” (2). Two, it could have kept a larger number of troops on the ground. The withdrawal from Iraq in particular, which Obama made no efforts to renegotiate, allowed ISIS to rapidly spread, taking over major cities in the country (4).His unwillingness to fill the power vacuums in the Middle East set us up for another terrorism crisis. This unwillingness again caused harm in…The Arab Spring - LibyaIt seemed like a new era would be ushered in for the Middle East. Pro-democracy protests erupted everywhere from Tunisia to Libya to Egypt (5). Tunisia has managed to achieve a positive result, but other areas have not been so lucky. Let us focus on Libya. A fantastic article in Foreign Affairs magazine has been written that already explores the situation at length, so I will summarize its key points (6). The flow of events, according to the article, goes like this: 1) An armed uprising began against Qaddafi2) Qaddafi eventually gained the upper hand, retaking all the major cities, while also not targeting any civilians3) While he prepared to retake Benghazi, the last major city under rebel control, the rebels roused fear of a chance of a massacre in the city by Qaddafi4) Obama led NATO in a “humanitarian intervention” to stop this from happening, with as little evidence as the evidence for WMDs in Iraq many years earlier under Bush.5) The rebels were able to launch a counteroffensive, kill Qaddafi, and create a new government6) The government of the rebels collapsed, and Libya became a haven for terroristsObama thus made two critical mistakes. His first was intervening in the first place, when there was no threat. His second, which Obama himself acknowledges, was the unwillingness of the US to “come in full-force” (7), or commit resources to ensuring the stability of the new government. Obama’s failure in Libya directly resulted in the collapse of the country--first Qaddafi’s regime, and then the short-lived democratic regime--and Libya is now a threat to US security due to the rise of extremism in the area. While most of the other Arab Spring nations did not see quite as cataclysmic a result directly at the hands of the US, the unwillingness to “come in full-force” to ensure stability in those areas resulted in an overwhelming failure of the Arab Spring everywhere but Tunisia, and left a power vacuum for Daesh to form in. The counterplan for this is simple: Obama should not have intervened, and should have let Qaddafi regain control.The Arab Spring - SyriaSyria is the other country most demonstrative of an objective failure in Obama’s policies. Unlike Libya, in Syria, the regime was actively hitting civilians with chemical weapons; al-Assad is a far less pleasant dictator (8).The US eventually became militarily involved against Assad, arming and training “moderate opposition”; yet, at the same time, the coalition it leads against Daesh has actively avoided striking any areas where Assad’s forces are present. This sort of neurotic policy, supporting both sides of the war, logically has concluded in the most pressing situation in the Middle East as the war has continued to drag on and more and more extremists have been created. Obama has finally backed off from his demand that Assad be removed from office and has turned to Russia for executing a much better plan. However, much damage has already been done, with the roadmap to peace in the region requiring several more years, thanks to the US armament of rebels (9).Conclusion - The Middle EastIn asking ourselves whether “harm” or “good” was created by Obama’s policies, we have to ask ourselves if the situation in the Middle East resulted in a better situation than we faced on January 1, 2009, or if we have spent billions of dollars and made the region more hostile and more dangerous to Americans. In 2009, the fight against al-Qaeda and extremism seemed to be reaching its end. The number of troops killed in Iraq fell from 961 in 2007 to 322 in 2008 (10). This apparent victory, over the course of Obama’s years, proved to be short-lived, with the rise of Daesh that Obama was unable to anticipate and is unable to effectively confront. The Middle East is in shambles, and extremists are once again a major threat to national security. I typically shy away from anecdotes, but I think this one is particularly appropriate. I recently read 2013's I Am Malala, about the Pakistani woman who was shot by extremists for advocating for women’s education. Obviously, she doesn’t have a very favorable view of the US, criticizing the drone strikes and other military actions, taking an uncompromising view. She also comes across as a very devout Muslim. So, imagine my surprise when I discovered that, in her own country, the book is being banned in private schools because it is apparently too pro-West (11). If calling the US essentially a warmonger is pro-West, what is anti-West? Obama’s foreign policies have continued the alienation of the Middle East and paved the way for the clash of civilizations (more about that in Round 2, as well as Obama’s foreign policies toward other areas).Sources:1. http://www.kunc.org...2. http://www.newyorker.com...3. http://www.nytimes.com...4. http://www.kunc.org...5. http://www.theguardian.com...6. https://www.foreignaffairs.com...7. http://www.huffingtonpost.com...8. http://www.bbc.com...9. http://www.huffingtonpost.com...10. http://icasualties.org...11. http://www.theguardian.com...