One of the New Sheriffs in Town

Take a good look.   This is what a woman in a world leadership role  looks like.

While Hillary Clinton is busy running around still blaming misogyny and the Russians for her defeat in November, Nikki Haley is standing up and reasserting America’s moral authority in the world.  She is standing in stark contrast with the women of the prior administration and the prior administration itself.

President Obama spent much of his time in office reducing America’s role in world affairs, offering mea culpas for America’s sins and faults on the world stage.  And of course he filled his inner circle with people that reflected his worldview, like Eric Holder (“America is a nation of cowards”).    Obama’s view was summed up in a single sentence, “there have been times when America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive.”   Rarely, if ever, did we hear Obama or his inner circle extol America’s virtues.  There was little talk of a “city on a hill” or “the last best hope on earth.”  The word “freedom” and “liberty” rarely appeared in Obama speeches.

And while he did this consistently through eight years of his administration, our adversaries watched and noticed.    The world noticed when John Kerry cartoonishly announced, “This is what change looks like,” upon the opening of the U.S. embassy in Cuba, with Castro mocking him and announcing that nothing will change in Cuba as they continued to beat the Ladies in White.  The world noticed when Obama turned his back on freedom loving Iranians during the Green Revolution.   The world noticed when Russia marched into a sovereign nation and America failed to lead a concerted effort to repulse the aggression.  And every bad actor took note when Obama drew a “red line” on the use of WMD in Syria and then failed to act, a catastrophic choice that had far reaching ramifications, and even had Obama supporters perplexed.  

Last week changed all that.  A vital player in this drama is Nikki Haley, and she is doing a spectacular job of beginning to articulate and reassert America’s guiding principles.

Haley’s most important job is to articulate new American foreign policy principles for Donald Trump.  

Her first articulated principle is that the UN no longer exists primarily to turn Israel into a piñata.

And last week, she expressed an important  doctrine---THE USE OR THREAT TO USE WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION WILL CARRY IMMEDIATE CONSEQUENCES, WHETHER THEY ARE USED AGAINST A REGIME’S OWN PEOPLE OR THOSE OF OTHER SOVEREIGN NATIONS.   

Haley has been firm, steadfast, and unequivocal.  She announced that the United States would act unilaterally and quickly to respond to the use of WMD by Syria.  And just as important, she quickly rebuffed Bolivia’s attempt to have the UN Security Council meet in closed session, “Any country that chooses to defend the atrocities of the Syrian regime will have to do so in full public view, for the world to hear.”

Her firmness contrasts starkly with her predecessor,  Samantha Power.  I hold Power in particular contempt.   She piously excoriated the United States in her book (which I read cover to cover): A Problem from Hell: America in the Age of Genocide, in which she claimed that the U.S. was historically slow and timid in its reaction to instances of genocide in the 20^th century.   When she assumed the role of U.N. ambassador there were initial fears that she would lead us to intervene in multiple internecine squabbles across the globe.  Instead she stood mostly mute as ISIS rampaged the Middle East and radical Islam waged genocide against Christendom and the Judaic world.   She will be most remembered for her vote to withhold the U.S. veto of the UN demand to end Israeli settlements.

Nikki Haley has a difficult job of providing the moral and intellectual substance behind the foreign policy of a maverick president and articulating it both to the U.S. and the world.  It appears that she will be unveiling it piece by piece.

Since 9/11, we have grown a bit complacent in our acceptance of weapons of mass destruction.  The nonproliferation regime is fraying.   It’s bad enough that Pakistan has a nuclear arsenal, but now North Korea’s is growing and they have made overt threats to us.  With the failure of the Obama/Kerry/Rice deal with Putin with respect to chemical weapons in Syria, we now have reason to be skeptical about the viability of the nuclear deal with Iran.

Samantha Power may have written the book on genocide, but Nikki Haley is doing something about it.  I predict that she may turn out to be the best U.N. ambassador since Jeanne Kirkpatrick.   And I also predict that when things don’t roll her way, she won’t be blaming misogyny.