A Realist Talks Realistically About Foreign Policy

Steven Clemons says remarkably sensible things about Obama and Cuba here.  Mr. Clemons notes some of the flaws with Obama’s big foreign policy speech (it’s so big and sprawling he calls it a “kitchen sink” speech), which echo nicely someof my concerns about “And-ism” and policy approaches that try to comprehend everything: Obama fails to make “hard choices” and doesn’t set priorities.  Another interesting point: “hard power” isn’t actually hard in the sense that it is ineffective; “soft power” achieves more and is therefore actually much more “hard” because it is more effective.