Obama to Release National Security Strategy as Urgency Over the Islamic State Grows

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Critics of the administration argue that Obama has relied too heavily on international organizations such as the United Nations and NATO to act and punish world bullies when they violate international treaties and norms.

The president, they say, failed to enforce his red-line threat to Syrian President Bashar Assad over his use of chemical weapons on rebels and didn’t stand up to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s incursion into Ukraine.

Worst of all, critics argue, the Obama administration has fallen short in assessing the threat from al Qaeda after it regrouped and established a virulent strain in Yemen and it failed to predict or quickly react to the rise of the Islamic State after pulling all U.S. troops out of Iraq in 2012.

“I’m really looking for a shift to really reflect a viable strategy and an acknowledgement that our previous strategies have fallen short,” said Jonathan Schanzer, a Middle East scholar with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

“The key question I have is whether there’s an admission that our approach has been wrong and whether there are concrete steps to begin to address the problems.”
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