The Atlantic

A Reckoning for Obama's Foreign-Policy Legacy

Veterans of the last administration are learning a hard lesson: Policies constructed by executive order and executive agreement are just as easily blown up by them.
Source: Andrew Harnik / AP

Embedded in any policy is some theory of victory—some explanation, no matter how inchoate or ill-considered, that explains why this might work. So too with President Trump’s decision to walk away from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the agreement with Iran so ungainly that even the acronym JCPOA seems elegant by comparison. The nominal theory of victory here is preposterous: that Iran will come to heel, retreat from its nefarious activities in the Middle East, end ancillary programs such as its ballistic-missile work that support the nuclear program, and permanently renounce its nuclear program in word and deed. Such behavior would be inconsistent with anything Iran has done in the past and would be a crushing humiliation that would jeopardize the very survival of the

You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

More from The Atlantic

The Atlantic7 min readAmerican Government
Could South Carolina Change Everything?
For more than four decades, South Carolina has been the decisive contest in the Republican presidential primaries—the state most likely to anoint the GOP’s eventual nominee. On Saturday, South Carolina seems poised to play that role again. Since the
The Atlantic4 min read
Hayao Miyazaki’s Anti-war Fantasia
Once, in a windowless conference room, I got into an argument with a minor Japanese-government official about Hayao Miyazaki. This was in 2017, three years after the director had announced his latest retirement from filmmaking. His final project was
The Atlantic5 min readAmerican Government
What Nikki Haley Is Trying to Prove
This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. Nikki Haley faces terrible odds in her home state of

Related Books & Audiobooks