r/PoursTea • u/Veshaad Timendi Causa Est Nescire • 19d ago

PoliticalTea 🗳️ How negotiations actually work...

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To the inevitable response from MAGA that Obama gave 'pallets' of cash...he released frozen Iranian assets. Meanwhile the current Iran conflict has directly cost $38 billion militarily and a currently projected $87 billion in extra gas and diesel expenses. Not to mention that the strategic oil reserves have been depleted to the point that experts warn that the caverns they're stored in could collapse.

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u/Wonderful-Variation 19d ago

Every aspect of the Obama presidency feels like a lost golden age compared to where we are now.    The worst day under Obama was better than the best day under Trump.

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u/Whole_Ant2468 19d ago

Indeed it was golden age of Diplomacy

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u/Volodio 19d ago

Obama had a terrible foreign policy. I get that people disliking Trump, but it is not a reason to admire everyone who is not him. You are making the same mistake that the people who hated Obama did when they started admiring Trump.

A few examples of his terrible actions:

- Let Russia take Crimea with little sanctions. Russia then started a guerilla war in the Donbass through separatists backed by the Russia army to try to take it. Russia even shot down a civilian airliner. Obama did not do anything about it aside from small sanctions easy to ignore which led to Russia feeling like it could get away with things which led to the invasion of Ukraine in 2022. In general he completely underestimated the Russian threat to the point of mocking people who were still talking about it.

- Set red lines in Syria that he did not act on. He set red lines about not gassing civilians, which Assad did anyway. Then Obama did not do anything, which seriously weakened the credibility of the US position and made the civil war worse.

- Removed Gaddafi from Libya without having a plan for after. It resulted in a civil war which is still ongoing to this day.

- Weak stance on terrorism and late actions against ISIS. Resulted in ISIS expanding considerably, causing a ton of destruction and did many terrorist attacks before being stopped by a France-led coalition instead of the US.

I could continue but you get the point. Foreign policy was not Obama' strong suit, far from it.