Obama: Clean Break With the Past or Carter-esque Naivete?

Even here in Kosovo, I can hear the buzz about Senator Barack Obama's visit to the Middle East and Europe. The trip comes in the midst of two other foreign policy developments for the candidate.

First is a published report about the 300-person foreign policy team Obama has created. The relevance of this "news" is deftly debunked by my friend Charlie Brown at the Undiplomatic blog. The second is news that Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki supports Obama's approach to the war in Iraq. Both of these issues will provide great fodder for the horde of American journalists in the Obama world tour caravan.

By most conventional measures of an American presidential candidate, Senator Barack Obama's foreign policy credentials are light. He has served four years on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and made several overseas trip, including a much covered visit to Africa in 2006. But beyond that there are few professional experiences which have informed his views of the world. He doesn't have the direct experiences of... Read more.