Obama’s Legacy of Unfinished Businesses: Coercive Rhetoric and the Defiance of American Exceptionalism

Abstract

The article explores the legacy of Obama's foreign policy based on the administration's engagement towards the defined 'core' foreign policy regions, aimed to renew the contemporary American identity. It argues how Obama's rhetoric in Asia-Pacific to rebalance the region has resulted to the adoption of an assertive and belligerent stance of China, with suspicions aimed at possible US coerciveness to undermine China's regional order and ambitions especially in the South China Sea. It further argues of Obama's failure to fully embrace the concept of American Exceptionalism in handling the contemporary power dynamics and anarchy of the Middle East, defying traditional US missionary policies with foreign policy elements of inconsistencies, cautiousness, and skepticism. Finally the article concludes of Obama's legacy with the continual regional disorders spurred by America's retreat in the Middle East, and China's belligerent rise in Asia.