It is widely accepted that the White House has no coherent foreign policy strategy. The chaos in the Middle East, Ukraine, and Nigeria has left the White House embarrassed.
"This goes to the larger issue that we’ll hear about from Susan Rice about a national security strategy that doesn’t seem to exist in the Obama administration," Chuck Todd said.
President Obama said he hopes to change that appearance with a national security strategy document that will be released Friday. The document is an explanation of current policies, rather than the shift in policy members of Congress have called for.
The document will defend Obama’s actions as an intentional strategy that is working. Susan Rice will call for "strategic patience" with the conflicts in Syria and Ukraine when she unveils the president’s plan. Critics believe that the U.S. has been passive in combatting aggression abroad.
The president’s step backward in foreign policy is deliberate, according to the NSS document. He will make the argument that while America’s military power cannot be questioned, the country does not posses the capabilities or resources to pursue solutions for every conflict in the world.
Obama faces criticism from his own advisers that his acquiescent attitude with the Islamic State and Putin further exasperated the crises abroad, allowing the regions to get out of control. Susan Rice calling for continuation of the current policy is unlikely to please those critics.