Obama signals foreign policy shift but insists: 'America must always lead' --- America should provide global leadership with less recourse to military might in future, Barack Obama announced on Wednesday, proposing a new foreign policy doctrine focused on soft power diplomacy and launching financial grants to fight terrorism through international partnerships instead. -- In a graduation speech to cadets at the US military academy in West Point, New York, the president sought to carve a middle way between the relentless US interventionism of recent decades and a growing isolationist tendency that some fear will leave the world less stable and without a dominant superpower. -- The much-anticipated foreign policy address came after Obama presented a delayed timetable for withdrawing troops from Afghanistan but amid growing criticism from Republicans of foreign policy “weakness” after setbacks in Syria and Ukraine. -- Yet the president rejected the choice between fighting wars or withdrawing from foreign challenges, arguing it was possible for the US to lead through example and by creating international alliances. -- “We have been through a long season of war,” he told the first West Point class to graduate since 9/11 who are unlikely to be sent immediately into combat. -- In future, he said: “US military action cannot be the only – or even primary – component of our leadership in every instance. Just because we have the best hammer does not mean that every problem is a nail.” -- The promise of a less aggressive American foreign policy comes despite Obama's increased use of drone assassinations and continued failure to shut the Guantánamo Bay detention facility. -- Between the end of the cold war and 9/11, US presidents intervened militarily every 17 months on average, including Panama, Kuwait, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia and Kosovo, but Obama said the end of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq offered the chance of a new approach. --- “Here’s my bottom line: America must always lead on the world stage. If we don’t, no one else will,” he said. -- “The question we face ... is not whether America will lead, but how we will lead,” he said. -- In one of the few concrete policy proposals of the speech, Obama gave an example of alternative ways to protect US national security from threats such as terrorism by calling on Congress to support a new $5bn Counterterrorism Partnerships Fund to train and support partner countries in areas such as the Sahel. -- “We must shift our counter-terrorism strategy – drawing on the successes and shortcomings of our experience in Iraq and Afghanistan – to more effectively partner with countries where terrorist networks seek a foothold,” said Obama. - More, Dan Roberts in Washington, Guardian, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/28/obama-foreign-policy-shift-speech-west-point