President Obama has managed to avoid war with Iran, but his wars still could come back to haunt him, Andrew Levine, a scholar at a Washington think tank told RT, exposing the pitfalls of the US electoral system and Obama’s term in the White House.

RT: You contributed to a book entitled Hopeless: Barack Obama and the politics of Illusion. What was the illusion in your opinion, and how did it become hopeless?

Andrew Levine: Well, Obama of course campaigned on the idea of hope and the possibility of change, but he was skillful in turning himself into something like a Rorschach figure, in which anyone could see whatever they wanted to see. The changes were not certainly ruptures with the past, but they dashed the expectations of virtually every constituency that supported him, because they envisioned transformations of American domestic and foreign policy that were far more far-reaching than what Obama actually even attempted, let alone achieved.

RT: You’re writing that President Obama’s wars could come back to haunt him. In what way could they do so?

AL: Well, they could all fall apart. In effect the US lost both of those wars, even before Obama assumed office. But the imperative that Obama faced, which was also the imperative that George Bush faced in his final years, was not to lose face.

RT: I’d like you to expand a little bit on Afghanistan. You argue that it is turning into a face-saving operation. How is Obama handling that?

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