Officially the current motto of the Obama administration's foreign policy is "Don't do stupid shit."
The real policy, as outlined in the president's West Point speech, is "It doesn't matter what happens in the world as long as it doesn't affect Americans." While this sounds fairly harmless, it has proved to be disastrous.
The Ebola outbreak is an example. The US was slow to react because it was only killing foreigners. The US government didn't step up its reaction until an American aid worker was infected. The problem here is that plagues can't be contained. The best way to stop Ebola in the US is to stop it in Africa. This means putting US personnel at risk, helping to treat African victims but if it continues to spread then it will come here and start killing American civilians.
Syria is another example. When the civil war there started, outsiders urged Obama to get involved by finding non-Islamic rebels and arming them. Obama did virtually nothing at the casualties mounted. Even when Syria crossed his red line and used WMDs, he faltered. It is obvious that he didn't want to get involved as long as the conflict only involved foreigners killing each others. Hundreds of thousands dead and over a million displaced was not enough to sway Obama.
This continued as the war spilled over into Iraq and the gains made under the Bush administration were lost. Obama dismissed the Islamic State as a Junior Varsity team despite intelligence briefings that said they were very dangerous to the US. Reports of mass slaughter of conquered men and enslavement of women was insufficient to convince Obama to do anything against the Islamic State.
Obama didn't change his mind until the IS began beheading Americans. By that point it was too little, too late. Air strikes are not enough and the President is still unwilling to take sides in Syria.
The result of Obama's earlier inaction is that Ebola is spreading with no end in sight and the Islamic State has conquered a third of Iraq with no sign of slowing.
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