Henry R. Nau: Obama’s Foreign Policy - The Swing Away From Bush ... How Far To Go?
[Henry R. Nau is professor of political science and international affairs at the Elliott School of International Affairs, The George Washington University.]
American foreign policy swings like a pendulum. Under President George W. Bush, U.S. foreign policy promoted a democracy agenda, used force readily to buttress and at times even displace diplomacy, championed free markets, and risked if not relished unilateralism. Under President Barrack Obama, U.S. foreign policy has swung decisively in the opposite direction. Now, U.S. security interests matter more than democracy, force is a last resort, substantial regulations are needed to end the booms and busts of global capitalism, and multilateralism is the sine qua non of U.S. diplomacy.
After more than a year, it is not too early to evaluate the pendulum swings in American foreign policy and ask whether or not Obama is likely to stop the pendulum this time around.
Successful American presidents have stopped the pendulum to achieve novel and lasting contributions to American security and ideals. Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman ended pendulum swings between ambitious internationalism under Woodrow Wilson and isolationist nationalism under Harding and Coolidge. Roosevelt blended internationalist and nationalist concepts to commit the United States to multilateral participation in the United Nations while reserving sovereign veto rights for the United States and other great powers on the un Security Council. When the un system failed, Truman adapted Roosevelt’s formula to regional security and created the Western institutions of nato, the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty, the European Community, and Bretton Woods that defended and rebuilt postwar Europe and Japan.
Ronald Reagan stopped Cold War pendulum swings between containment and detente. He rejected both the balance of power antics of Richard Nixon and human rights initiatives of Jimmy Carter. Like Roosevelt and Truman he combined realism and idealism to confront and reassure the Soviet Union at the same time. Reagan’s military and economic buildups upped the ante in a competition the Soviets could not win while his diplomacy of expanding freedom and reducing reliance on offensive nuclear weapons offered a cooperative alternative the Soviet Union and its satellites could not resist. The effect of Reagan’s strategy was to narrow Soviet economic and military options and encourage Soviet domestic reforms. In that sense Reagan helped bring reformers like Mikhail Gorbachev to power in Moscow. He and Gorbachev then ended not only the Cold War but also the Soviet Union. As John Lewis Gaddis points out in Strategies of Containment, “no administration prior to Reagan had deliberately sought to exploit those tensions [in the Soviet Union] with a view to destabilizing the Kremlin leadership and accelerating the decline of the regime it ran.”
Since Reagan, American presidents have been less successful at stopping the pendulum. George H.W. Bush in the first Persian Gulf War, and Bill Clinton in Somalia, swung American policy decisively toward the un and assertive multilateralism. Then, after the un flopped in Bosnia and Kosovo, George W. Bush pushed the pendulum in the opposite direction. In response to 9/11, he eschewed un multilateralism altogether and disdained nato help in invading Afghanistan and Iraq. He made a virtue of unilateralism and lost worldwide credibility. All three presidents suffered reversals, tacking back and forth between engagement and withdrawal without a clear sense of where the pendulum stops.
Will Obama experience the same fate? The chances are good that he will. He has swung the pendulum decisively against George W. Bush. After more than a year, he continues to blame Bush shamelessly for every problem he faces. This reactive tendency is not just partisan; it is part of a broader intellectual and management style. As a self-proclaimed pragmatist, Obama takes on problems as he inherits them. He reacts to what history serves up and sees the world as a complex system in which everything is interconnected. Problems have to be addressed comprehensively, or, like squeezing a balloon, progress in one area will only distort progress in others. He thinks and acts systematically, puzzling about how things fit together; he does not think and act strategically, identifying key problems that cause or unlock other problems. His style is oriented toward “fixing” the world, rather than “shaping” it.
In his first year Obama addressed every conceivable foreign policy crisis on the globe. He reset relations with Russia; visited China; agonized over Afghanistan, Iraq, North Korea, and Iran; reached out to the Muslim world; attempted to regain Europe’s trust; tried to jumpstart the Middle East peace process; and promoted economic recovery, climate change, and energy independence. He rarely indicated which problem was more important than another and bounced from topic to topic and region to region. 1 In this sense, Obama is clearly pragmatic. He is, as he told a Republican congressional audience in January, no ideologue. But his pragmatism is ideological. He has a coherent worldview that highlights “shared” interests defined by interconnected material problems such as climate, energy, and nonproliferation and deemphasizes “sovereign” interests that separate countries along political and moral lines. He tacks away from topics that he believes divide nations — democracy, defense, markets, and unilateral leadership — and toward topics that he believes integrate them — stability, disarmament, regulations, and diplomacy. He has been called a president for the post-American world, but he may actually be a president for the post-sovereign world. He is a policy pragmatist in response to a worldview of shared community interests that transcend sovereign national interests.
Given his worldview, Obama is unlikely to stop the pendulum. Successful presidents stopped the pendulum because they understood that there are no trade-offs between shared and sovereign interests. Common outcomes — stability, diplomacy, regulations, and multilateralism — depend upon competitive alternatives — democracy, defense, markets, and leadership. There is no lasting stability without progress toward democracy. Diplomacy is not effective without strengthened defense and the threat of the use of force. Regulations need markets to avoid the sclerosis of statism, and unilateralism or aggressive leadership is often the only defense against the malaise of multilateralism.
Let’s look more closely at the four areas in which American foreign policy swings, and at where Obama seems to be heading...
Read entire article at Policy Review
American foreign policy swings like a pendulum. Under President George W. Bush, U.S. foreign policy promoted a democracy agenda, used force readily to buttress and at times even displace diplomacy, championed free markets, and risked if not relished unilateralism. Under President Barrack Obama, U.S. foreign policy has swung decisively in the opposite direction. Now, U.S. security interests matter more than democracy, force is a last resort, substantial regulations are needed to end the booms and busts of global capitalism, and multilateralism is the sine qua non of U.S. diplomacy.
After more than a year, it is not too early to evaluate the pendulum swings in American foreign policy and ask whether or not Obama is likely to stop the pendulum this time around.
Successful American presidents have stopped the pendulum to achieve novel and lasting contributions to American security and ideals. Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman ended pendulum swings between ambitious internationalism under Woodrow Wilson and isolationist nationalism under Harding and Coolidge. Roosevelt blended internationalist and nationalist concepts to commit the United States to multilateral participation in the United Nations while reserving sovereign veto rights for the United States and other great powers on the un Security Council. When the un system failed, Truman adapted Roosevelt’s formula to regional security and created the Western institutions of nato, the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty, the European Community, and Bretton Woods that defended and rebuilt postwar Europe and Japan.
Ronald Reagan stopped Cold War pendulum swings between containment and detente. He rejected both the balance of power antics of Richard Nixon and human rights initiatives of Jimmy Carter. Like Roosevelt and Truman he combined realism and idealism to confront and reassure the Soviet Union at the same time. Reagan’s military and economic buildups upped the ante in a competition the Soviets could not win while his diplomacy of expanding freedom and reducing reliance on offensive nuclear weapons offered a cooperative alternative the Soviet Union and its satellites could not resist. The effect of Reagan’s strategy was to narrow Soviet economic and military options and encourage Soviet domestic reforms. In that sense Reagan helped bring reformers like Mikhail Gorbachev to power in Moscow. He and Gorbachev then ended not only the Cold War but also the Soviet Union. As John Lewis Gaddis points out in Strategies of Containment, “no administration prior to Reagan had deliberately sought to exploit those tensions [in the Soviet Union] with a view to destabilizing the Kremlin leadership and accelerating the decline of the regime it ran.”
Since Reagan, American presidents have been less successful at stopping the pendulum. George H.W. Bush in the first Persian Gulf War, and Bill Clinton in Somalia, swung American policy decisively toward the un and assertive multilateralism. Then, after the un flopped in Bosnia and Kosovo, George W. Bush pushed the pendulum in the opposite direction. In response to 9/11, he eschewed un multilateralism altogether and disdained nato help in invading Afghanistan and Iraq. He made a virtue of unilateralism and lost worldwide credibility. All three presidents suffered reversals, tacking back and forth between engagement and withdrawal without a clear sense of where the pendulum stops.
Will Obama experience the same fate? The chances are good that he will. He has swung the pendulum decisively against George W. Bush. After more than a year, he continues to blame Bush shamelessly for every problem he faces. This reactive tendency is not just partisan; it is part of a broader intellectual and management style. As a self-proclaimed pragmatist, Obama takes on problems as he inherits them. He reacts to what history serves up and sees the world as a complex system in which everything is interconnected. Problems have to be addressed comprehensively, or, like squeezing a balloon, progress in one area will only distort progress in others. He thinks and acts systematically, puzzling about how things fit together; he does not think and act strategically, identifying key problems that cause or unlock other problems. His style is oriented toward “fixing” the world, rather than “shaping” it.
In his first year Obama addressed every conceivable foreign policy crisis on the globe. He reset relations with Russia; visited China; agonized over Afghanistan, Iraq, North Korea, and Iran; reached out to the Muslim world; attempted to regain Europe’s trust; tried to jumpstart the Middle East peace process; and promoted economic recovery, climate change, and energy independence. He rarely indicated which problem was more important than another and bounced from topic to topic and region to region. 1 In this sense, Obama is clearly pragmatic. He is, as he told a Republican congressional audience in January, no ideologue. But his pragmatism is ideological. He has a coherent worldview that highlights “shared” interests defined by interconnected material problems such as climate, energy, and nonproliferation and deemphasizes “sovereign” interests that separate countries along political and moral lines. He tacks away from topics that he believes divide nations — democracy, defense, markets, and unilateral leadership — and toward topics that he believes integrate them — stability, disarmament, regulations, and diplomacy. He has been called a president for the post-American world, but he may actually be a president for the post-sovereign world. He is a policy pragmatist in response to a worldview of shared community interests that transcend sovereign national interests.
Given his worldview, Obama is unlikely to stop the pendulum. Successful presidents stopped the pendulum because they understood that there are no trade-offs between shared and sovereign interests. Common outcomes — stability, diplomacy, regulations, and multilateralism — depend upon competitive alternatives — democracy, defense, markets, and leadership. There is no lasting stability without progress toward democracy. Diplomacy is not effective without strengthened defense and the threat of the use of force. Regulations need markets to avoid the sclerosis of statism, and unilateralism or aggressive leadership is often the only defense against the malaise of multilateralism.
Let’s look more closely at the four areas in which American foreign policy swings, and at where Obama seems to be heading...