Peter Beinart: Obama's Foreign Policy Has Failed
[Peter Beinart, senior political writer for The Daily Beast, is associate professor of journalism and political science at City University of New York and a senior fellow at the New America Foundation. His new book is The Icarus Syndrome: A History of American Hubris.]
Just over three years ago, acclaimed author and campaign adviser Samantha Power published a memo outlining the foreign policy Barack Obama would pursue if elected president. It was called “Conventional Washington versus the Change We Need.” Power’s argument—aimed straight at then-candidate Hillary Clinton—was that merely replacing George W. Bush with a Democrat would not truly change American foreign policy. It would not truly change American foreign policy because many of Bush’s policies had been supported by “the foreign-policy establishment of both parties,” which remained enthralled to a “bankrupt conventional wisdom.” Obama, she suggested, offered something different. As with his opposition to the Iraq War, he would offer “fresh strategic thinking” undeterred by charges that he was “weak, inexperienced, and even naive.” He represented “a break from a broken way of doing things.”
Three years later, measured by the criteria Power laid out, Obama’s foreign policy has failed. The failure started soon after Obama’s election, when he assembled a foreign-policy team—led by Hillary Clinton herself—drawn from the very “foreign-policy establishment” that Power derided. The people Obama has installed in key positions are smart, earnest, and hard-working, but they lack exactly the quality that Power promised would define his foreign policy: a willingness to challenge conventional wisdom, even when it entails political risks. To the contrary, the foreign-policy wonks who did stake out provocative positions—Robert Malley, for instance, who incurred the wrath of the “pro-Israel” establishment for questioning U.S. policy toward Hamas, or Kenneth Pollack and Michael O’Hanlon, who incurred the wrath of the liberal blogosphere for supporting the Iraq surge—did not get jobs. The people who did are, for the most part, foreign-policy versions of Elena Kagan: ambitious, talented people who have never publicly espoused a truly controversial opinion about anything. The difference is that in foreign policy, unlike the Supreme Court, there is no lifetime tenure, so habits of conventionality and caution, once learned, rarely go away.
All this helps to explain the absence of memorable Obama speeches about America’s relationship to the world. From his 2002 speech at West Point junking containment and deterrence to his 2005 inaugural promising a campaign to end tyranny, George W. Bush laid out his foreign-policy views in sharp, bold strokes. Most of Obama’s speeches, by contrast, are so exquisitely nuanced that they stop just short of saying anything that anyone could really disagree with. The Bush administration was a festival of grand doctrines and controversial figures; the Obama administration, for all its brainpower, is intellectually bland.
That’s not to say Obama has no foreign-policy accomplishments. Using the financial crisis to replace the G-8 with the G-20 was a valuable shift in global architecture. America’s relationship with Russia has improved; Pakistan is getting more serious attention; U.S. diplomacy no longer needlessly alienates the world. But Power’s point was that true success would require fundamentally challenging the conventional wisdom in both parties, and that hasn’t happened...
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Just over three years ago, acclaimed author and campaign adviser Samantha Power published a memo outlining the foreign policy Barack Obama would pursue if elected president. It was called “Conventional Washington versus the Change We Need.” Power’s argument—aimed straight at then-candidate Hillary Clinton—was that merely replacing George W. Bush with a Democrat would not truly change American foreign policy. It would not truly change American foreign policy because many of Bush’s policies had been supported by “the foreign-policy establishment of both parties,” which remained enthralled to a “bankrupt conventional wisdom.” Obama, she suggested, offered something different. As with his opposition to the Iraq War, he would offer “fresh strategic thinking” undeterred by charges that he was “weak, inexperienced, and even naive.” He represented “a break from a broken way of doing things.”
Three years later, measured by the criteria Power laid out, Obama’s foreign policy has failed. The failure started soon after Obama’s election, when he assembled a foreign-policy team—led by Hillary Clinton herself—drawn from the very “foreign-policy establishment” that Power derided. The people Obama has installed in key positions are smart, earnest, and hard-working, but they lack exactly the quality that Power promised would define his foreign policy: a willingness to challenge conventional wisdom, even when it entails political risks. To the contrary, the foreign-policy wonks who did stake out provocative positions—Robert Malley, for instance, who incurred the wrath of the “pro-Israel” establishment for questioning U.S. policy toward Hamas, or Kenneth Pollack and Michael O’Hanlon, who incurred the wrath of the liberal blogosphere for supporting the Iraq surge—did not get jobs. The people who did are, for the most part, foreign-policy versions of Elena Kagan: ambitious, talented people who have never publicly espoused a truly controversial opinion about anything. The difference is that in foreign policy, unlike the Supreme Court, there is no lifetime tenure, so habits of conventionality and caution, once learned, rarely go away.
All this helps to explain the absence of memorable Obama speeches about America’s relationship to the world. From his 2002 speech at West Point junking containment and deterrence to his 2005 inaugural promising a campaign to end tyranny, George W. Bush laid out his foreign-policy views in sharp, bold strokes. Most of Obama’s speeches, by contrast, are so exquisitely nuanced that they stop just short of saying anything that anyone could really disagree with. The Bush administration was a festival of grand doctrines and controversial figures; the Obama administration, for all its brainpower, is intellectually bland.
That’s not to say Obama has no foreign-policy accomplishments. Using the financial crisis to replace the G-8 with the G-20 was a valuable shift in global architecture. America’s relationship with Russia has improved; Pakistan is getting more serious attention; U.S. diplomacy no longer needlessly alienates the world. But Power’s point was that true success would require fundamentally challenging the conventional wisdom in both parties, and that hasn’t happened...