The inadvertent architect of the Obama administration's foreign policy shift?
President Obama came to office with a pragmatic approach to foreign policy, “determined to break free of the old ideologies and categories,” while skeptical of liberal internationalism and notably more comfortable with realist positions, Ryan Lizza writes in this must-read article from The New Yorker.
“The truth is that my foreign policy is actually a return to the traditional bipartisan realistic policy of George Bush’s father, of John F. Kennedy, of, in some ways, Ronald Reagan,” Obama said.
The first two years of his administration saw a calculated retreat from a perceived idealist approach to foreign policy, backtracking on democracy and human rights while holding out the promise of engagement to autocratic regimes, such as Cuba, Syria and Iran.
“Obama’s lengthy bumper-sticker credo did not include a call to promote democracy or protect human rights. Obama aides who focused on these issues were awarded lesser White House positions,” Lizza notes.
The White House has upset both idealists and realists with a cautionary case-by-case approach, which often appears to blend soaring rhetoric with a reluctance to act decisively.
“You can’t be a little bit realist and a little bit democratic when deciding whether or not to stop a massacre,” says Anne-Marie Slaughter, former State Department policy planning chief.
Realists like Zbigniew Brzezinski are also disillusioned.
“I greatly admire his insights and understanding. I don’t think he really has a policy that’s implementing those insights and understandings,” he told Lizza. “The rhetoric is always terribly imperative and categorical: ‘You must do this,’ ‘He must do that,’ ‘This is unacceptable.’ He doesn’t strategize. He sermonizes.”
The National Security Council’s “non-ideological” political fixers and realists were determined not only to jettison the idealistic baggage that led the Clinton and Bush administrations to highlight democracy and human rights, but also to shift focus and resources from the broader Middle East to the Asia-Pacific.
That was until events dictated otherwise.
Last August, President Obama sent a five-page memorandum on “Political Reform in the Middle East and North Africa” to the senior members of his foreign-policy team, Lizza notes.
“Progress toward political reform and openness in the Middle East and North Africa lags behind other regions and has, in some cases, stalled,” the memo stated, highlighting the backlash against democratic, human rights and civil society groups, even in relatively moderate states.
“Obama’s analysis showed a desire to balance interests and ideals,” Lizza writes. “The goals of reform and democracy were couched in the language of U.S. interests rather than the sharp moral language that statesmen often use in public.”
The evidence of growing popular discontent with sclerotic regimes demonstrably incapable of addressing citizen’s aspirations confirmed that the regional status quo was unsustainable. The president called for a strategic review – led by three senior N.S.C. staffers: democracy advocate Samantha Power, development expert Gayle Smith, and Middle East veteran Dennis Ross – to devise country-specific strategies for political reform.
The team subjected arguments against promoting political reform to serious scrutiny – that economic development must precede democratization and pressuring allies to reform would undermine vital security interests – before rejecting the familiar recipe for timidity or inaction.
The review’s conclusions were being finalized and due to be presented when Mohammed Bouazizi (above), a Tunisian vegetable vendor, set himself aflame and inspired the dramatic wave of unrest across the Arab world.
“Democracy in the Middle East, one of the most fraught issues of the Bush years,” Lizza notes, “was suddenly the signature conflict of Obama’s foreign policy.”
But events have not prompted the administration to recast its foreign policy or to articulate a new vision or strategy.
“Obama has emphasized bureaucratic efficiency over ideology, and approached foreign policy as if it were case law, deciding his response to every threat or crisis on its own merits,” writes Lizza, while his “reluctance to articulate a grand synthesis has alienated both realists and idealists.”
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