For all his talk, is Barack Obama merely perpetuating George W Bush's foreign policy? Has a softened approach to Iran yielded any benefits whatsoever for America? Was scrapping the European missile defence shield a major strategic blunder? All are questions to which answers might be expected at an Intelligence Squared debate with the motion: "Obama's foreign policy is a gift to America's enemies." Instead, though, a bestiary of left and right-wingers spent the evening slugging it out over generalities, hardly ever engaging with each others’ arguments. On stage-right, a heap of hawkish muscle: Weekly Standard editor and Fox News stalwart Bill Kristol, former four-star general John M Keane, former chief of staff of the US army, and Con Coughlin, Daily Telegraph foreign correspondent. On stage-left, the liberals: twisting, energetic Simon Schama, wadded in by imperturbable constitutionalist Philip Bobbitt and the philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy. An opening flurry from Kristol meandered artfully from politesse to sniping as he reminded the audience that he would be speaking in prose, not poetry–harping on the ineffectual rhetoric of the left was popular with all three proposers. Obama was enfeebling America in the eyes of the world, he said; Iran was making friends with Turkey and Brazil; Turkey was on the way to becoming an Islamic state. Simon Schama rebounded, writhing, with an impassioned plea that the gentler approach represented a pragmatic view of a complex world. This is a different kind of war, he announced, and America must uphold the humane values of its founding fathers if it's to win. That means tolerance, plurality and the rule of law. Former general Keane at first appeared to be the very type of the belligerent Hollywood general, a mighty square head delivering sentiments such as "force is the only language they understand," but raised the first concrete point of the debate: that Obama's announcement of a troop withdrawal from Afghanistan gave the Taliban a good reason to keep fighting. He went on, however, to complain that Obama would not call the enemy terrorists—objectifying them in this way isn't desirable, of course, if you wish to seek common ground. An unbridgable gulf was open between the sides, and hopes of a difficult decision at close of play began to crumble. Keane invoked Churchill, and then finished by dwelling on the brutality, moral reprehensibility, and thuggishness of the enemies of the west. Mild Philip Bobbitt approached the podium, removing his glasses with every other sentence and speaking in a confident monotone of strategy and the rule of law. Casually rubbishing George W Bush (the scoring of points off the other side along party-political lines was another of the evening’s staples), he extolled Obama's adherence to the rule of law, stressing, like his colleague Simon Schama, the importance of moral values. A rejoinder came in strident terms from Con Coughlin, who seemingly had no need of the big picture, having seen the small picture on the "coalface" of Obama's foreign policy during his extensive travels of the middle east. After insulting his former tutor Schama (“your book should be called Dribble Dribble Dribble”), he proclaimed himself a realist and went on to make two points. One was that Obama's policies had thus far had no effect but to make Israel angry. The other was that 30 years of enmity stood between Iran and America. The last word went to Bernard-Henry Lévy, who masterfully sidestepped the ludicrous politics by talking for ten minutes about Sun Tzu's Art of War, arguing that Obama's policies all had their roots in the 2,600-year-old wisdom of the Chinese sage. Of course, nobody had an answer to that. Had there been more to his co-debaters' examples, perhaps his speech would have seemed frivolous. As it was, he made them all look hidebound. In closing remarks, the sides found a few things to agree on: Obama's slowness to comment on the "green revolution" in Iran last year was possibly not a good move (Schama called it "craven"); announcing a withdrawal date from Afghanistan was perhaps not ideal; 18 months was not long enough to tell if his foreign policy was going to be a success or not. General Keane spoke movingly of the reluctance of soldiers to fight wars (and was rightly upset when misrepresented by the other side's talk of ham-fisted battalions); Hitler was mentioned; the question of Obama's support for Israel was touched upon but there was no time for either side to shake any conclusions out of it. In the end the motion was defeated. But really, nobody was having the argument on the ticket. You can watch highlights from the debate by clicking here, and the whole thing will be online from Monday 7th June at intelligencesquared.com
