Politics

The Obama worldview

Obama has given US foreign policy something it sorely lacked–intellectual clarity

December 31, 2015
President Obama shakes hands with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The leaders had discussed the crisis in Syria and plans to fight Islamic State. Paris, Dec. 1, 2015. ©AP Photo/Evan Vucci
President Obama shakes hands with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The leaders had discussed the crisis in Syria and plans to fight Islamic State. Paris, Dec. 1, 2015. ©AP Photo/Evan Vucci
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Peace talks on Syria, backed by the UN, will begin in January and the process, which will culminate in elections, will be completed within 18 months. Syria will therefore be unfinished foreign policy business when President Obama leaves the White House in early 2017.

To many it has been a domestic issue presidency and a sharp contrast to the belligerent unilateralism that preceded it. But there is an Obama world view. His handling of the Syrian war has revealed it.

Throughout the wars of 9/11, the United States has deployed four armies. The first was named after Secretary of State Colin Powell and Secretary of Defence Caspar Weinberger. The Powell/Weinberger army was a legacy of the first Gulf War and operated to a doctrine of overwhelming force, international endorsement and a clear exit strategy. It was the instrument of a nation at the height of its powers, contemplating a world it understood and dominated. In the event, it never went to war.

Never one for established orthodoxies, Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defence, immediately looked for a different response to 9/11. Instead of the measured deliberation of Powell/Weinberger, he created a second, light touch, army for the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. It consisted of limited ground forces, overwhelming air power, a client infantry founded by the Afghan Northern Alliance and an urbane and compliant (at least then) politician in Hamid Karzai. Al-Qaeda was evicted from Afghanistan and the Taliban scattered back to its villages or across the border into Pakistan. For a brief time, America was convinced it had found the philosopher’s stone of intervention and employed the same techniques in Iraq.

Afghanistan has always been a strong society but a weak state; Iraq, since its inception, has been a strong state but a weak society. This is not a complete explanation of US failure in Iraq, but, the moment the state was disestablished, society fell apart. The third, counter-insurgency, army was formed in response to the subsequent descent into chaos.

Since Vietnam, the US Army had abhorred the messy, indecisive business of counter-insurgency. But the best and brightest US soldiers of their generation worked it out all over again from first principles. The Surge in 2007 went some way to restoring the reputation of US arms; but even the American inventory of blood, treasure and time was being tested by the ruinous cost of counter-insurgency, and as the US disengaged from Iraq, the fourth, counter-terrorist, army began to emerge. It was made up of drone strikes and special forces raids and it specialised in counter-terrorism. This fourth army reached its apotheosis with the operation that killed Osama bin Laden.

The American Right loses no opportunity to castigate Obama for failing to show international leadership. In an attempt to dignify diffidence as a policy, supporters have tied themselves in intellectual knots by trying to create doctrines with names like Strategic Reticence as legitimate schools of political philosophy.

Obama’s foreign policy posture is characterised by two guiding principles: caution and the self-evident virtue of a liberal international order. Caution is understandable. A detached and cerebral style perhaps does not excite those looking for visceral leadership, but most Americans would trade intellectual clarity for the gung ho style of the Bush years.

But it is the intellectual principle of an international liberal order that gives form and structure to his policies. Obama has pulled America back from its speculative adventures. Now, in the Middle East, the US is moving from the role of regional arbiter towards the role of regional mediator. By refusing to commit US ground troops in Syria, by conceding a role for Russia, by demanding that Saudi Arabia accept its responsibilities and by getting Iran back into the community of nations, Obama has created the possibility that the region—and Islam—might recognise the need to order its own affairs.

This has its dangers, not least that it might inflame a Sunni-Shia confrontation. But to be the president who finally moved the Middle East beyond political infantilism is a historic achievement for which he will probably settle.