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Obama’s Military & Foreign Policy Successes: How Did He Do It?
In three short years, President Obama has been able to do what President Bush could not do in eight: Destroy the leadership of Al Qaeda, get the last U.S. troops out of Iraq, and assist in toppling two Middle Eastern dictators. Were it not for the albatross of Afghanistan bequeathed by his predecessor, Obama would pretty much have a clean sweep.
So how did he do it?
It has taken a combination of:
* Consensus building between the White House, Pentagon and State Department that sometimes takes months before decisions are reached.
* Carefully calibrated responses rather than massive troop deployments.
* An emphasis on multilateralism and not unilateralism, including the involvement of NATO countries.
* When and where possible, diplomacy over bellicosity.
* Good old-fashioned police work in sniffing out domestic terrorism.
* Avoidance of the kind of triumphalism in which the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld axis reveled.
* While Republicans were once the leaders in foreign policy, they have for the most part been struck deaf and dumb, allowing the president to chart his own course.
Obama also has been incredibly lucky insofar that Iran has pretty much minded its own businesses, Israel and Palestine remain stalemated but not at war, and other hotspots have not boiled over.
“Without putting a single U.S. service member on the ground, we achieved our objectives, and our NATO mission will soon come to an end,” Obama said as he took a muted victory lap after the death of Colonel Moammar el-Qaddafi. “We’ve demonstrated what collective action can achieve in the 21st century.”
Some Republicans, trapped in the party’s echo chamber, still claim that Obama is weak on terrorism and leads from behind, while an aide to presidential candidate Mitt Romney had the temerity to say Quaddafi’s death “does not validate” the president’s approach to Libya.
Senator John McCain was been one of the few to praise the president.
“I think the administration deserves great credit,” McCain said in an interview on CNN. “Obviously, I had different ideas on the tactical side, but the world is a better place.”
It was Obama’s future secretary of state, Hillary Rodham Clinton, whose memorably called the future president’s ability to be decisive on foreign policy in a television ad that questioned whether voters could trust him to take a 3 a.m. call in the Oval Office about a world crisis.
“It’s 3 a.m. and your children are safe and asleep, but there’s a phone in the White House and it’s ringing. Something is happening in the world,” the ad said. “Who do you want answering the phone?”
Those doubts have been all but erased, but for all of the successes, the future of what I call the Obama Doctrine is fraught with peril.
Chief among them is turning over security in Afghanistan to the Afghans.
Largely unnoticed, Obama quietly ordered 100 armed military advisers to Uganda earlier this month where they will help regional forces fight the Lord’s Resistance Army, a renegade group that has gone on rape and murder sprees in central Africa, and similar limited interventions are said to be in the planning stages elsewhere.
Some or all of those interventions could go wrong.
15 Responses to “Obama’s Military & Foreign Policy Successes: How Did He Do It?”
You’re kidding me right? The US being forced to leave Iraq is a failure. We wanted to stay to provide the stability to guaranty the success of Iraq and counterbalance the influence of Iran. Now you may think that it is a bad idea but it is what the administration wanted so to call that a win is spin doctoring beyond compare. We had little to do with Egypt. There is just no excuse for trying to take credit there and we were dragged into Libya even tho Obama wanted nothing to do with it. Heck I’ll give Obama props for the most part he has totally continued almost every foreign policy the same as Bush. His talk is much different but not his actions. You can say he’s been hit hard economically and that it’s not his fault. Well it’s just about the opposite on the foreign front. He has pretty much just had to sit and wait for the fruits to ripen
EEllis:
You have a couple of things bass ackwards.
The U.S. is not being “forced” to leave Iraq. In fact, Obama had shown some signs of foot dragging on his original troop draw-down commitment.
Bringing Iran into the equation is disingenuous. If Iran’s influence in Iraq, which has grown steadily during the U.S. occupation, was of paramount concern, then the U.S. would not be withdrawing, period.
Moving on:
To give Obama no credit for jump starting the Arab Spring is incorrect. So I’ll meet you half way and give him some credit.
Obama was initially reluctant to join the no-fly zone crowd. That lasted about one day, so he is just as deserving of credit as the head honchos of Britain and France. Furthermore, the rebel successes on the ground would not have been possible without the use of U.S. drones and intelligence assets, and without them there probably would have been a stalemate, at best.
Finally, the record shows pretty vividly that Obama has broken with Bush both in theory and in practice. As I was careful to note, Obama also has been lucky. Bush was just plain reckless.
If you give me a couple of days I might be able to come up with something positive to say about Bush regarding foreign policy and use of the military, but the only thing that comes to mind is that he did not follow the advice of some of his advisers and go to war with Iran.
That, I believe, is what is known as damning with faint praise.
Iraq – leaving under the SOFA signed by Mr. Bush, 0 points for Mr. Obama.
Arab Spring –
Iran’s Green Revolution – no action.
Egypt: wanted ‘stability’ until Mubarak was no longer a viable leader.
Syria – no action.
Bahrain – no action.
Libya – jumped on the bandwagon.
Total Arab Spring – 1 point Mr. Obama.
Not a stellar record by my count. I don’t know if you have any children, but are you happy when they bring home a ‘D’ on their report card instead of an ‘F’?
Sorry, Shaun. Iraq was already set up for withdrawl and Obama said while campaigning that he would immediately get us out of both Iraq and Afghanistan. It has been three years.
Please tell us what he did to aid Mubarak’s overthrow. Nada.
We were waterboys in the Libyan conflict, and he has now sent troops into Africa.
Give him credit? You’ve got to be kidding. He’s no better than the prior Prez when it comes to sacrificing young service men and women’s lives and limbs, and squandering our money.
[...] Obama’s Military & Foreign Policy Successes: How Did He Do It? (themoderatevoice.com) [...]
I think Obama’s handling of foreign policy has been a huge upgrade from Bush’s bull-in-a-China-shop ways. We’ve actually managed to dial make some progress and dial down most of our engagements. And the handling of Libya was perfect. You think England and France make a move like that without our support? Gimme a break. Egypt happened fast and didn’t need any help. Iran was no where near the level of unrest needed to sustain a revolution. Our involvement would have been very premature. Libya was on the fence and needed a push, which they got.
Syria? Lets be honest, there is no way we get involved in another incident before election time unless something truly dramatic happens. Be nice to see if we can help out there, but Obama is pretty distracted trying to get a jobs bill passed. The people have spoken, they want the economy fixed and that is clearly where his focus is right now.
I would add that inheriting Afghanistan as an “albatross… bequeathed by his predecessor” is not an excuse to escalate the conflict.
Possibly to explain this: Didn’t the author, a Mr. Mullen, write an article some time ago with a silly photo displayed with it, of Obama in a black jacket, with the accompanying far-left distortion that perhaps “we” were too smitten with Obama because he’s So Cool, and that’s why “we” are disappointed that he’s not been as far left as the silly groupies were expecting. Well, apparently the author, incredibly, still is a groupie. Perhaps he’s even more of a groupie now.
To think that Bush (and maybe more importantly, Cheney) went into Iraq with the intention of ever leaving is naive. The reason the Neocons are all so PO’d right now is because they thought they’d made it impossible ever to do so.
“It’s not a matter of whether the war is not real, or if it is, Victory is not possible. The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous. Hierarchical society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance. This new version is the past and no different past can ever have existed. In principle the war effort is always planned to keep society on the brink of starvation. The war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects and its object is not the victory over either Eurasia or East Asia but to keep the very structure of society intact.”
– George Orwell “1984″
Shaun is only doing what conservatives would be doing if McCain won the election…taking credit for everything because their guy is in the WH. It is no different than conservatives that say Bush kept the country safe because we did not have an attack on US soil after 911. Is it a stretch…sure.
BS. While Iraq is not demanding we leave they are not willing to allow us to stay under current agreements. We want to stay and have been negotiating for months to get an agreement that we can both live with. We failed! That is not a win it is a lose.
That’s just nuts. For years now we have needed the Govt of Iraq’s permission to stay in Iraq. They needed the extra stability and money we provided but if they made a real and public demand we leave then we would of. Failure to do so would be political unsupportable and contrary to every goal stated for Iraq. And I didn’t say it was the paramount concern but most people are able to consider multiple issues.
Give him a lollipop for all I care but you have given no reason anyone should consider Obama even a minor factor in the Arab Spring movement.
It was longer than a day but he had no choice unless he wanted to screw up our relationships with extremely close allies and take major political heat for ignoring the freedom fighters. Look you are trying to make a point about why he was special or some such nonsense. Obama should get credit for the good things that happen just like how he gets bashed when bad things occur. That doesn’t mean he was all that special, most of these things would of happened no matter what. And then you try and give Obama credit for the quality and technical superiority of the US military? Weak.
Broken with Bush in speeches. In practice he has continued with just about everything the former administration had going foreign policy wise except when he folded to pressure from Russia and repudiated signed agreements and left prospective allies in eastern Europe with their pants around their ankles. Certainly he has been using the Bush playbook on Afghanistan and Iraq and I give him credit. It was working in Iraq and would have been dumb to change course. Now in Afghanistan we need something. Something more, or different, or extra. I don’t know, but there all we have is the same. When making the case for Obama being exceptional he really needs to do more than stay the course.
Really you might as well say “He’s special because I like him” for all the case you have made. That’s fine and all but let’s keep things in perspective.
What we have is a classic case of different goals.
I always thought it was stupid (and arrogant) of us to consider long-term occupation of Iraq. That’s horrid, old-school thinking and would lead to endless trouble.
What I like about the Obama administration’s take is it involves modern, not old-school, thought.
– we don’t need full-on invasions to instigate change.
– long-term occupations are more perilous, and on the whole, less effective than short-term engagements. This is because long-term occupations inspire insurgency.
– you’re far better off helping the locals win victory than winning it for them.
– never forget your soldiers are your citizens. They will come home and return to society. If they come home destroyed (much more likely Ina long-term conflict), you’ve done the, a terrible disservice. Better to keep it short.
Bush & friends had multiple failures on the military front. The biggest was applying an outdated military philosophy to a new problem.
sentry:
I call ‘em as I see ‘em. Obama has been ripe for criticism and I have criticized him in the post that you allude to, as well as others. But in this instance he is worthy of praise.
I give Obama credit for Iraq but that credit is an almost total repudiation of what you said. They have pretty much followed the Bush playbook to the letter with little to no change. That’s good because Bush finally had it right and changing would be stupid and destructive. There is a saying that the military is always prepared for the last war.
The article is correct in that Obama has had some policy successes, however it over reaches in trying to spin it all as a triumph of diplomacy and multilateralism.
In Iraq he has competently finished out an agreement and plan that was in place before he took office.
Whether his troop “surge” in Afghanistan is “carefully calibrated” or “insufficient” is yet to be seen. In Libya, he would have done nothing if France and Britain hadn’t pushed, though once they took the lead, his policy was sound.
But note…
The “business” that Iran is minding includes crushing popular opposition and enriching uranium. This has hardly been a sucess. To be fair, it isn’t clear that anyone else could have done better. But I would hardly claim it as a validation of his approach.