This article in the German publication Die Welt (The World), and cited in an interesting post by Robin Koerner, says that Europeans are getting a hazy picture of Barack Obama’s views on foreign policy and national security issues.
I think that it also precisely identifies Obama’s area of greatest vulnerability with US voters once the fall campaign begins. (Should Obama be the Democratic nominee for president, which appears likely.)
But in fairness to him, with rare exceptions, few new presidents come to the White House with significant diplomatic or national security experience or with strategic visions born of such experience. George W. Bush certainly had no such vision. His father, who had served brief stints as US envoy to China, US ambassador to the United Nations, and Director of the Central Intelligence Agency had something of a foreign policy vision, inherited from every post-World War Two president, from Truman to Reagan. But even the elder Bush was shy on “the vision thing,” as he called it.
The last US president to possess a combination of experience and strategic vision in the realms of foreign policy and national security, and both were abundantly present in him, was Dwight Eisenhower. His possession of these assets paid off hugely as, at the height of the Cold War, Eisenhower expertly extricated the US from the Korean War (within six months of his taking the oath of office) and kept the nation at peace through the balance of his term. Eisenhower did this largely without grand pronouncements. Too often his successors in the Oval Office have thought that speeches equaled policy. As an old national security pro, Ike knew better.
Before Eisenhower, whose first term began in January, 1953, the last president to have anything like a strategic vision was Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909). In spite of his bombast and a militarism which resulted in violating other nations’ sovereignty to, as TR himself bragged, “take” Panama, his basic approach to foreign affairs was similar to the one Ike consistently pursued and Roosevelt himself memorably summarized: Speak softly and carry a big stick.
This approach is what later generations would call “foreign policy realism,” an approach that asked three basic questions:
- What is in the best interest of the United States?
- What is likeliest to contribute to the peace and stability of the world?
- What is within the scope of present capability?
Jimmy Carter’s approach to foreign policy added a fourth question: What is consonant with US belief in human rights? But I would argue that this is not a stunning addition, since what is in the long-term best interests of the country and that which contributes to peace and stability is consonant with a concern for human rights. This is the argument of military people and former military people–like John McCain–when it comes to the use of torture as an interrogation method with hostile detainees. They argue that to run roughshod over the human rights of others invites such treatment for our military personnel. Here, as in other areas, the proponents of foreign policy realism argue, realism and US idealism dovetail.
Nonetheless the tradition of foreign policy realism, also pursued to a great extent by Franklin Roosevelt, sets in stark contrast to the naive strategic vision of Woodrow Wilson and his foreign policy successors. Wilson, like Lyndon Johnson after him, early expressed the hope that his tenure would be concerned mostly with domestic issues. Those are what most consumed him and were what he felt best equipped to handle.
The crisis in Mexico, early in his term, demonstrated how out of his depth Wilson was when it came to foreign policy and national security issues. His decision to deploy US troops in Mexico was unnecessary and ill-advised, shrouded though it was in talk about democracy, human rights, and national honor. Wilson made up his strategic vision as he went along and began a tradition of what I call impositionalism pursued by Harry Truman in Korea, John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson in Vietnam, and numerous tinier military actions undertaken by Johnson and Clinton.
Interestingly, George W. Bush, who had apparently thought little about foreign policy and national security issues before becoming president, has espoused and pursued a foreign policy that is more like Wilson than his father’s or Eisenhower’s.
Each new occupant in the White House begins, to some extent, in a reactive mode, seeking to be the antidote for the perceived deficiencies of his predecessor. If Barack Obama proves to be the Democratic nominee and the president, his approach to national security will have to involve more than being the Un-Bush. Whether it will be is, at this point, anybody’s guess.
[For more on the major traditions in US foreign policy thinking, seen from the standpoint of a preacher eating burritos with his son, see here.]
[This has been cross-posted at my personal blog.]
[UPDATE: I agree with one of the commenters that it’s difficult for potential presidents to gain much in the way of substantive foreign policy experience. But I do think that candidates should evidence having thought about foreign policy and to enunciate a broad strategic vision. So far as I know, John McCain is the only one of the four remaining serious candidates to have done that to any significant degree.]