President Barack Obama might turn out to be a foreign policy pragmatist, eschewing the grand strategies and big-label crusades that inspire the minds of Washington’s cognoscenti. After eight years of the Bush administration’s foreign policy fantasies, the notion of an Obama administration muddling through foreign policy choices should be welcomed, even by those who will inevitably be disappointed when Obama fails to live up to their high expectations. Read my latest commentary on the issue.
President Obama: A Realist Interventionist?
Posted in Foreign policy.
3 Responses to President Obama: A Realist Interventionist?
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Leon Hadar says:
Good points. One of the arguments that I made was that the American public is not in a mood for new interventionism and THAT I think would be the main constraint operating on both Obama and the Congress in addition to the economic and military constraints.
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One has reflect on the fact that our last commander in chief also had a vision and in retrospect it seems uninformed, immature and by all accounts, a failure. I must commend your publication for its thoughtful and somewhat balanced reporting.
Leon, as I said before here in that previous thread where you more lightly noted this diagnosis of Obama’s foreign policy outlook I think you’ve articulated a really a deep and thoughtful insight. And I’d agree that we ought not automatically look down at his pragmatic, “muddling through” efforts at all, especially given the hand he’s been dealt.
What worries me however is what can seem the utter lack of *any* deeper foreign affairs’ belief or vision on the part of the man. As you say there’s always a kind of foolish demand on the part of so many foreign-policy people for some kind of fully realized grand vision. But what happens if a President has *no* such vision at all? Or if it turns out that he does have a vision, but it’s just a really really bad one?
So often it seems events conspire to force even the most flexible, pragmatic of people into situations where they simply have to make deep, values choices. And I wonder if Iran and its nuke program and Israel’s desire to whack it isn’t looking to be that situation for Obama.
With everything else it seems he can back and fill and dodge and weave for a good while yet. But what happens when Netanyahu wins and tells the U.S. flatly that he is going to attack Iran so we better join in?
If Obama doesn’t have a vision now it seems to me he at least ought to start working on at least something similar for then, because he’s going to need *some* coordinates to base that decision on beyond just the short-term practicalities of the situation.
It also thus seems to me that it might be helpful for people like you whose writings count and might be taken into account to start talking very seriously about just what values as well as what interests the U.S. would have at stake if it were to participate in or even just abide a strike against Iran.
Cheers,