In With the Old
E.J. Dionne says Barack Obama’s foreign policy might look a lot like George H.W. Bush’s. That shouldn’t come as a huge surprise to those who recall that back in March Obama said he wanted a foreign policy like George H.W. Bush’s:
“My foreign policy is actually a return to the traditional realistic policy of George Bush’s father, of John F. Kennedy, of in some ways Ronald Reagan,” he said Friday. A voter at the town hall in Greenburg had asked Obama to respond to charges that his foreign policy was naïve. [...] “Remember, people were saying why didn’t you go into Baghdad and overthrow Saddam Hussein? The realists understood that that would be a nightmare. And it wasn’t worth our national interests,” Obama added. [...]
He described the conventional thinking in Washington on foreign policy as “bipartisan” and this “both ideological and highly political.”
That foreign policy he argued operated from the assumption that United States could act “as a lone super power” and said that “Senator Clinton is as captive to it in some ways as John McCain and George Bush.”
“I do think that Senator Clinton would understand that George Bush’s polices have failed,” Obama added. “But in many ways she has been captive to the same politics that lead her to vote for the war in Iraq. Since 9-11 the conventional wisdom has been you have to look tough on foreign policy by voting and acting like the republicans. And I disagree with it.”
Obviously, Obama seems to have warmed to Clinton’s approach to foreign policy since then. But the fact that he was putting things this way way back in March helps us understand the context in which giving positions to guys like Robert Gates and Jim Jones should be understood. Obama sees — correctly, in my view — this realist element of the Republican Party’s tradition as offering a useful corrective to the occasionally hubristic proclivities of some folks inside the Democratic coalition. For a while now there have been a lot of calls to try to produce a higher synthesis of realism with the liberal impulse — Futuyama’s “realistic Wilsonianism,” Robert Wright’s “progressive realism,” Anatol Lieven’s “ethical realism” — and Obama’s setting himself up to move in just this direction. One of my arguments in Heads in the Sand is that precisely such a synthesis has guided American foreign policy during its best moments.
27 Responses to “In With the Old”
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November 28th, 2008 at 3:04 pm
Matt,
I’m not as sure that he has warmed to Sen. Clinton’s approach so much as he has given her the politcal cover and incentive to break with Beltway-Conventional-Foreign-Policy.
But regardless, Obama’s streak is clearly practical first and foremost.
November 28th, 2008 at 4:04 pm
Obama’s pragmatic, and that’s good. But the forgive-and-forget on torture and executive power-grabbing is extremely short-sighted. There are things that must be punished.
November 28th, 2008 at 4:59 pm
DTM is correct Matt and you are, in this instance wrong. There is no evidence whatsoever that Obama has “warmed” to Hillary’s foreign policy outlook. She will be in charge of implementing his policy.
November 28th, 2008 at 6:15 pm
During the primaries, Clinton supporters would often tell me that Senator Clinton only voted for the War because she had to remain electable in 2008. These same supporters would assure me that, if Obama had been senator at the time and had presidential aspirations, then he would have done the same.
I always rejected the second argument as foolishly speculative and irrelevant, but I think the first argument is probably right. Moreover, I think Senator Clinton was probably right to see a vote for the war as necessary to remain viable. From 2002 until 2006, the press largely labeled everyone who was against the War as foolish and weak. They didn’t talk about Obama in those terms because he had a low profile, but Senator Clinton would have been constantly derided for it, and it probably would have stuck.
The point is — Senator Clinton’s vote can probably be seen as a mistaken “political” choice rather than a “policy” choice. It may really have been motivated by her understanding of politics rather than ideal policy. Senator Obama’s quote above suggests that he understood her choice in those terms.
This distinction doesn’t really matter when you’re talking about who is going to be President — the politics become and shape the policy. The distinction may make a big difference when you’re talking about an appointee. As Secretary of State, Senator Clinton will be answering to Obama. The big political decisions will be made by him. I suspect that Senator Obama’s choice of Clinton does not reflect warming to her beliefs, but a confidence that her beliefs will be more like his now that she isn’t making the big political decisions and worrying about electability.
November 28th, 2008 at 6:21 pm
Obama’s victory means Hillary Clinton is no longer captive to the mindset that kept her in a liberal hawk box. Hillary Clinton is now poised to be the Keith Richards of the Democratic Party, somebody who has done so many stupid and wrong things that it should have killed her (career) but since she’s survived with grace is now beloved.
Botching healthcare, voting for the Iraq War, putting her campaign in the hands of Mark Penn — all forgiven and all for the better as Hillary Clinton is a larger than life figure with great power and she only needs one giant success in her lifetime to overcome a lifetime of half measures and missteps.
November 28th, 2008 at 6:27 pm
My guess is that there were others more suited to be Obama’s SoS, both in temperament and foreign policy vision (though I suspect that Obama and Clinton are closer in the latter than the former), and that political strategy dictated her placement at State. This choice is really the best Obama could have made to keep her out of his hair while still seeming to offer her a position worthy of her stature.
November 28th, 2008 at 8:49 pm
In 2002 there was no particular reason to distrust GWB (I distrusted him for no particular reason), and he assured us that the authorization to use force was necessary to get Iraq to give up WMD (which I believed existed but were no threat to us). A vote for it was politically hard to repudiate. Hillary got backed into a corner. Obama managed not to. I think that says more for him than against her.
I really don’t think they’re are very far apart.
Has Obama read HitS? He sounds like he has. Shows what MY can do with a good copy editor.
November 28th, 2008 at 11:10 pm
There were plenty of reasons to distrust George W. Bush in 2002. Senator Jeffords of Vermont switched to Independent in May of 2001 because the party was tilting so far right after having campaigned as ‘compassionate conservatives’ in 2000. GWB was an unpopular bullshitter before 9/11 ever happened. Are we supposed to believe that tragedy somehow knocked the bullshit out of him?
GWB has been spewing BS since the day he arrived on the national scene. You don’t spew BS for the heck of it, you do it to obfuscate what you are really doing. The radical thing to do was believe George W. Bush in October 2002 and not your lyin’ eyes.
November 28th, 2008 at 11:16 pm
Still suckers.
November 29th, 2008 at 9:29 am
Do we get to invade Panama and Somalia again?
November 29th, 2008 at 9:43 am
You write: Obama sees — correctly, in my view — this realist element of the Republican Party’s tradition as offering a useful corrective to the occasionally hubristic proclivities of some folks inside the Democratic coalition.” I hope that’s true.
But how does Clinton fit into this? The differences between Bush I and Clinton are far greater than between Clinton and Bush II. Recall Bush I was the most assertive American government in pushing Israel toward a negotiated settlement; understood the need to cooperate with nuclear Russia; and, most importantly understood the dangers of nuclear proliferation.
Clinton sucked up to Israel; re-started a cold war with Russia, and dodged proliferation.
Scowcroft yes, Clinton, Albright et. al. no. Clinton is Bush II lite.
What does this all mean for a Obama foreign policy? Whatya you say?
November 29th, 2008 at 10:28 am
The relevant point to consider is that right now our foreign policy agenda is not being controlled by Hillary, not by Bush I, not by Cheney from his hidden location, nor by the editorial staff of The Nation..
Rather, it is being controlled by whoever decided to launch the attack on Mumbai.
November 30th, 2008 at 12:51 am
There’s another kind of realism that should be put at the top of the list, which is tied to Paul Kennedy’s thesis on ‘managed (and manageable) decline’. The US cannot sustain 50% of the world’s military expenditature with 20% of its GDP and 4% of its population. It certainly cannot do it in the long term, and it has to start getting used to the long term in the short term.
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