Is Obama as Jeffersonian as Walter Russell Mead Thinks He Is? Posted by David Shorr

I see a different problem with Walter Russell Mead's "Carter Syndrome" piece in Foreign Policy than Matt Yglesias does. Matt views Mead's four archetypes of US foreign policy as reductive, so for him, the piece -- essentially a warning message to President Obama about the unsustainability of his policy -- is a pointless and forced exercise. Being more sympathetic to Mead's theory, I think his article offers useful insights into the tensions, trade-offs, and political cross-pressures that the administration's policies confront. That said, the way Mead applies his archetypes to Presidet Obama leads to a misreading of his strategy.

The misdiagnosis starts with the following passage:

Like Carter in the 1970s, Obama comes from the old-fashioned Jeffersonian wing of the Democratic Party, and the strategic goal of his foreign policy is to reduce America's costs and risks overseas by limiting U.S. commitments wherever possible. He's a believer in the notion that the United States can best spread democracy and support peace by becoming an example of democracy at home and moderation abroad.

And the key data point, naturally, is Obama's Afghanistan decision -- which, under this interpretation, is part of a more purposeful "America come home" drive and doubt about our ability to help spread democracy and human rights. To me it seems like an awfully big leap to construe the president's desire to confine the US commitment in Afghanistan with a policy of minimizing international commitments anywhere.

Sure enough, Barack Obama doesn't want to become Lyndon Johnson. Who can blame him for wanting to keep this war from crippling his ability to respond to the country's formidable domestic challenges. Yes, he's making a careful calculation to keep some proportionality in a military commitment that could devour his presidency. But it's a calculation not only about the trade-offs between international and domestic priorities. In his West Point speech, the president talked as much (if not more) about keeping the war in Afghanistan in proper proportion to other foreign policy challenges as he did about balancing against domestic challenges.

Mead's attempt to peg President Obama as a Jeffersonian leads to other misreadings of his foreign policy:

While Wilsonians believe that no lasting stability is possible in a world filled with dictatorships, Jeffersonians like Obama argue that even bad regimes can be orderly international citizens if the incentives are properly aligned. Syria and Iran don't need to become democratic states for the United States to reach long-term, mutually beneficial arrangements with them. And it is North Korea's policies, not the character of its regime, that pose a threat to the Pacific region.

Democracy shmemocracy, without it we can have stability, orderly citizens, and beneficial arrangements! As I said, I find the Mead-ian archetypes useful, and there is a strain of foreign policy thinking that believes the spread of democracy comes from domestic forces within a country, not a business the United States should be in. Trying to reach agreements with dictatorial regimes on urgent international security problems, however, doesn't necessarily have anything to do with this perspective.

Ultimately, Mead and I are both making educated guesses about Barack Obama's view of the world; neither of us knows what he really thinks. But I read the policy described above quite differently. Our peace and security agenda with these countries is the first matter of business not the final one. It is the minimal price of internationnal good citizenship -- by no means insigificant (in fact urgently needed), but far from qualifying a nation as a pillar of the world community.

Comments

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Besides the infamous Mead Card that everyone in high school policy debate read every other round to show that any proposal that might hurt economic growth would lead immediately to global thermonuclear annihilation, my favorite Walter Russell Mead idea was his proposal to buy Siberia from Russia in the early part of the 90s.

[Peace]

Obama's mixture of pragmatism and idealism has more in common with the French intellectual Raymond Aron than in it does with any current American foreign policy tradition. There is also an interesting new book by Reed Davis,"The Politics of Undersatanding: The Political Thought of Raymond Aron," which describes Aron's foreign policy views.

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