How Critics of Obama Foreign Policy Get it Wrong Posted by David Shorr

Now that President Obama's Republican have started to declare themselves on foreign policy, this has fired a starter's pistol for fellow wonks to draw their comparisons and critiques. I ran across three such pieces that dovetail especially well with one another -- each of the authors voicing different sets of concerns. And from these distinct angles, each also gives short shrift to the Obama administration. 

I'll start with Mark Lagon's World Affairs piece, because Mark is a [disclosure] good friend and also because I must deal with this pesky trope about  "declinism." The following passage at least gives a more sophisticated take -- putting it in the context of Mark's broader point about Obama abandoning the values agenda of democracy promotion -- but he's still drawing from the same Republican messaging memo:

That President Obama should have excluded it from his vision of America’s foreign policy assets—particularly in the key cases of Iran, Russia, and Egypt—suggests that he feels the country has so declined, not only in real power but in the power of example, that it lacks the moral authority to project soft power. In the 1970s, many also considered the US in decline as it grappled with counterinsurgency in faraway lands, a crisis due to economic stagnation, and reliance on foreign oil. Like Obama, Henry Kissinger tried to manage decline in what he saw as a multipolar world, dressing up prescriptions for policy as descriptions of immutable reality.

Wow, that's three declines in as many sentences, along with a quite deft way of couching the "apology" charge without quite saying it ("...lacks the moral authority..."). First, the issue isn't whether America has moral authority; we certainly do, and I doubt President Obama ever loses sight of that. The real question is how to leverage that moral authority. Should US foreign policy presume that the American example's unassailable power trumps any and all skepticism? For governments of some countries, questioning American motives is just a way to deflect pressure off of themselves, but that doesn't answer the question of whether moral authority can be overplayed? This isn't a debate about moral authority, but about smug self-satisfaction versus savvy self-awareness.

Which brings us to "prescriptions" and "descriptions." Without taking the bait on the Obama-as-Kissinger thing, it's fair to say that the argument for a self-aware policy is based on certain judgments about international political reality. Principally this: the presumption and constant assertion of US righteousness -- without any tempering or active effort to bolster US credibility -- just won't cut it in today's world. I don't know about "immutable," but yeah, I'd say it's a reality that if the United States to get things done, it must do more than stand tall and proud. It may feel good to keep beating the drum of American greatness, but real-world foreign policy effectiveness comes down to undercutting and outmaneuvering those who offer resistance, rather than expecting them to crumble in the face of our awesomeness. So then, what is the appropriate countercharge to "declinist?"  I can think of a couple: "out of touch," "delusional." ("Delusionist"?)

The other gap in Mark's lament about Obama's supposedly value-free policy is his cavalier attitude toward the other considerations of policy. Here's his explanation of how wrong Obama got his policy toward Russia:

Instead of establishing a foundation of clear principles in his reset of relations with the Putin regime, President Obama has seen relations with Russia in terms of a larger picture of strategic arms control. He believes proliferators like Iran and North Korea can be restrained if the major nuclear powers reduce their stockpiles, in fealty to the premises of the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Hence, the New START Treaty was his singular focus with Russia and the grounds for his appeasement of Putinism. 

Yup, there's the "A" word, a reliable device that puts you squarely on the right side of history and makes you a political heir to Churchill. I guess Mark doesn't really think much of strategic arms control -- no biggie if the United States walked away from the decades of mutual strategic force limits and verification that the US has had with Russia and its Soviet predecessor. For my part, I am hugely grateful for what President Obama did in the December 2010 lame duck session, for yielding on a losing battle over the Bush-era tax cuts in order to make sure New START was ratified by the Senate. (Same goes for the end of Don't Ask Don't Tell.) 

In fact, I'm especially grateful on behalf of America's moral authority. Mark may not care, but a failure by the Senate to ratify New START would've been a MASSIVE black eye for our international reputation. Now, on the theory that friends can be frank with each other, that whole naive-about-restraining-Iran-and-North-Korea slam is one of the smarmiest around. As discussed above, the progressive concept of moral authority calls for the US to occasionally bulk up our own moral standing through steps like the nuclear disarmament that America promised under the NPT. Now I don't know anyone with views that resemble your caricature, but we do believe that New START makes it easier for the United States gain support in pressuring Iran. And conversely, its failure would only have made it harder. Whenever conservatives couch it this way, it lowers the level of the debate several notches.

Tomorrow I'll look at the critiques made from the perspective of a self-described Realist and someone worried about overstretch.

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