George W. Bush, Barack Obama and the future of US global leadership
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George W. Bush, Barack Obama
and the future of US global leadership
JAMES M. LINDSAY
The decade since September 11 has seen two competing US foreign policy
visions. George W. Bush’s response to the attack was to declare a global war on
terrorism. Convinced that the United States faced an existential threat abetted by
other states and optimistic about the capacity of American power to reshape the
world, the United States went on the offensive. In Afghanistan, it fought to kill
or capture Al-Qaeda fighters and their supporters. In Iraq, it fought to break the
nexus of terrorists, tyrants and technologies of mass destruction. But the Iraq war
produced something Bush had not anticipated—a protracted and bloody occupa-
tion that demonstrated the limits of American power. Criticism of US foreign
policy soared, both at home and abroad.
Barack Obama tapped into the American public’s disillusionment over Iraq and
US foreign policy more generally by rejecting the core principles of Bush’s world-
view. In his analysis, Bush had failed to see how globalization had remade world
politics. It had dispersed power around the globe and created a whole host of
new problems, of which terrorism was just one, that transcended borders. Great
military power had limited utility in such an environment, and the United States
could not go it alone. It needed partners to achieve its goals and protect its inter-
ests. And those partners could be won over only through diplomatic engagement,
not intimidation.
For all the differences between Bush and Obama, however, the two shared
a common trait: a conviction that other countries both wanted and needed US
leadership. This conviction reflected America’s more than half a century of success
as the global superpower. US leadership had been essential to everything from
creating the United Nations to leading the world in liberating Kuwait. US global
leadership was not a boast but a reality.
Yet even as Obama pledged to begin ‘renewing American leadership’, the very
trend he cited to criticize Bush’s foreign policy—globalization—was at the least
complicating his efforts and at the worst undermining them.1 As Obama discov-
ered during his first two years in office, kind words, an open hand and a willing-
ness to listen did not guarantee cooperation, let alone foreign policy success. His
hoped-for partners often disagreed on the nature of the problem, what c onstituted
1
Barack Obama, ‘Renewing American leadership’, Foreign Affairs 84: 4, July–Aug. 2007, pp. 2–16.
International Affairs 87:4 (2011) 765–779
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Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford ox4 2dq, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.James M. Lindsay
the proper solution and who should bear the burden of implementing it. They had
their own interests and priorities, and often they were not looking to Washington
for direction.
How to succeed in a world in which other countries are increasingly ignoring
or contesting American leadership rather than embracing it is the overriding
challenge facing the United States in the years to come. As Obama rightly
notes, much of what he or any US president wants to achieve overseas requires
the cooperation of others. But how can that cooperation best be achieved? The
temptation is to cling to past ways of doing business. Changing strategies, revising
priorities and revamping missions is politically painful and potentially dangerous.
But a foreign policy that ignores how much the global environment has changed
will yield frustration far more than accomplishment.
The war on terror
George W. Bush did not set out to remake US foreign policy. When he declared his
candidacy for the presidency in 1999 domestic issues topped the political agenda;
foreign policy was an afterthought for most Americans.2 Bush naturally looked
inward rather than outward during the 2000 campaign and his first eight months in
office.3 Neither Al-Qaeda specifically nor terrorism more broadly figured promi-
nently when he did turn to foreign policy.
September 11 changed that calculation and with it the direction of American
foreign policy. Fighting terrorism became not just a priority, but the priority. Bush
saw September 11 not just as a horrific act but as the manifestation of an existential
threat on a par with those posed by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. This was
not an ordinary geopolitical clash, but rather a struggle between good and evil that
affected all the world’s nations. As he told mourners at a national prayer service
three days after the attacks: ‘Our responsibility to history is clear: to answer these
attacks and rid the world of evil’.4
Bush’s diagnosis of the threat led inexorably to a policy prescription: a ‘war on
terrorism’.5 Both nouns in that formulation were significant. The United States
would not react defensively by relying on law enforcement and passive measures
like more guards, guns and gates to protect itself; instead, it would go on the
offensive. As he told his advisers, ‘We need to fight overseas by bringing the war
to the bad guys’.6 The target would go beyond Al-Qaeda to include all global
terrorists and the states that supported them. In the words of what became known
2
See Chicago Council on Foreign Relations, ‘American public opinion and US foreign policy, 1998’ (Ann
Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Science Research ).
3
See Ivo H. Daalder and James M. Lindsay, America unbound: the Bush revolution in foreign policy (Hoboken, NJ:
John Wiley & Sons, 2005), ch. 5.
4
George W. Bush, ‘President’s remarks at National Day of Prayer and Remembrance Service’, National
Cathedral, Washington DC, 14 Sept. 2001, http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/ 2005/
09/images/20050916–4_d-0150–515h.html, accessed 23 May 2011.
5
George W. Bush, ‘Statement by the President in his address to the nation’, White House, Washington DC, 11
Sept. 2001, http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010911–16.html, accessed
23 May 2011.
6
Quoted in Bob Woodward, Bush at war (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002), p. 281.
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as the Bush Doctrine, ‘We will make no distinction between the terrorists who
committed these acts and those who harbor them’.7
Bush’s war on terrorism rested on five assumptions. First, America’s global
dominance, and especially its military dominance, gave it an unprecedented ability
to take the fight overseas.8 Second, Washington’s reluctance to respond militarily
to terrorist attacks over the previous two decades had encouraged Al-Qaeda and
its ilk. Vice-President Dick Cheney argued this point frequently and forcefully:
‘Weakness, vacillation, and the unwillingness of the United States to stand with
our friends—that is provocative. It encouraged people like Osama bin Laden …
to launch repeated strikes against the United States, our people overseas and here
at home, with the view that he could, in fact, do so with impunity’.9
Third, the Cold War doctrines of deterrence and containment would not work
with terrorists.10 Threats to retaliate mean nothing to groups with no territory to
defend. That conclusion was ominous, given the fear that the next terrorist attack
might dwarf September 11 in scope. The anthrax attacks of autumn 2001 raised
the spectre of large-scale biological terrorism. Intelligence reports suggested that
Al-Qaeda might be able to build radiological (‘dirty’) bombs, if not acquire a
nuclear weapon. The United States no longer had the luxury of absorbing an
attack and then responding. It had to be prepared to act pre-emptively.11
Fourth, terrorists could not operate without state support. Bush made this
point explicitly in his 2002 State of the Union Address: Iran, Iraq, North Korea
‘and their terrorist allies constitute an axis of evil’. States hostile to the United
States might equip terrorists with weapons of mass destruction. That made the
war on terrorism indistinguishable from the effort to stop rogue regimes. Indeed,
within a few short paragraphs of identifying the ‘axis of evil’, Bush vowed that
‘the United States of America will not permit the world’s most dangerous regimes
to threaten us with the world’s most destructive weapons’.12
Fifth, alliances and multilateral organizations might occasionally help the
United States wage its war on terrorism, but they were not essential. The United
States could accomplish what it needed to do militarily without allied help, and it
should not let other states dictate what it could do. ‘At some point we may be the
only ones left,’ Bush conceded. ‘That’s okay with me. We are America’.13 Bush’s
unilateralism had predated September 11, and it had greatly strained transatlantic
7
Bush, ‘Address to the nation’.
8
For an indication of Republican thinking on the utility of US military dominance see Charles Krauthammer,
‘The new unilateralism’, Washington Post, 8 June 2001.
9
Vice-President Dick Cheney on NBC News, Meet the press, 16 March 2003, http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/
intrel/bush/cheneymeetthepress.htm, accessed 23 May 2011.
10
See George W. Bush, ‘The President’s news conference with Prime Minister Tony Blair of the United King
dom’, 31 Jan. 2003, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=63014#axzz1MdVDjXvI, accessed
23 May 2011.
11
See George W. Bush, ‘Remarks at the 2002 graduation exercise of the United States Military Academy’,
West Point, 1 June 2002, http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/bush/westpoint.htm; The National Security
Strategy of the United States, Sept. 2002, http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/nss/nss_sep2002.pdf, both
accessed 23 May 2011.
12
George W. Bush, ‘State of the Union Address’, Washington DC, 19 Jan. 2002, http://www.whitehouse.gov/
news/releases/2002/01/20020129–11.html, accessed 23 May 2003.
13
Quoted in Woodward, Bush at war, p. 81.
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relations.14 But he and his advisers were convinced that, at the end of the day,
because they were championing the interests of their friends (if not in the way
those friends might have preferred) and not seeking advantage for themselves, allies
would eventually rally to their side.
Bush’s war on terrorism had one significant consequence for American grand
strategy: talk of Great Power conflict faded. During the campaign Bush had
derided the Clinton administration for appeasing a rising China and indulging a
corrupt Russia.15 Early in his presidency he seemed to be heading for confronta-
tion with both countries. Yet when the National Security Strategy appeared in
September 2002, things looked different: ‘Today, the international community
has the best chance since the rise of the nation-state in the seventeenth century to
build a world where Great Powers compete in peace instead of continually prepare
for war. Today, the world’s Great Powers find ourselves on the same side—united
by common dangers of terrorist violence and chaos’.16 Bush’s assessment that
Great Power interests were more compatible than competitive gave him consider-
able leeway to exercise American power.
A superpower’s limits
The Bush Doctrine was applied first in Afghanistan. On 12 September 2001, the
United Nations authorized ‘all necessary steps’ to respond to the previous day’s
attacks.17 That same day, NATO for the first time in its history invoked article 5,
obliging it to come to the defence of a member. Less than a week later, a near-
unanimous US Congress authorized Bush ‘to use all necessary and appropriate
force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned,
authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September
11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons’.18
Students of counterfactual history will long speculate on how Bush’s foreign
policy might have evolved had Afghanistan’s leader Mullah Omar handed over
Osama bin Laden as the United States demanded. He didn’t, however, and the
United States, joined by the forces of nearly 20 countries, attacked Afghanistan in
October.19 Despite a slow start, the US-led forces routed the Taleban in relatively
short order. By early December, the Taleban government had collapsed.20
14
For examples, see Daalder and Lindsay, America unbound, pp. 61–6.
15
George W. Bush, ‘A distinctly American internationalism’, speech at Ronald Reagan Presidential Library,
19 Nov. 1999, http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/bush/wspeech.htm, accessed 23 May 2011. See also
Condoleezza Rice, ‘Promoting the national interest’, Foreign Affairs 79: 1, Jan.–Feb. 2000, pp. 2–26.
16
White House, The National Security Strategy of the United States, Sept. 2002, http://georgewbush-whitehouse.
archives.gov/nsc/nss/2002/, accessed 23 May 2011.
17
UN Security Council Resolution 1368 (2001), adopted 12 Sept. 2001, http://www.ilsa.org/jessup/jessup08/
basicmats/sc1368.pdf, accessed 23 May 2011.
18
Public Law 107-43, ‘Authorization for the use of military force’, 18 Sept. 2001, http://news.findlaw.com/wp/
docs/terrorism/sjres23.es.html, accessed 23 May 2011.
19
Daalder and Lindsay, America unbound, p. 115.
20
For an analysis of US military strategy in defeating the Taleban in 2001, see Michael O’Hanlon, ‘A flawed
masterpiece’, Foreign Affairs 89: 3, March–April 2002, pp. 47–63.
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Most US allies assumed Bush was pursuing an Afghanistan-only policy. He
was, in fact, pursuing an Afghanistan-first strategy. With the Taleban toppled, his
focus shifted to Iraq. His advisers had debated whether to invade Iraq immedi-
ately after September 11.21 Bush had decided against it as a first step, but Saddam
Hussein embodied the convergence of Bush’s three fears—terrorism, tyrants and
technologies of mass destruction. Although US intelligence agencies had not
found any evidence linking Saddam Hussein to Al-Qaeda, Bush believed that he
‘would like nothing more than to use a terrorist network to attack and to kill and
leave no fingerprints behind’.22 Given the stakes, the United States could not wait,
as Condoleezza Rice put it, ‘for the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud’.23
Bush’s decision, then, was not whether to go to war with Iraq but how to
get there. Administration officials gave numerous speeches and interviews in the
attempt to persuade Americans that Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD)
capability posed an unacceptable threat. The effort succeeded. In October 2002,
the US Congress authorized war against Iraq. Bush sought a similar vote from the
UN Security Council. He did so for instrumental reasons—a UN authorization
would shore up domestic political support and put more pressure on Baghdad. He
did not believe, however, that he needed the UN’s blessing to go to war. When
that blessing didn’t come, the United States, with the support of a ‘coalition of
the willing’ that in terms of troop contributions consisted primarily of Britain
and to a lesser extent Australia and Poland, invaded Iraq in March 2003—over the
strident objections of much of the rest of the world.
Baghdad fell even more rapidly than Kabul had, in less than four weeks. But
celebrations of ‘mission accomplished’ proved premature. By summer 2003, an
insurgency gripped much of Iraq. Bush attributed the problem to a failure to
anticipate ‘the consequences of catastrophic success’.24 Planning for the postwar
occupation had assumed that US forces would hand over power to the Iraqis after
a few months. This reflected Bush’s ideological distaste for nation-building, which
dated back to the campaign.25
As the insurgency gained strength, the Iraq Survey Group (ISG) sought to find
Iraq’s WMD. Despite the work of 1,400 people and an investment of more than
US$1 billion, no nuclear, chemical or biological weapons were discovered. The
head of the ISG told the US Senate that when it came to Iraq’s WMD programme
‘we were almost all wrong’.26 The war’s primary rationale was mistaken.
With no WMD to be found, Bush increasingly justified the war in terms of
promoting democracy in Iraq and eventually the rest of the Arab world. Freedom
21
See Woodward, Bush at war, ch. 6.
22
Bush, ‘The President’s news conference with Prime Minister Tony Blair’.
23
CNN, ‘Late edition with Wolf Blitzer’, 8 Sept. 2002, http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0209/08/
le.00.html, accessed 23 May 2011.
24
‘I’ve gained strength’, interview with George W. Bush, Time, 6 Sept. 2004, p. 38, http://www.time.com/time/
covers/1101040906/, accessed 23 May 2011.
25
See e.g. Bush’s comments in ‘The second 2000 Gore–Bush presidential debate’, 11 Oct. 2000, http://www.pbs.
org/newshour/bb/election/2000debates/2ndebate1.html, accessed 23 May 2011.
26
David Kay, testimony before the US Senate, Committee on Armed Services, 28 Jan. 2004, http://
articles.cnn.com/2004–01–28/politics/kay.transcript_1_iraq-survey-group-wmd-weapons-inspector?_
s=PM:ALLPOLITICS, accessed 23 May 2011.
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had been a theme of Bush’s public comments dating back to his first campaign
speech.27 It had not, however, previously been a priority. But it became an effec-
tive rhetorical device for blunting domestic critics. It diverted attention from the
WMD question and forced opponents either to agree with him or to explain why
they opposed spreading democracy.
In his second inaugural address, Bush pivoted away from the original Bush
Doctrine and positioned democracy promotion as a leading goal of American
foreign policy, declaring: ‘It is the policy of the United States to seek and support
the growth of democratic institutions in every nation and culture, with the
ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world’.28 Just weeks after the address,
Secretary of State Rice cancelled a trip to Egypt in protest at the arrest of an
Egyptian democracy activist. When Rice finally went to Cairo later that year she
publicly told a gathering of Egyptian reformers, ‘All free nations will stand with
you as you secure the blessings of your own liberty’.29
Bush’s ‘freedom agenda’, however, soon hit problems. One was that the admin-
istration had no strategy to accomplish its lofty goal. Just weeks after the second
inaugural address, Bush submitted a budget request that actually cut funds for
the government’s democracy promotion efforts.30 A second problem was that
democracy promotion often conflicted with other important US foreign policy
goals, most notably countering terrorism. Many of the allies in the war on terror
were autocracies. Demanding that they embrace democratic reform risked losing
their cooperation on terrorism. A third problem was that democracy could
produce governments hostile to US interests. That happened dramatically in early
2006 when Palestinians voted Hamas into power, an outcome the Bush adminis-
tration had thought impossible.31 Not surprisingly, autocratic Arab governments
suddenly held new appeal. During Rice’s January 2007 visit to Egypt, she dropped
all public talk of democracy and instead stressed that the US ‘relationship with
Egypt is an important strategic relations that we value greatly’.32
By the end of Bush’s second term in office the limits to American power were
showing. The United States could topple regimes with remarkable speed.33 It
could not, however, easily snuff out insurgencies or rebuild broken governments.
Despite expenditure of more than half a trillion dollars, US troops were still
fighting in Iraq—and in 2007 Bush dispatched 20,000 additional US soldiers to try
to curtail the violence there. Meanwhile, in Afghanistan the Taleban had regained
the initiative, putting pressure on Hamid Karzai’s government and sparking
violence across the border in Pakistan.
27
Bush, ‘A distinctly American internationalism’.
28
George W. Bush, ‘President Bush’s second inaugural address’, 20 Jan. 2005, http://www.npr.org/templates/
story/story.php?storyId=4460172, accessed 23 May 2011.
29
Condoleezza Rice, ‘Remarks at the American University in Cairo’, 20 June 2005, http://merln.ndu.edu/
archivepdf/NEA/State/48328.pdf, accessed 23 May 2011.
30
Daalder and Lindsay, America unbound, p. 198.
31
Steven R. Weisman, ‘Rice admits US underestimated Hamas strength’, New York Times, 30 Jan. 2006.
32
Condoleezza Rice, ‘Remarks with Egyptian foreign minister Aboul Gheit’, 25 Jan. 2007, http://unispal.
un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/4F64E01FD3F94ED685257266004F72BD, accessed 23 May 2011.
33
See Max Boot, ‘The new American way of war’, Foreign Affairs 82: 4, July–Aug. 2003, pp. 41–58.
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Flexing American muscles in Iraq and Afghanistan also had not produced the
supplementary benefits that Bush had anticipated. Rather than being cowed by
his threats, Iran and North Korea continued with their nuclear programmes—
indeed, in 2006 Pyongyang tested its first atomic bomb. Allied leaders had not
rallied around Bush’s leadership but rather had distanced themselves from it,
in good part because their citizens opposed US policies.34 At home, the US
government’s deficit topped US$500 billion, and a majority of Americans wanted
out of Iraq. This was not what Bush had envisioned when he declared the war
on terror.
The promise of transformation
Barack Obama in a way owed his political success to George W. Bush. Obama
was an obscure Illinois state legislator when he used an anti-war rally in Chicago
in October 2002 to denounce Bush’s march towards a ‘dumb war’.35 The speech
became pivotal during the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination campaign.
Hillary Clinton and other leading Democratic presidential candidates had voted
for the war; Obama smartly argued that he had opposed it from the start, thereby
distinguishing himself from the rest of the field.36 Although his formal foreign
policy credentials were slim, he successfully argued that his better judgement
trumped his opponent’s greater experience.
The argument was significant because, unlike eight years earlier, foreign policy
figured prominently in the 2008 presidential campaign, especially during the
Democratic primaries. Iraq was the banner issue. More than one in three Ameri-
cans in the spring of 2008 saw it as the most important issue facing the country.37
Obama argued that ‘by refusing to end the war in Iraq President Bush is giving the
terrorists what they really want … a US occupation of undetermined length, at
undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences’.38 Obama’s policy prescrip-
tion was straightforward: he would withdraw all US troops within 16 months of
his election. But in keeping with his 2002 claim that he wasn’t against all wars, just
dumb ones, he pledged to send more US troops to Afghanistan, which he believed
that the Bush administration had unjustifiably ignored.39
Obama’s criticisms of Bush’s foreign policy did not turn on the question of
goals or the propriety of an activist foreign policy. Obama’s vow to ‘protect the
American people and to expand opportunity for the next generation’ could have
been drawn from the speech of any US president during his lifetime.40 And like
34
See e.g. BBC World Service Poll, ‘Israel and Iran share most negative ratings in global poll’, 6 March 2007,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/06_03_07_perceptions.pdf, accessed 23 May 2011.
35
Quoted in Greg Bryane and Jane B. Vaughn, ‘300 attend rally against Iraq war’, Chicago Daily Herald, 3 Oct. 2002.
36
See James M. Lindsay, ‘National security, the electoral connection, and policy choice’, in Martin A. Levin,
Daniel DiSalvo and Martin Shapiro, eds, Getting past no from Clinton to Bush to Obama (Baltimore, MD: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 2011).
37
The Gallup poll: public opinion 2007 (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008), p. 315.
38
Barack Obama, ‘The war we need to win’, Woodrow Wilson Center, 1 Aug. 2007, http://www.wilsoncenter.
org/events/docs/abgmasp0807.pdf, accessed 3 June 2011.
39
Dan Balz, ‘Obama says he would take fight to Pakistan’, Washington Post, 2 Aug. 2007.
40
Obama, ‘Renewing American leadership’, p. 2.
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Bush, Obama was an internationalist who favoured a robust US role overseas. He
was not a non-interventionist calling for a retreat to Fortress America.
Obama’s criticisms instead flowed from a rejection of Bush’s view of how the
world worked. Where Bush implicitly denied the claim that globalization was
remaking world politics, Obama accepted it as a given. A globalized world had
created a multitude of threats that crossed national borders. Terrorism was only
the most visible on a list that included nuclear proliferation and climate change.
American power, though vast, was insufficient to meet these challenges. In
Obama’s words, ‘America cannot meet the threats of this century alone’.41
Obama argued that the United States could secure the partners it needed only
if other countries agreed with where it was headed and how. The United States
could no longer afford the Bush practice of ‘bullying other countries to ratify
changes we hatch in isolation’.42 Obama pledged to abide by international rules
on issues such as coercive interrogation and to return diplomacy to the forefront
of US policy. He would tackle issues like climate change and revive the Israeli–
Palestinian peace process. His diplomatic push would extend even to America’s
enemies. To the consternation of his critics, and even some of his supporters,
when asked during the campaign whether he would ‘be willing to meet separately,
without precondition … with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, and
North Korea, in order to bridge the gap that divides our countries’, he answered
‘yes’.43
Although Obama emphasized the importance of working with friend and foe
alike, he insisted that he would act militarily where it made sense. Besides vowing
to send more troops to Afghanistan, he insisted he would use drone strikes and
Special Forces operations to attack inside Pakistan. In 2007 he said: ‘If we have
actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf
won’t act, we will’.44 Both Democrats and Republicans denounced the statement,
with some arguing that he had ‘suggested invading Pakistan’.45
Obama’s enthusiasm for military action, however, stopped short of humanitarian
intervention. He favoured withdrawing US troops from Iraq even if genocide was
occurring. ‘Well, look,’ he said at one campaign stop, ‘if that’s the criteria by which
we are making decisions on the deployment of US forces, then by that argument
you would have three hundred thousand troops in the Congo right now, where
millions have been slaughtered as a consequence of ethnic strife, which we haven’t
done’. He added, ‘We would be deploying unilaterally and occupying the Sudan,
which we haven’t done’.46
41
Obama, ‘Renewing American leadership’, p. 4.
42
Obama, ‘Renewing American leadership’, p. 11.
43
See among others John Heilemann and Mark Halperin, Game change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin,
and the race of a lifetime (New York: Harper, 2010), p. 111; David Plouffe, Audacity to win: the inside story and lessons
of Barack Obama’s historic victory (New York: Viking, 2009), pp. 84–6; Matthew Yglesias, ‘The accidental foreign
policy’, The Atlantic, June 2008, pp. 28–30.
44
Barack Obama, ‘The war we need to win’.
45
The quote is from Sen. John McCain (R-AZ). For a list of similar criticisms, see Michael D. Shear, ‘In
bin Laden announcement, echoes of 2007 Obama speech’, The Caucus, 2 May 2011, http://thecaucus.blogs.
nytimes.com/2011/05/02/in-bin-laden-announcement-echoes-of-2007-obama-speech/, accessed 23 May 2011.
46
Quoted in Ryan Lizza, ‘The consequentialist’, New Yorker, 2 May 2011, p. 46.
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Obama similarly shied away from embracing George W. Bush’s ‘freedom
agenda’. In part, this reflected hard-nosed political calculation; Iraq had made
democracy promotion toxic to many Americans. But it also reflected his assess-
ment that democracy promotion exalted elections over what he considered the
building blocks of democracy—security and economic opportunity. He noted
privately that President Franklin Roosevelt’s famed ‘Four Freedoms’ speech had
not mentioned elections at all.47 Mindful of FDR’s concern about freedom from
want and fear, Obama proposed doubling the US foreign aid budget.
Obama’s reluctance to embrace humanitarian intervention and his coolness
towards democracy promotion spurred discussion that he was a rare bird—a
Democratic foreign policy realist. Obama’s own comments fuelled the debate.
‘The truth is’, he told Pennsylvania voters, ‘that my foreign policy is actually a
return to the traditional bipartisan realistic policy of George Bush’s father, of John
F. Kennedy, of, in some ways, Ronald Reagan’.48 But a more accurate description
of how Obama viewed foreign policy was pragmatism rather than realism. He
wanted ‘a strategy no longer driven by ideology and politics but one that is based
on a realistic assessment of the sobering facts on the ground and our interests in
the region’.49 He vowed to assess each problem on its merits, and then attempt to
devise a solution.
Obama’s campaign vision for US foreign policy excited people both at home and
overseas.50 Exhausted after eight years of George W. Bush, they expected that the
one-term Senator would, to borrow a popular verb, transform American foreign
policy. The candidate himself sometimes got caught up in the optimism of what
he would do. ‘The day I’m inaugurated, the country looks at itself differently.
And don’t underestimate that power. Don’t underestimate that transformation’.51
Expectations meet reality
Obama began his presidency by methodically translating his campaign promises
into deeds.52 On his third day in office, he ordered the closure of the US detention
facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, within a year and an end to coercive inter-
rogations. In mid-February, he ordered 17,000 US troops sent to Afghanistan, an
increase of nearly 50 per cent over the 36,000 US troops already there.53 At the
end of February, he ordered the withdrawal of all US combat troops from Iraq
47
James Traub, The freedom agenda: why America must spread democracy (just not the way George Bush did) (New York:
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2008), p. 218.
48
Quoted in Lizza, ‘The consequentialist’, p. 46.
49
Quoted in Lizza, ‘The consequentialist’, p. 46.
50
On the high expectations for Obama, see R. Nicholas Burns, ‘The ascension’, The National Interest, Jan.–Feb.
2009, pp. 53–62.
51
Quoted in Paul Steinhauser, ‘Obama: my presidency would unleash a “transformation”’, CNN.com, 27
July 2007, http://articles.cnn.com/2007–07–27/politics/obama.black.votes_1_affirmative-action-presidential-
forum-obama?_s=PM:POLITICS, accessed 23 May 2011.
52
For a summary of Obama’s major foreign policy decisions during his first months in office, see Jonathan Alter,
The promise: President Obama, year one (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010), ch. 14.
53
Barack Obama, ‘Presidential statement’, White House, 17 Feb. 2009, http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_
office/Statement-by-the-President-on-Afghanistan/, accessed 23 May 2011.
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by August 2010 and all remaining US troops by December 2011.54 In March he
sent a videotaped greeting to Iran in honour of the Iranian New Year, saying that
‘my administration is now committed to diplomacy that addresses the full range of
issues before us’.55 In May, he told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that
Israel had to freeze all settlement construction.56 In June, the US House passed
the cap-and-trade bill that Obama favoured to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.57
Obama launched a slew of diplomatic initiatives, most notably overturning
Bush policy in sending US officials to participate in international talks with Iran
over its nuclear programme. He travelled widely to speak to foreign audiences,
visiting 21 countries in 2009 alone—the most ambitious foreign travel schedule
of any first-year president.58 In April, he promised cheering crowds in Prague
‘to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons’.59 In June,
he spoke in Cairo of his desire ‘to seek a new beginning between the United
States and Muslims around the world’.60 In September, he told the UN General
Assembly that he was seeking, ‘in word and deed, a new era of engagement with
the world’.61
Obama’s embrace of diplomacy made him popular abroad and revived Ameri-
ca’s image around the globe.62 Expectations of what he would accomplish soared.
He won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize. The prize committee mentioned no accom-
plishments in its award citation; instead, it celebrated him for giving the world’s
people ‘hope for a better future’ with ‘his diplomacy … founded in the concept
that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes
that are shared by the majority of the world’s population’.63
Obama’s first 28 months in office did produce some notable accomplishments.
In June 2010, the UN Security Council imposed new sanctions on Iran in a bid
to curtail its budding nuclear programme.64 The move was significant not just
54
Barack Obama, ‘Remarks of President Barack Obama—as prepared for delivery: responsibly ending the
war in Iraq’, Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, 27 Feb. 2009, http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/
Remarks-of-President-Barack-Obama-Responsibly-Ending-the-War-in-Iraq/, accessed 23 May 2011.
55
Quoted in ‘Obama extends Iran an olive branch on video tape’, 20 March 2009, http://www.nytimes.
com/2009/03/20/world/middleeast/20iran.html, accessed 23 May 2011.
56
Glenn Kessler, ‘Obama pushes Israel on settlement issue’, Washington Post, 29 May 2009, http://www.
washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/28/AR2009052803771.html, accessed 23 May 2011.
57
John M. Broder, ‘House passes bill to address threat of climate change’, New York Times, 26 June 2009, http://
www.nytimes.com/2009/06/27/us/politics/27climate.html, accessed 23 May 2011.
58
Alter, The promise, p. 14.
59
Barack Obama, ‘Remarks by President Barack Obama’, Prague, 5 April 2009, http://www.whitehouse.gov/
the_press_office/Remarks-By-President-Barack-Obama-In-Prague-As-Delivered/, accessed 23 May 2011.
60
Barack Obama, ‘Remarks by the President on a new beginning’, Cairo, 4 June 2009, http://www.whitehouse.
gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-cairo-university-6–04–09, accessed 23 May 2001.
61
Barack Obama, ‘Remarks by the president to the United Nations General Assembly’, New York, 23 Sept. 2009,
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-by-the-President-to-the-United-Nations-General-
Assembly/, accessed 23 May 2011.
62
Pew Research Center, ‘Confidence in Obama lifts US image around the world; most Muslim publics not so
easily moved’, Pew Global Attitudes Project, 23 July 2009, http://pewglobal.org/2009/07/23/confidence-in-
obama-lifts-us-image-around-the-world/, accessed 23 May 2001.
63
Reuters, ‘Text of Nobel Peace Prize citation for Obama’, 9 Oct. 2009, http://www.reuters.com/article/
2009/10/09/us-nobel-peace-citation-text-sb-idUSTRE5981RA20091009, accessed 23 May 2001.
64
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1929, 9 June 2010, http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/
GEN/N10/396/79/PDF/N1039679.pdf ?OpenElement, accessed 23 May 2011.
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because it intensified pressure on Tehran but because it won the support of the two
veto-wielding Security Council members that had previously resisted sanctions,
China and Russia. Russian support reflected the success of Obama’s effort to ‘reset’
relations with Moscow.65 In September 2009, he revamped US missile defence
policy, scrapping the long-range missile defence system that Bush had begun and
the Russians opposed in favour of a system that relied on shorter-range intercep-
tors that caused Moscow less alarm.66 That policy change enabled the signing and
eventual ratification of the ‘New START’ treaty as well as facilitating Moscow’s
cooperation in the passage of materiel through Central Asia to Afghanistan.
In March 2011, Obama worked with Britain and France to secure Chinese and
Russian cooperation at the Security Council once again, this time to pass a resolu-
tion authorizing action to protect Libyan civilians against attacks by Muammar
Qadhafi’s forces.67
Obama succeeded on several core national security objectives as well. US combat
troops left Iraq in August 2010 as promised, and the withdrawal of the remaining
50,000 non-combat troops was on schedule to be completed by the December
2011 deadline.68 He quintupled the number of strikes by armed drones against
suspected terrorist hideouts in Pakistan and elsewhere.69 And most notably, in
May 2011 US Navy SEALS killed Osama bin Laden in a high-stakes raid in Abbot-
tabad, Pakistan, conducted without the knowledge of the Pakistani government.
Nonetheless, Obama’s foreign policy fell short of being transformational in
terms of making US foreign policy more successful. Most of his signature initia-
tives either stalled or failed. Domestic opposition eventually forced him to reverse
his decision to close the detention facility at Guantánamo.70 Israel refused to
halt settlement construction, and in late 2010 Obama dropped his demand.71 He
similarly abandoned his efforts to establish a cap-and-trade system for greenhouse
gas emissions.72 ‘Iranian leaders rebuffed his diplomatic overtures’.73 Less than two
months after Obama’s Prague speech, North Korea conducted its second nuclear
65
See Samuel Charap, ‘The “transformation” of US–Russia relations’, Current History, Oct. 2010, pp. 281–7,
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2010/09/pdf/charap_us_russia_relations.pdf, accessed 23 May 2011.
66
Peter Baker, ‘White House scraps Bush’s approach to missile shield’, New York Times, 17 Sept. 2009, http://
www.nytimes.com/2009/09/18/world/europe/18shield.html, accessed 23 May 2011.
67
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973, 17 March 2011, http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/
UNDOC/GEN/N11/268/39/PDF/N1126839.pdf ?OpenElement, accessed 23 May 2011.
68
Ernesto Londoño, ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom ends as last combat soldiers leave Baghdad’, Washington Post, 19
Aug. 2010, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/18/AR2010081805644.html,
accessed 23 May 2011.
69
Data on US drone strikes can be found at the New America Foundation, ‘Year of the drone’, http://
counterterrorism.newamerica.net/drones, accessed 23 May 2011.
70
Scott Shane and Mark Landler, ‘Obama clears way for Guantánamo trials’, New York Times, 7 March 2001,
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/08/world/americas/08guantanamo.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=scott%20
shane&st=cse, accessed 23 may 2011.
71
Mark Landler, ‘Clinton says US is committed to Mideast peace but reverting to old strategy’, New York Times,
10 Dec. 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/11/world/middleeast/11diplo.html, accessed 23 May 2011.
72
Dan Morgan, ‘US shelves “cap and trade”’, European Institute, Feb. 2011, http://www.europeaninstitute.
org/February-2011/us-shelves-qcap-and-tradeq-policy-shift-and-congressional-opposition-sink-eu-style-
climate-exchange-market-in-us.html, accessed 23 May 2011.
73
Thomas Erdbrink, ‘Iran’s supreme leader rebuffs Obama’, Washington Post, 22 March 2009, http://www.
washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/21/AR2009032100217.html, accessed 23 May 2011.
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test. Beijing failed to reciprocate his conciliatory gestures, and by late 2010 he had
adopted a more assertive posture towards China.74
Obama’s efforts to stabilize Afghanistan drew the United States into a deeper
commitment than he had anticipated. His February 2009 troop increase failed
to turn the tide against the Taleban as he hoped. Despite explicit administration
guidance to senior military officials that he did not wish to hear requests for more
troops for at least a year, the commanding US general privately warned in August
2009 of ‘mission failure’ if substantially more troops were not sent and the strategy
changed.75 The report quickly leaked, creating an uproar. Obama launched a fresh
review of Afghanistan policy that culminated in a decision to dispatch 30,000
more troops, with the aim of beginning to withdraw them by July 2011.76 As that
deadline approached, military conditions had improved but the political situation
in Afghanistan remained perilous.77
The limits to change
Obama’s failure to transform American foreign policy had several roots. One was
the sheer number and complexity of the problems he inherited. Topping the list
was the financial crisis. Obama spent much of his first six months in office working
to prevent the collapse of the US economy and with it the international finan-
cial system. The purely foreign policy challenges he faced—Middle East peace,
climate change and nuclear proliferation, to name a few—were messy, perhaps
intractable, problems that were not amenable to unilateral American solutions or
perhaps even multilateral ones. And events were not kind to Obama. Whether it
was the green movement in Iran or the Arab Spring, his foreign policy challenges
multiplied rather than shrank. And while these crises may have given Obama
opportunities, the expensive US commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan and the
US government’s dismal fiscal position limited his possible responses.
Domestic politics did Obama no favours, either. Although Democrats initially
controlled both House and Senate, the latter’s peculiar rules enabled the Repub-
lican minority to delay if not block outright foreign policy initiatives such as
cap-and-trade legislation that required congressional consent. Obama won Senate
approval of the New START treaty, but only after a bruising political battle that
consumed the White House’s attention for several months. The lesson was clear:
passing foreign policy legislation would require intense commitments of scarce
time and energy.
74
See Helene Cooper, ‘For Chinese leader’s visit, US to take bolder tack’, New York Times, 17 Jan. 2011, http://
www.nytimes.com/2011/01/18/world/asia/18policy.html, accessed 23 May 2011.
75
On the guidance to senior military officials not to request more troops for Afghanistan, see Bob Woodward,
Obama’s wars (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010), pp. 123–4. On the commanding general’s assessment, see
Stanley A. McChrystal, ‘Commander’s initial assessment’, 30 Aug. 2009, http://media.washingtonpost.com/
wp-srv/politics/documents/Assessment_Redacted_092109.pdf, accessed 23 May 2011.
76
The particulars of the Afghan strategy review are extensively documented in Woodward, Obama’s wars, esp.
chs 13–28.
77
Thom Shanker, ‘Pentagon war report cites progress by troops’, New York Times, 29 April 2011, http://www.
nytimes.com/2011/04/30/world/asia/30military.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=afghanistan%20progress&st=cse,
accessed 23 May 2011.
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Obama’s own missteps hampered his cause. The numerous special envoys he
appointed created confusion about who was in charge of which policy, and his
first National Security Advisor, General James Jones, struggled in the position.78
Obama failed to anticipate that his demand for a halt to Israeli settlement activity
would strengthen Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s position at home.
Obama’s slow response to the 12 June protest movement in Iran energized his critics
and dismayed his supporters. His conciliatory gestures towards China emboldened
Beijing rather than tamed it. He neglected relations with emerging democratic
powers such as Brazil, India and Indonesia during his first year in office, and his
often inept handling of personal relations with foreign leaders alternately annoyed
and alarmed even close allies.79
But Obama’s foreign policy strategy suffered from a more fundamental problem:
it rested on an overly optimistic premise. He had assumed that if the United States
moderated its tone, reached out to foreign capitals, stressed common interests and
then decided to lead, others would follow. Bush had failed, on this assessment, not
so much because issues were complicated, or countries disagreed over what to do
and how to do it, or because foreign capitals had different priorities, but because
he had led badly. Obama would instead reclaim the diplomatic mantle of Franklin
Roosevelt, Harry Truman and John Kennedy.
Obama, however, had become president in an entirely different geopolitical
context from any of these presidential predecessors. No country was playing the
role of the Soviet Union, spurring countries to put aside differences to rally around
the United States. Rapid economic growth in emerging markets had shifted the
balance of global economic power and created new cross-national networks both
within and between regions that bypassed the United States.80 The 2008–2009
financial crisis further weakened the US ability to lead, its economic woes being
interpreted both abroad and at home as evidence of its decline.81
None of this was a surprise for Obama. He had spoken often on the campaign
trail about how globalization was remaking the world. But he had not followed
his analysis of global trends to its logical conclusion. A world in which power
was more dispersed and new cross-national networks had developed would be a
world that was harder to lead. Rather than hungering for US leadership, many
countries were indifferent to it. They did not see Washington offering solutions
that addressed their primary concerns. So they pursued their interests elsewhere.82
At times, even traditional friends and allies as well as rising powers contested
78
See among others, Alter, The promise, p. 75.
79
See Robert Kagan, ‘Allies everywhere feeling snubbed by President Obama’, Washington Post, 17 March 2010,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/16/AR2010031603322.html, accessed 23
May 2011.
80
See e.g. Evan A. Feigenbaum, ‘Why America no longer gets Asia’, Washington Quarterly 34: 2, Spring 2011, pp.
25–43, http://twq.com/11spring/docs/11spring_Feigenbaum.pdf, accessed 3 June 2011.
81
See among others, Gideon Rachman, ‘Think again: American decline’, Foreign Policy, Jan.–Feb. 2011, http://
www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/01/02/think_again_american_decline, accessed 23 May 2011.
82
In the case of Asia, see Evan A. Feigenbaum and Robert Manning, The United States in a new Asia (New
York: Council on Foreign Relations, 2009), http://www.cfr.org/asia/united-states-new-asia/p20446, accessed
3 June 2011. In the case of Latin America, see Julia E. Sweig, ‘A new global player: Brazil’s far-flung agenda’,
Foreign Affairs 89: 6, Nov.–Dec. 2010, pp. 173–84.
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American leadership.83 China sought to reconfigure the balance of power in Asia
and remake the global financial architecture on a pattern more to its liking. Brazil
and Turkey tried to broker a deal with Iran over its nuclear weapons programme.
India saw itself as the dominant power from Aden to the Strait of Malacca, not as
a junior partner to Washington. Reconciling these competing ambitions, interests
and priorities was a daunting, perhaps Sisyphean, task.
Obama acknowledged the problem early in his presidency. ‘If there’s just
Roosevelt and Churchill sitting in a room with a brandy, that’s an easier negotia-
tion,’ he noted. ‘But that’s not the world we live in’.84 He calculated that if the
United States listened more and stressed common interests ‘at the margins, they
[other countries] are more likely to want to cooperate than not cooperate’.85 This
was what one politically tone-deaf Obama adviser called ‘leading from behind’.86
But the key question left unasked and unanswered was whether more cooperation
would translate into enough cooperation. As a result, Obama declined to adjust his
foreign policy goals, and struggled to devise a strategy for advancing US interests
in a world where other powers, large and small, were busy protecting their own.
He stayed on course, laying down markers and drawing lines, only to see many
of them ignored.87
Succeeding in a globalized world
September 11 redefined US foreign policy. George W. Bush believed that the
attacks provided a new orientating principle for US foreign policy and mandated
an aggressive US response. In fighting the war on terrorism he sought to remake
the global landscape in a form more conducive to American security. But fighting
terrorism proved far too narrow a focus for US policy. The United States simply
had too many other interests beyond its borders. Bush’s war on terror ultimately
showed the limits of American power and saddled his successor with a raft of
messy foreign policy problems.
Obama understood that globalization had remade the geopolitical terrain. Power
had been dispersed not just across a wider array of countries, but to non-state
actors as well. The days when the United States could impose solutions, if they
had ever existed, did so no longer. Navigating this more complex world required
listening to others and giving ‘them a stake in upholding the international order’.88
83
See among others Steven A. Cook, ‘How do you say “frenemy” in Turkish?’, Foreignpolicy.com, 1 June 2010,
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/06/01/how_do_you_say_frenemy_in_Turkish, accessed 3 June
2011; Stewart Patrick, ‘Irresponsible stakeholders? The difficulty of integrating rising powers’, Foreign Affairs
89: 6, Nov.–Dec. 2010, pp. 44–53.
84
Quoted in Helene Cooper, ‘On the world stage, Obama issues an overture’, New York Times, 2 April 2009,
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/03/world/europe/03assess.html?ref=us, accessed 23 May 2011.
85
President Barack Obama, ‘Press conference by President Obama in Port of Spain’, White House, 19 April 2009,
http://archives.uruguay.usembassy.gov/usaweb/2009/09–139aEN.shtml, accessed 3 June 2011.
86
Quoted in Lizza, ‘The consequentialist’, p. 55.
87
See e.g. Steven Lee Myers, ‘Israeli leader rebuffs Obama on ’67 borders’, New York Times, 21 May 2011,
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/21/world/middleeast/21prexy.html?ref=world; Liz Sly, ‘At least 32 killed
as Syrian troops open fire’, Washington Post, 21 May 2011, http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/syrian-
troops-fire-on-protesters-at-least-3-dead/2011/05/20/AF4hUj7G_story.html, both accessed 23 May 2011.
88
Obama, ‘Renewing American leadership’, p. 11.
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What Obama stumbled over was not the diagnosis but the prescription: even if
Washington led wisely and sympathetically, others might not follow. Consulta-
tions could not guarantee consensus. Governments could and did disagree over
which issues constituted threats or opportunities, what priority they should be
given, how they should be handled and who should bear the responsibility for
addressing them. The result too often was inaction or gridlock.
Obama’s challenge is one his successors are likely to confront as well: how to
promote US interests in a world that often will not automatically respond to US
leadership even as the United States remains the single most powerful and influ-
ential country. That may require new strategies—or, just as likely, a narrower
definition of US goals overseas and hard choices among priorities. That search
will be painful. Much of the world expects US leadership even when it bristles
at it. Obama’s effort to shift the burden of fighting in Libya onto other NATO
countries foundered because they were neither accustomed to leading nor neces-
sarily capable of it.
Obama’s task will be perhaps even more daunting at home. Countries, like
people, live in the past, hailing old triumphs and ignoring the march of events.
Domestic groups will resist change even as the US government’s fiscal woes create
intense political pressures to scale back its commitments overseas.89 Proposals to
rethink old policies will be met with renewed claims that Obama does not believe
in American exceptionalism.90 But unless Obama finds a way to align his foreign
policy prescriptions with evolving global trends, the gap between American
aspirations and accomplishments will grow, and the prospects for successful US
global leadership will dim further.
89
See Roger C. Altman and Richard N. Haass, ‘American profligacy and American power’, Foreign Affairs 81: 6,
Nov.–Dec. 2010, pp. 25–34.
90
Karen Tumulty, ‘An old idea and a new political battle’, Washington Post, 29 Nov. 2010, http://www.
washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/28/AR2010112804139.html, accessed 23 May 2011.
779
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