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For the last several months, Jeffery Goldberg of the Atlantic has been putting together the definitive article of President Obama's foreign policy throughout his two terms. He can describe what he sought to achieve better than I can.quote:My goal in our recent conversations was to see the world through Obama’s eyes, and to understand what he believes America’s role in the world should be. This article is informed by our recent series of conversations, which took place in the Oval Office; over lunch in his dining room; aboard Air Force One; and in Kuala Lumpur during his most recent visit to Asia, in November. It is also informed by my previous interviews with him and by his speeches and prolific public ruminations, as well as by conversations with his top foreign-policy and national-security advisers, foreign leaders and their ambassadors in Washington, friends of the president and others who have spoken with him about his policies and decisions, and his adversaries and critics. The result is an endlessly fascinating article that digs deeply into foreign policy as a concept, and Obama's vision of how it should be conducted by the US. Before I crack into why I made this thread, I'll post a few excerpts that show generally what kind of information the article presents. quote:The current U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, who is the most dispositionally interventionist among Obama’s senior advisers, had argued early for arming Syria’s rebels. Power, who during this period served on the National Security Council staff, is the author of a celebrated book excoriating a succession of U.S. presidents for their failures to prevent genocide. The book, A Problem From Hell, published in 2002, drew Obama to Power while he was in the U.S. Senate, though the two were not an obvious ideological match. Power is a partisan of the doctrine known as “responsibility to protect,” which holds that sovereignty should not be considered inviolate when a country is slaughtering its own citizens. She lobbied him to endorse this doctrine in the speech he delivered when he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, but he declined. Obama generally does not believe a president should place American soldiers at great risk in order to prevent humanitarian disasters, unless those disasters pose a direct security threat to the United States. quote:Obama’s reticence frustrated Power and others on his national-security team who had a preference for action. Hillary Clinton, when she was Obama’s secretary of state, argued for an early and assertive response to Assad’s violence. In 2014, after she left office, Clinton told me that “the failure to help build up a credible fighting force of the people who were the originators of the protests against Assad … left a big vacuum, which the jihadists have now filled.” When The Atlantic published this statement, and also published Clinton’s assessment that “great nations need organizing principles, and ‘Don’t do stupid stuff’ is not an organizing principle,” Obama became “rip-poo poo angry,” according to one of his senior advisers. The president did not understand how “Don’t do stupid poo poo” could be considered a controversial slogan. Ben Rhodes recalls that “the questions we were asking in the White House were ‘Who exactly is in the stupid-poo poo caucus? Who is pro–stupid poo poo?’ ” The Iraq invasion, Obama believed, should have taught Democratic interventionists like Clinton, who had voted for its authorization, the dangers of doing stupid poo poo. (Clinton quickly apologized to Obama for her comments, and a Clinton spokesman announced that the two would “hug it out” on Martha’s Vineyard when they crossed paths there later.) quote:One day, over lunch in the Oval Office dining room, I asked the president how he thought his foreign policy might be understood by historians. He started by describing for me a four-box grid representing the main schools of American foreign-policy thought. One box he called isolationism, which he dismissed out of hand. “The world is ever-shrinking,” he said. “Withdrawal is untenable.” The other boxes he labeled realism, liberal interventionism, and internationalism. “I suppose you could call me a realist in believing we can’t, at any given moment, relieve all the world’s misery,” he said. “We have to choose where we can make a real impact.” He also noted that he was quite obviously an internationalist, devoted as he is to strengthening multilateral organizations and international norms. quote:Obama understands that the decision he made to step back from air strikes, and to allow the violation of a red line he himself had drawn to go unpunished, will be interrogated mercilessly by historians. But today that decision is a source of deep satisfaction for him. There is a lot more at the link, including some funny stories, like Obama punking King Abdullah of Jordan. It's the article of the year up until this point in my opinion. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/04/the-obama-doctrine/471525/ With that being said, this article is the perfect primer to move into an important discussion as the Obama administration prepares to pack up their things and retire to Florida. As he leaves office, his take on foreign policy will leave with him, and the US will move on to the next iteration of thought when it comes to the policy platform that should guide the US through its interactions with other nations. But we've learned a lot throughout Obama's administration, and in a theater like foreign policy where the US to this day routinely makes an rear end out of itself, every bit you learn helps. Obama refers to the foreign policy establishment, and its "playbook." This is sort of the conventional wisdom the foreign policy community has rallied around based on the "lessons" we've learned from all the different case studies of foreign policy in action. As we're all well aware, the playbook is still a bit of a work in progress. I want to talk about this playbook, and Obama's role in crafting it for the future. What plays worked? What plays didn't? How should the overall playbook reflect what we've learned since 2008 by seeing what Obama's philosophy looks like, and the long term effects this philosophy had when put into practice for 8 years? Obviously, this discussion is going to include some case studies. People are going to be talking about, just as an example, whether the detente with Cuba was the proper course of action, and things like that. That's fine, and discussing Obama's track record is certainly part of this thread. But in my opinion, I think the goal here should be less sorting out whether Obama was good or bad on foreign policy, and more shaping our own personal philosophies on foreign policy by what we can learn from what Obama has done, especially with such an outstanding article right up there that provides a wealth of information to help do that. So lets also talk about some hypotheticals, and where we can and where we cannot apply methods that were fundamental parts of Obama's foreign policy platform, as well as what we've learned from other leaders and other case studies, to see what kind of playbook we want to see from presidents in the future. Volkerball fucked around with this message at 15:06 on Mar 10, 2016 |
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Mar 10, 2016 15:04
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Aside from Syria and the red line I think Obama's foreign policy has been about as good as could reasonably be expected. That's a pretty big 'aside from' though.
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Mar 10, 2016 15:33
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quote:The Iraq invasion, Obama believed, should have taught Democratic interventionists like Clinton, who had voted for its authorization, the dangers of doing stupid poo poo. I'm interested in this. A lot of my current views on foreign policy first developed while reading Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine. I recall one of the chapters was on the Iraq war and subsequent reconstruction, the upshot being that there was an enormous amount of Iraqi enthusiasm for the reconstruction program, which had been billed as a sort of new Marshall Plan, that gave way to anger and violence when tangible benefits failed to materialize. This, Klein said, was because the purpose of the reconstruction program was to transfer enormous amounts of wealth to large American firms, which is why there was so little investment in Iraqi firms, and why the relevant American firms were much more interested in maximizing their costs (which were guaranteed to be covered) than in actually accomplishing anything in the region. So I guess my question is: why is it that a non-interventionist consensus has coalesced around the Obama administration, seemingly with the Iraq War experience as a rationale? Why has it become the conventional wisdom that the US must not get involved in other nations' affairs at all, rather than that it has to be done right, with the right incentive structure in place? Was Klein's analysis totally wrong, or are the lessons of Iraq being distorted?
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Mar 10, 2016 15:49
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A lot of my criticism of Obama's foreign policy (or really either party's foreign policy as of late) is that it has no semblance of a plan. I think Hillary hit the nail on the head when she said that "don't do stupid poo poo" does not constitute a plan, and the fact that Obama got mad at her for saying that reveals how limited his view or thinking on foreign policy is. To me, foreign policy (FP) is not a play book, it is not a list of actions you take for a given set of circumstances. Our nation's FP should be more like a chess game, where we plan our moves out in advance, yet alter what we do in response to the actions of others to meet the needs of the situation. Not sticking our junk into the hornet's nest that is Syria: smart move, and it constitutes "not doing stupid poo poo." However, Obama had no follow up after that, he simply watched passively from the sidelines as things spiraled out of control with no contingency plans. Our reliance on Turkey (a rather unsavory and unreliable "ally" at best) and a reluctance to actually make use of some of the few capable players on the ground (the KRG and YPG) is laughable. In short, Obama has no end-game, no exit strategy for Syria - he simply is hoping the pot doesn't boil over all over himself. Now, if this is something where you never plan on getting involved with in any form, whatsoever (e.g. if the Syrian war was, say, an Uzbek civil war) then fine. However, US FP history clearly shows that we can practically never walk away from a war in the Middle East for some reason. Therefore, letting the Syrian mess spill over was incredibly short-sighted, as eventually we'd have to wade in even if we didn't want to. That doesn't even begin to start with the fact that he had no long-term international plans. For being the first black president, I would have thought this was a perfect opportunity to try and engage with Africa on a diplomatic and economic front. China is moving in on the continent (or was) with unquestioned zeal, and I'm surprised we didn't even try to compete. Likewise, he didn't use any of his fame and goodwill when he started his first term to accomplish much of anything. With that kind of political capital, you'd think he'd want to try and get something, anything done just to not waste it. The Eurozone crisis? He sits back passively and makes an occasional phone call, never mind that the economic viability of a huge trade partner is on the line. The Ukraine crisis? John Kerry get's played by the Russian foreign minister like a fiddle. The Iran-Saudi rivalry? His inaction on all the other issues causes the Saudis to decide that they are better off making their own coalition of Sunni states, leading to Yemen's war and added proxy war tension in Syria. Essentially Obama was first and foremost a domestic affairs president. Not necessarily a bad thing, considering where we were in 2008, but to claim that he had anything even approaching an adequate or active foreign policy is a joke.
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Mar 10, 2016 16:17
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This is a great article. Obama's characterization of meetings as Putin as "businesslike" in their meetings is interesting, its another confirmation that the Russian elite understand their diminished position and aren't seriously trying to challenge American dominance. Recent Russian war-mongering in Crimea and Syria is more for domestic consumption and to prop up remaining "influence", and Obama correctly determines that it has probably costed more than it's worth.Juffo-Wup posted:I'm interested in this. A lot of my current views on foreign policy first developed while reading Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine. I recall one of the chapters was on the Iraq war and subsequent reconstruction, the upshot being that there was an enormous amount of Iraqi enthusiasm for the reconstruction program, which had been billed as a sort of new Marshall Plan, that gave way to anger and violence when tangible benefits failed to materialize. This, Klein said, was because the purpose of the reconstruction program was to transfer enormous amounts of wealth to large American firms, which is why there was so little investment in Iraqi firms, and why the relevant American firms were much more interested in maximizing their costs (which were guaranteed to be covered) than in actually accomplishing anything in the region. Klein's analysis of Iraq is very good in showing how capitalists took advantage of the invasion and occupation to profit, and to some extent how this kind of profiteering is inevitable in a capitalist society/world. You say that intervention "done right, with right incentive structure" is worth considering, but I'd argue Klein convincingly shows that this is politically impossible at present and capitalists will always find a way to exploit a crisis. In some cases the humanitarian benefits of intervention will outweigh these drawbacks, but the debate over intervention will always include some arguments motivated by profit-seeking instead of humanitarian concern. Iraq was a case were the motivations were nakedly opportunistic from the start, and has resulted in a public more critical of US interventionism.
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Mar 10, 2016 16:32
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Juffo-Wup posted:So I guess my question is: why is it that a non-interventionist consensus has coalesced around the Obama administration, seemingly with the Iraq War experience as a rationale? Why has it become the conventional wisdom that the US must not get involved in other nations' affairs at all, rather than that it has to be done right, with the right incentive structure in place? Was Klein's analysis totally wrong, or are the lessons of Iraq being distorted? Because it is a very significant and recent. And after wrapping up two decade long and largely ineffective operations there just wasn't that much political will for much else. Though whereas in Iraq the US basically caused a sectarian conflict that it couldn't well control, Syria was already in progress by the time it came to their attention. There are a few lessons from Iraq that could be relevant rather than reducing it to one of non-interventionalism. Griffen posted:A lot of my criticism of Obama's foreign policy (or really either party's foreign policy as of late) is that it has no semblance of a plan. I think Hillary hit the nail on the head when she said that "don't do stupid poo poo" does not constitute a plan, and the fact that Obama got mad at her for saying that reveals how limited his view or thinking on foreign policy is. To me, foreign policy (FP) is not a play book, it is not a list of actions you take for a given set of circumstances. Our nation's FP should be more like a chess game, where we plan our moves out in advance, yet alter what we do in response to the actions of others to meet the needs of the situation. Not sticking our junk into the hornet's nest that is Syria: smart move, and it constitutes "not doing stupid poo poo." However, Obama had no follow up after that, he simply watched passively from the sidelines as things spiraled out of control with no contingency plans. Our reliance on Turkey (a rather unsavory and unreliable "ally" at best) and a reluctance to actually make use of some of the few capable players on the ground (the KRG and YPG) is laughable. In short, Obama has no end-game, no exit strategy for Syria - he simply is hoping the pot doesn't boil over all over himself. Now, if this is something where you never plan on getting involved with in any form, whatsoever (e.g. if the Syrian war was, say, an Uzbek civil war) then fine. However, US FP history clearly shows that we can practically never walk away from a war in the Middle East for some reason. Therefore, letting the Syrian mess spill over was incredibly short-sighted, as eventually we'd have to wade in even if we didn't want to. It's more a guideline than a plan. Even when you had US administrations heavily involved in ME affairs Kissinger himself summed it up along the lines of "Do what works until it no longer works, then do something else".
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Mar 10, 2016 16:36
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Nocturtle posted:Klein's analysis of Iraq is very good in showing how capitalists took advantage of the invasion and occupation to profit, and to some extent how this kind of profiteering is inevitable in a capitalist society/world. You say that intervention "done right, with right incentive structure" is worth considering, but I'd argue Klein convincingly shows that this is politically impossible at present and capitalists will always find a way to exploit a crisis. In some cases the humanitarian benefits of intervention will outweigh these drawbacks, but the debate over intervention will always include some arguments motivated by profit-seeking instead of humanitarian concern. Iraq was a case were the motivations were nakedly opportunistic from the start, and has resulted in a public more critical of US interventionism. I get that, but to say 'wealthy interests will always corrupt even good intentions so it's better to not even try' seems more like it's giving up on trying to have a foreign policy at all, rather than recommending any particular such policy. And if it is the case that well-intentioned interventionism will always be corrupted, how do we explain the success of the actual Marshall plan? (Unless you think it wasn't successful, in which case, fair enough).
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Mar 10, 2016 16:41
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Juffo-Wup posted:I get that, but to say 'wealthy interests will always corrupt even good intentions so it's better to not even try' seems more like it's giving up on trying to have a foreign policy at all, rather than recommending any particular such policy. And if it is the case that well-intentioned interventionism will always be corrupted, how do we explain the success of the actual Marshall plan? (Unless you think it wasn't successful, in which case, fair enough). The Iraq war wasn't well-intentioned interventionism; the chance of corruption was pretty much 100% to begin with. The war was nothing more than neo-conservative antics with no real plan afterward. I think Obama entered into a rock and a hard place with it came to foreign policy. The aftermath of the Bush administration had left a US exhausted by war and questioning whether or not it really needed to be a world police. Meanwhile though the repercussions of the Iraq war caused a ripple in the Middle East that we're now seeing the fruition of today. I think he wanted to put an end to the world view of the United States being cowboys, but I think in doing so he made America and himself look weak. I also don't think he's a particularly clever tactician on the world stage. To put it bluntly, his administrations inability to think three steps forward has played a part in what we're seeing today in regard to the Arab Spring, the situation in Syria and the tensions between Russia and the West. His unwillingness to take a forward approach has probably put the world at greater risk than the Bush administration. Is it solely his fault? I'm not sure really. His foreign policy choices haven't exactly been stellar. As for a foreign policy philosophy - I don't think such a thing can be created. Foreign policy changes dynamically depending on the situation currently going on in the world. Today's enemy is tomorrows ally.
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Mar 10, 2016 17:27
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WMain00 posted:The Iraq war wasn't well-intentioned interventionism; the chance of corruption was pretty much 100% to begin with. The war was nothing more than neo-conservative antics with no real plan afterward. Well, yes, I more or less agree, which is why I think it's wrongheaded to take the result as instructive for any attempt at foreign intervention whatsoever. Like, that's my whole argument.
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Mar 10, 2016 17:37
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Juffo-Wup posted:I get that, but to say 'wealthy interests will always corrupt even good intentions so it's better to not even try' seems more like it's giving up on trying to have a foreign policy at all, rather than recommending any particular such policy. And if it is the case that well-intentioned interventionism will always be corrupted, how do we explain the success of the actual Marshall plan? (Unless you think it wasn't successful, in which case, fair enough). I didn't argue that "wealthy interests will always corrupt even good intentions so it's better to not even try", just that profiteering will always be one of the motivations pushing the US to war. Your original question was "Was Klein's analysis totally wrong, or are the lessons of Iraq being distorted?" and the answer is no, Klein's analysis of how profit-seeking behavior drives and exploits crises is convincing. It is one of many motives including humanitarian concern, "nation building", American security and military dominance. One lesson from the Iraq invasion is that the profit-seeking motivation can easily become dominant, and will co-opt humanitarian arguments and invent security risks wholesale (WMDs). This is not an argument against all "interventions", but it should cause Americans to be more critical of the arguments for war. Another (obvious) lesson is that Americans as a whole are easily convinced to support military action, and this is reflected in the politics of invasion. In a just world supporting the Iraqi invasion should be a scarlet letter that dooms a politicians career, but in general politicians who supported the invasion have not been punished by the electorate. Another lesson is that once you go to war you should not act surprised when people exploit the resulting crisis for profit, it's inevitable and part of the package. A further lesson is that modern America's ability to "nation build" is limited. I don't like drawing broad historical parallels and am not a historian, so I won't try to discuss the Marshall plan. Unrelated to this point, I do like how Obama cites climate change as an existential threat while ISIS is not. I'd argue this reflects a better understanding of America's long term interests than optimal handling the next crisis in the middle-east (there will always be another crisis). Nocturtle fucked around with this message at 17:59 on Mar 10, 2016 |
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Mar 10, 2016 17:51
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Juffo-Wup posted:Well, yes, I more or less agree, which is why I think it's wrongheaded to take the result as instructive for any attempt at foreign intervention whatsoever. Like, that's my whole argument. It'd be fairer to split thee Iraq example in half wherein you have the intervention which really defies conventional wisdom and the ensuing sectarian conflict. Iraq isn't quite a failed state yet but given the amount of resources and political will would doing it again in Syria from scratch been really feasible?
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Mar 10, 2016 17:53
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WMain00 posted:As for a foreign policy philosophy - I don't think such a thing can be created. Foreign policy changes dynamically depending on the situation currently going on in the world. Today's enemy is tomorrows ally. True, but you can at least set goals that you work to achieve. One might be "decrease US economic and diplomatic dependence on the Middle East." That might mean the use of fracking in the US to reduce oil imports and even start oil and NG exports to Europe to cut them off of ME oil. That also might mean (covertly) stoking regional rivalries or encouraging cooperation to decrease ME hostility to the US so we can quietly back out of the region. Or you might have the goal of "improving ties to Latin America and the reduction of strong-man countries." Whatever the case, the only foreign policy goal I see from Obama is "hope nothing bad happens to me." When you give up the initiative on every front, you lose the ability to dictate the terms of the diplomatic battlefield.
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Mar 10, 2016 18:11
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Okay, three lessons. First: quote:One lesson from the Iraq invasion is that the profit-seeking motivation can easily become dominant, and will co-opt humanitarian arguments and invent security risks wholesale (WMDs). This is not an argument against all "interventions", but it should cause Americans to be more critical of the arguments for war. Agreed. The American people should have been more cautious and skeptical in 2003, and in general policymakers should be more careful to ensure they have narrow and achievable goals. Second: quote:Another (obvious) lesson is that Americans as a whole are easily convinced to support military action, and this is reflected in the politics of invasion. In a just world supporting the Iraqi invasion should be a scarlet letter that dooms a politicians career, but in general politicians who supported the invasion have not been punished by the electorate. We agree here too. The invasion of Iraq was ultimately a political issue, a question of ideology and the memory of the electorate. But political problems have political solutions: it is a matter of making a (careful, deliberate) foreign policy strategy in response to what happened in Iraq, and selling it to the American people. I also wish that those responsible had faced political repercussions, but it seems like to the extent that the democratic process would be capable of doing that, it would also be capable of adopting a foreign policy strategy that is neither isolationist nor imperialist. If politics is hopeless, then politics is hopeless. Third: quote:Another lesson is that once you go to war you should not act surprised when people exploit the resulting crisis for profit, it's inevitable and part of the package. A further lesson is that modern America's ability to "nation build" is limited. Here is where I think I disagree, for reasons I hinted at above. It's not the case that corporate power exploited or hijacked the attempt at Iraqi reconstruction. Rather, it was handed to them. The upshot, to me, of Klein's argument is that the invasion of Iraq and subsequent occupation were really stunning successes from the perspective of the actual goals of the project. So it seems like the solution should be political: pick politicians who have better goals. Gravel Gravy posted:It'd be fairer to split thee Iraq example in half wherein you have the intervention which really defies conventional wisdom and the ensuing sectarian conflict. Iraq isn't quite a failed state yet but given the amount of resources and political will would doing it again in Syria from scratch been really feasible? No, probably not. I have no problem admitting that I am almost entirely at a loss when it comes to figuring out how the US should / should have respond(ed) to the Syrian crisis. I was speaking moreso in general.
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Mar 10, 2016 18:25
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Juffo-Wup posted:I get that, but to say 'wealthy interests will always corrupt even good intentions so it's better to not even try' seems more like it's giving up on trying to have a foreign policy at all, rather than recommending any particular such policy. And if it is the case that well-intentioned interventionism will always be corrupted, how do we explain the success of the actual Marshall plan? (Unless you think it wasn't successful, in which case, fair enough).
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Mar 10, 2016 19:16
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A Buttery Pastry posted:The actual Marshall Plan was part of the US asserting itself as an imperial power, with the political class in general being strongly supportive of it as a national political project. Combine that with a weaker capitalist class, a recent history of deep government control of the economy, and the Marshall Plan also having the clear effect of restoring an export market for US goods, and it makes sense why short-term gains from corruption were generally overlooked in favor of long-term gains from doing it properly. Any modern attempts at a Marshall Plan is going to have to contend with capital having sunk its claws deep into pretty much every politician, and the country as a whole not caring enough about anything that a politician could channel it into the kind of sustained political action which would be needed to replicate it. If capital has sunk its claws so deep into our political class that the electorate couldn't possibly get them to adopt a nonimperialist interventionism, how are we supposed to get them to adopt isolationism? The argument here isn't for a particular foreign policy strategy, it is an argument for political despair. Which, sure, fair enough, but that tends to shut down a discussion pretty quick.
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Mar 10, 2016 19:24
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Griffen posted:The Ukraine crisis? John Kerry get's played by the Russian foreign minister like a fiddle. How, exactly, has Kerry been played like a fiddle by Lavrov with regard to Ukraine? It seems to me that the U.S. has done everything it possibly could that wouldn't escalate the situation in a direction that wouldn't be in anyone's interests.
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Mar 10, 2016 19:35
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A Buttery Pastry posted:The actual Marshall Plan was part of the US asserting itself as an imperial power, I don't think that this is what the word "imperial" means unless you're using Marxist historiography.
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Mar 10, 2016 19:38
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Majorian posted:How, exactly, has Kerry been played like a fiddle by Lavrov with regard to Ukraine? It seems to me that the U.S. has done everything it possibly could that wouldn't escalate the situation in a direction that wouldn't be in anyone's interests. Well, you could argue that the whole attempt at diplomatic reset was one of the reasons why Russia was able to take Crimea, but IMO it wasn't that big a deal. The real place where Kerry's been played like a fiddle is Syria
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Mar 10, 2016 19:42
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icantfindaname posted:Well, you could argue that the whole attempt at diplomatic reset was one of the reasons why Russia was able to take Crimea, but IMO it wasn't that big a deal. The real place where Kerry's been played like a fiddle is Syria Yeah, and I think the diplomatic reset was a very good idea overall. The problem with it was, the Bush Administration's policy towards Russia really dug us into a hole - I think a deeper one than Obama initially realized. Dropping the Eastern European missile defense idea and restarting the bilateral arms reduction process were both wise, necessary moves, but they weren't enough. From the Russian perspective, the U.S. needed to actually codify that it was limiting its capacity to act unilaterally, as it had under Dubya. They wanted a deeper-cutting arms reduction agreement, a return to the ABM Treaty, and a cessation of eastward NATO expansion. Whether or not those things could have been accomplished with the Republican-held Congress is obviously difficult to say, but I think the Russian government viewed the "reset" as just barely scratching the surface. quote:The real place where Kerry's been played like a fiddle is Syria I dunno, I think the situation had already been mishandled by the time Kerry became Secretary of State, unfortunately. The "Assad must go!" policy was already in place. I think Kerry just inherited a lovely situation, and I give him credit for at least moving us away from a self-defeating maximalist position. e: Like, I can understand being disappointed with how Russia's intervention in Syria has turned out - I'm disappointed too. But I don't think there was much the U.S. could have done to keep them out AND keep them honest, without risking an even worse crisis. The Russians were always going to insert themselves anyway, without or without our acquiescence, to prop up Assad. Majorian fucked around with this message at 20:22 on Mar 10, 2016 |
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Mar 10, 2016 20:11
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quote:When The Atlantic published this statement, and also published Clinton’s assessment that “great nations need organizing principles, and ‘Don’t do stupid stuff’ is not an organizing principle,” Obama became “rip-poo poo angry,” according to one of his senior advisers. The president did not understand how “Don’t do stupid poo poo” could be considered a controversial slogan. Ben Rhodes recalls that “the questions we were asking in the White House were ‘Who exactly is in the stupid-poo poo caucus? Who is pro–stupid poo poo?’ ” The Iraq invasion, Obama believed, should have taught Democratic interventionists like Clinton, who had voted for its authorization, the dangers of doing stupid poo poo. Hilary Clinton announces new campaign theme song to summarize her foreign policy.
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Mar 10, 2016 20:23
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Juffo-Wup posted:So I guess my question is: why is it that a non-interventionist consensus has coalesced around the Obama administration, seemingly with the Iraq War experience as a rationale? Why has it become the conventional wisdom that the US must not get involved in other nations' affairs at all, rather than that it has to be done right, with the right incentive structure in place? Was Klein's analysis totally wrong, or are the lessons of Iraq being distorted? It hasn't, really. He's pushing his legacy, taking note of the fact that nobody remembers anything about his foreign policy except for Iran, Libya, Syria, and his pro-Muslim speeches way back at the beginning of his term, and spinning a narrative that conveniently omits most of his first term. Since opposition to the Iraq War was the most famous foreign policy he held prior to the election, he's using that as the root of his narrative by claiming that it shows his views were always non-interventionist. Also, the real lesson the US learned from Iraq is "don't get drawn into a ground invasion, leave the boots-on-the-ground work to the local faction you're backing so the aftermath will be their responsibility rather than ours", which is certainly a lesson Obama took to heart in his numerous Middle Eastern interventions. An "analysis" of Obama's foreign policy that only mentions Pakistan once in passing, drops a vague reference to Egypt without mentioning Morsi and al-Sisi and completely omits the word "Yemen" is a puff piece, not genuine journalism. A detailed puff piece, to be sure, with plenty of quotes, tales from numerous insiders close to the president, and snippets from what appears to be an in-person interview with the president himself. But as deep as it goes on the things it does cover, it only covers about things the Obama administration wants to talk about or feels that it can't avoid talking about. At the same time, it makes a lot of statements that simply don't seem to be backed up by reality or outright contradict the evidence he offers - the most charitable interpretation I can come up with is that he's making the cardinal mistake of judging a politician's intentions based on what they say rather than what they do, but I have serious trouble believing that a guy who's well-connected enough to have a private lunch with the President of the United States is really that naive about politics. Griffen posted:A lot of my criticism of Obama's foreign policy (or really either party's foreign policy as of late) is that it has no semblance of a plan. I think Hillary hit the nail on the head when she said that "don't do stupid poo poo" does not constitute a plan, and the fact that Obama got mad at her for saying that reveals how limited his view or thinking on foreign policy is. To me, foreign policy (FP) is not a play book, it is not a list of actions you take for a given set of circumstances. Our nation's FP should be more like a chess game, where we plan our moves out in advance, yet alter what we do in response to the actions of others to meet the needs of the situation. Not sticking our junk into the hornet's nest that is Syria: smart move, and it constitutes "not doing stupid poo poo." However, Obama had no follow up after that, he simply watched passively from the sidelines as things spiraled out of control with no contingency plans. Our reliance on Turkey (a rather unsavory and unreliable "ally" at best) and a reluctance to actually make use of some of the few capable players on the ground (the KRG and YPG) is laughable. In short, Obama has no end-game, no exit strategy for Syria - he simply is hoping the pot doesn't boil over all over himself. Now, if this is something where you never plan on getting involved with in any form, whatsoever (e.g. if the Syrian war was, say, an Uzbek civil war) then fine. However, US FP history clearly shows that we can practically never walk away from a war in the Middle East for some reason. Therefore, letting the Syrian mess spill over was incredibly short-sighted, as eventually we'd have to wade in even if we didn't want to. Syria would have been another Iraq or Vietnam for sure - there was simply no way any intervention could have had any real effect, short of an all-out military invasion which would find itself facing a permanent insurgency and unable to establish a strong and stable puppet government. There's no realistic "exit strategy" for sticking our noses into a civil war where we don't like any of the participants and don't want any of them to win. Obama's problem in Syria wasn't that he was too non-interventionist, as his administration is trying to portray it. The reason he's been burned so badly by Syria is because, even though he realized the ultimate futility of intervening in the Syria conflict, he couldn't resist involving the US anyway. Since he realized it was a bad idea with a lot to lose and basically nothing to gain, he tried to compensate for that by restricting the scope to throwaway efforts so we could cut our losses and bail if needed rather than escalating into yet another Middle East quagmire. Instead, the resulting vague, non-committal involvement ended up looking worse than just pretending the conflict didn't exist in the first place.
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Mar 10, 2016 21:02
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Main Paineframe posted:Syria would have been another Iraq or Vietnam for sure - there was simply no way any intervention could have had any real effect, short of an all-out military invasion which would find itself facing a permanent insurgency and unable to establish a strong and stable puppet government. There's no realistic "exit strategy" for sticking our noses into a civil war where we don't like any of the participants and don't want any of them to win. Obama's problem in Syria wasn't that he was too non-interventionist, as his administration is trying to portray it. The reason he's been burned so badly by Syria is because, even though he realized the ultimate futility of intervening in the Syria conflict, he couldn't resist involving the US anyway. Since he realized it was a bad idea with a lot to lose and basically nothing to gain, he tried to compensate for that by restricting the scope to throwaway efforts so we could cut our losses and bail if needed rather than escalating into yet another Middle East quagmire. Instead, the resulting vague, non-committal involvement ended up looking worse than just pretending the conflict didn't exist in the first place. Syria was kind of a damned if you do, damned if you don't thing, though. It's hard to blame him for worrying that it could turn into another Rwanda. And even if you don't ascribe any altruism to his foreign policy, at the very least he knew Rwanda was a black mark on Clinton's legacy and didn't want to repeat that either. I mostly agree with you that less intervention than has happened would have been better, but I also think that wasn't quite so clear for a President in Obama's position at the time.
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Mar 10, 2016 21:24
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Main Paineframe posted:Syria would have been another Iraq or Vietnam for sure - there was simply no way any intervention could have had any real effect, short of an all-out military invasion which would find itself facing a permanent insurgency and unable to establish a strong and stable puppet government. There's no realistic "exit strategy" for sticking our noses into a civil war where we don't like any of the participants and don't want any of them to win. Obama's problem in Syria wasn't that he was too non-interventionist, as his administration is trying to portray it. The reason he's been burned so badly by Syria is because, even though he realized the ultimate futility of intervening in the Syria conflict, he couldn't resist involving the US anyway. Since he realized it was a bad idea with a lot to lose and basically nothing to gain, he tried to compensate for that by restricting the scope to throwaway efforts so we could cut our losses and bail if needed rather than escalating into yet another Middle East quagmire. Instead, the resulting vague, non-committal involvement ended up looking worse than just pretending the conflict didn't exist in the first place. That's kind of my point though. If you know something is a lost cause, you cut it off and don't get involved at all. If Syria was to note a shift in US policy to the Middle East as part of a greater "I regret that I have but no shits to give" and we wash our hands of the affair, great, and that is something I agree with. Being in Syria solves nothing. However, Obama didn't want to walk away entirely, as he still wanted the option to soap box and posture on the world stage about it. The problem was, everyone knew he didn't have any skin in the game, so his "red line" was a bluff that he got called on. Then we start doing this poorly thought out garbage like arming the "moderate rebels" which nets us 6 fighters for $500 million. We fund the SDF, which is really just an umbrella group of the YPG so we have plausible deniability about arming the Kurds, all the while using Turkish airspace and acting like Turkey is in any way a positive influence in the whole mess - effectively we're in a proxy war with a NATO member. All this makes us look weak and indecisive to other countries in the region (like KSA, Jordan, etc) who are now going it alone. When Iran ultimately restarts their nuclear program (if they haven't already) we have next to zero credibility to keep the Saudis from starting their own, if they aren't already. It's one thing to hold up our hand at Syria and say "bitch, please, I'm not interested." We've done it countless times (Darfur, Rwanda, pretty much anywhere in Africa). It's entirely another thing to pout, posture, and pontificate, waste money, and ultimately achieve nothing (what we've been doing in Syria). Diplomatic deterrence is about predictability, perception, expectations; if people know that if America says we're going to do something we come in full-bore to the hilt, then they will be very careful to listen to us. If we talk tough and then walk away after a little bit of slap fighting, they'll know that they can push us around a certain amount without retaliation (see Russia with the EU).
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Mar 10, 2016 22:08
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His defense of the 'red line' is utterly laughable. "It was good because after I made the gigantic mistake of saying it in the first place I didn't follow it up with even more gigantic mistakes", well done champ. Dude clearly was just completely out of his league/education on non-domestic issues, the best you can say about his FP is that it was better than bush's, while continuously lacking any semblance of coherence or strategy. Assad must go! Well I guess he can stay but only for a little bit! Nocturtle posted:This is a great article. Obama's characterization of meetings as Putin as "businesslike" in their meetings is interesting, its another confirmation that the Russian elite understand their diminished position and aren't seriously trying to challenge American dominance. Recent Russian war-mongering in Crimea and Syria is more for domestic consumption and to prop up remaining "influence", and Obama correctly determines that it has probably costed more than it's worth. Syria maybe, but Ukraine/Crimea gently caress no, Russia made out like bandits there for very little cost and the huge benefits of keeping them out of the EU for 20+ years, the military significance of Crimea and so on. I think you have a pretty bad read on the reasons for fighting in both places, really- domestically it helped but there's very obvious reasons why they'd like to keep Assad in power. Of course they are going to preserve their influence and military might- both may look like poo poo compared to what the US can do but Russia is still number 2 when it comes to projection power and number 3 isn't even in the same universe.
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Mar 10, 2016 23:46
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quote:One day, over lunch in the Oval Office dining room, I asked the president how he thought his foreign policy might be understood by historians. He started by describing for me a four-box grid representing the main schools of American foreign-policy thought. One box he called isolationism, which he dismissed out of hand. “The world is ever-shrinking,” he said. “Withdrawal is untenable.” The other boxes he labeled realism, liberal interventionism, and internationalism. “I suppose you could call me a realist in believing we can’t, at any given moment, relieve all the world’s misery,” he said. “We have to choose where we can make a real impact.” He also noted that he was quite obviously an internationalist, devoted as he is to strengthening multilateral organizations and international norms. Obama has made some mistakes but I think he's set the correct path to go on. It's not an easy path and there will be a lot of points where it seems like a bad idea, but I think he's on the correct path of internationalism. The US cannot keep being the world police. The rest of the world complains when we don't intervene and the rest of the world complains when we do intervene. They rely on us for stability and military strength and resent us for taking advantage of that to promote our own interests. A stable and sustainable future sees US leadership giving way to US assistance and support for the European Union, African Union, et al. I've seen this as Obama's foreign policy vision based on his actions and its nice to see him state it explicitly. It's going to be a long road. Libya is a perfect example of a stumble. The US intervened on request, went with a multinational force, let the Europeans take the lead role even though the US was supplying the equipment and expertise. All good things. But there was no good end game. Nobody could manage post-Gadhafi Libya, not the Europeans nor the Libyans. We couldn't take charge because that would destroy the legitimacy of whatever we put in place. But even though things went badly, doesn't mean giving up. Keep building diplomatic and military multilateral organizations, keep trying.
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Mar 11, 2016 00:12
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Stultus Maximus posted:They rely on us for stability and military strength and resent us for taking advantage of that to promote our own interests. I think there's an ambiguity here. Exactly whose interests are we talking about?
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Mar 11, 2016 00:23
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Didn't you know? Knee capping troublesome regimes on behalf of the Israelis, Saudis and French means the "world" relies on America for stability. Imagine how much worse Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya would be right now if not for America's stabilizing influence on the region.
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Mar 11, 2016 02:03
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Obama doesn't really have a cohesive doctrine for international relations, he just kind of flops around limply like a fish, when he isn't actively ignoring the US's long time allies in order to suck Iranian and Russian dick. The Iranian deal in particular is laughable-- they're openly flouting just about everything in it.
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Mar 11, 2016 02:06
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Helsing posted:Didn't you know? Knee capping troublesome regimes on behalf of the Israelis, Saudis and French means the "world" relies on America for stability. Imagine how much worse Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya would be right now if not for America's stabilizing influence on the region. I too get misty eyed when I imagine a world with the likes of Ghaddafi and the Taliban still in power
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Mar 11, 2016 02:08
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Fojar38 posted:I too get misty eyed when I imagine a world with the likes of Ghaddafi and the Taliban still in power gently caress Ghaddafi, I'm sure ISIS will do a much better job of running Libya. And gently caress those Taliban guys, I wonder who helped them gain power to start with? Unlike the Saudis or Pakistan. Those are countries that should definitely be given lots of money and diplomatic support, they are true paragons of stability and propping them up while turning a blind eye to who they are funding is exactly how a superpower invested in global stability ought to act.
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Mar 11, 2016 02:13
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I'm digging the article, everything about it says that Bernie is the man for continuing Obama's internationalist foreign policy - Hillary will go right back to the old playbook. I guess it will be up to historians to make more explicit parallels between late summer 2013 and the Cuban Missile Crisis.
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Mar 11, 2016 02:14
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-Troika- posted:Obama doesn't really have a cohesive doctrine for international relations, he just kind of flops around limply like a fish, when he isn't actively ignoring the US's long time allies in order to suck Iranian and Russian dick. I'm not sure how cautious inaction is possibly being spun negatively.
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Mar 11, 2016 02:24
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-Troika- posted:Obama doesn't really have a cohesive doctrine for international relations, he just kind of flops around limply like a fish, when he isn't actively ignoring the US's long time allies in order to suck Iranian and Russian dick. wow your bedroom life must be messed up if economic sanctions on Russia is "sucking dick".
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Mar 11, 2016 02:42
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Bip Roberts posted:I'm not sure how cautious inaction is possibly being spun negatively. Because it led directly to the worst war and humanitarian disaster since the Iran-Iraq war, possibly since Vietnam? The scale of the disaster is such that it's difficult to defend complete inaction. But I forgot the answer to every question in foreign politics always must be "gently caress amerikkka"
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Mar 11, 2016 02:42
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It's precious that anyone would spin the rise of ISIS as due to American "inaction".
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Mar 11, 2016 02:45
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icantfindaname posted:Because it led directly to the worst war and humanitarian disaster since the Iran-Iraq war, possibly since Vietnam? So what would your strategy be? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ct3BsyF64gM thanks MIGF
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Mar 11, 2016 02:48
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icantfindaname posted:Because it led directly to the worst war and humanitarian disaster since the Iran-Iraq war, possibly since Vietnam? The scale of the disaster is such that it's difficult to defend complete inaction. But I forgot the answer to every question in foreign politics always must be "gently caress amerikkka" The syrian civil war could've been avoided had the US stuck its dick in there or started posturing, obsessing over its own credibility.
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Mar 11, 2016 02:49
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Helsing posted:It's precious that anyone would spin the rise of ISIS as due to American "inaction". It's almost like ISIS isn't the problem with Syria, and is responsible for only a small fraction of the deaths and destruction
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Mar 11, 2016 02:50
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Panzeh posted:The syrian civil war could've been avoided had the US stuck its dick in there or started posturing, obsessing over its own credibility. A large majority of the deaths and damage would have been avoided yeah. Pointing this out doesn't fit the narrative obviously, but it's still true
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Mar 11, 2016 02:52
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icantfindaname posted:It's almost like ISIS isn't the problem with Syria, and is responsible for only a small fraction of the deaths and destruction Hmm, maybe 100,000 Marines in Damascus would have been the solution. Nothing ever goes wrong for Marines in that part of the levant. icantfindaname posted:A large majority of the deaths and damage would have been avoided yeah. Pointing this out doesn't fit the narrative obviously, but it's still true Think of the lives saved if only Obama told bad dudes not to be bad.
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Mar 11, 2016 02:53
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