Obama’s Priorities | SUPERcut! #307, Washington Free Beacon via You Tube, March 24, 2016
A recent article in The Atlantic on Obama’s foreign policy shows, despite his protestations of hardheaded “realism,” that he has not learned from his failures. Thus he still thinks that the vigorous use of force is usually an unnecessary and dangerous mistake, and that verbal persuasion and diplomatic engagement are more effective. He also still believes that “multilateralism regulates [U.S.] hubris” of the sort that George W. Bush showed when he recklessly invaded Iraq, and that American foreign policy has frequently displayed.
Obama’s delusional faith in rhetoric, especially his own, comes through in his rationale for the infamous 2009 Cairo speech: “I was hoping that my speech could trigger a discussion, could create space for Muslims to address the real problems they are confronting—problems of governance, and the fact that some currents of Islam have not gone through a reformation that would help people adapt their religious doctrines to modernity.” The idea that Obama’s mere words could start a “discussion” that would transform 14-century-old religious doctrines fundamentally inimical to liberal democracy, human rights, and all the other Western goods we live by, is a fantasy. Obama’s self-regard recalls Neville Chamberlain’s boast after his meeting with Hitler at Bad Godesberg that he “had established some degree of personal influence with Herr Hitler.”
Or consider Obama’s take on Vladimir Putin:
He understands that Russia’s overall position in the world is significantly diminished. And the fact that he invades Crimea or is trying to prop up Assad doesn’t suddenly make him a player. You don’t see him in any of these meetings out here helping to shape the agenda. For that matter, there’s not a G20 meeting where the Russians set the agenda around any of the issues that are important.
A “player,” in Obama’s foreign policy universe, is a leader who uses “smart power” like diplomacy and negotiated deals, and recognizes that the use of force will backfire and lead to costly “quagmires.” As Secretary of State John Kerry suggested, Putin is using outdated “19th century” instruments of foreign policy like military force in a world that presumably has evolved beyond it.
In contrast, a genuine “player,” as Obama fancies himself, attends summits and conferences, such as the useless climate change conference in Paris, and “sets the agenda.” And like his rationale for the Cairo speech, as the leader of the world’s greatest power, his rhetoric alone can be a force for change. Thus just saying that Syria’s “Assad must go,” while doing nothing to achieve that end, is still useful, and refusing to honestly identify the traditional Islamic foundations of modern jihadism will build good will among Muslims and turn them against the “extremists.”
Meanwhile, Putin and Iran fight and bomb and kill in Syria and Iraq, and now they are the big “players” in a region that the U.S. once dominated, but that now serves the interests of Russia and Iran. I’m reminded of Demosthenes’ scolding of the Athenians for refusing to confront Phillip II of Macedon: “Where either side devotes its time and energy, there it succeeds the better––Phillip in action, but you in argument.”
In other words, for Obama as for Chamberlain, appeasing words rather than forceful deeds are the key to foreign policy––precisely the belief that led England to disastrously underestimate Hitler until it was too late. And that same belief has turned the Middle East into a Darwinian jungle of clashing tribes, sects, and nations.
Obama wraps his foreign policy of retreat in claims to “realist” calculations of America’s security and genuine interests, and buttresses his claim by citing his strategically inconsequential drone killings. But such rhetoric hides an unwillingness to risk consequential action and pay its political costs. And it reflects a commitment to the internationalist idealism that gives diplomatic verbal processes an almost magical power to transform inveterate enemies into helpful partners. Europe tried that in the Thirties, and it led to disaster. That’s a much more important lesson from that sorry decade’s history than the lurid fantasies about fascism coming to America on the wings of Trump’s rhetoric.
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