The Realist Standard
President Obama has made no Secret of his admiration for the administration of George H. W. Bush. He has taken many public opportunities to stress his own foreign policy ideological lineage with the crowd of hard-nosed conservatives that staffed the one-term administration; particularly Colin Powell and President Bush himself. There seem two reasons for this. Firstly, it appears that President Obama is genuinely conservative when it comes to crafting foreign policy. Secondly, the President has in many ways consciously constructed his foreign policy in response to Bush Junior and his utter disregard for the notion of limits.
To the first point. Much to the chagrin of the American left the President has been extremely cautious in extricating the U.S. from its current engagements, including the same Iraq war he once opposed. Although he fought a (some say unsuccessful) battle with the Pentagon to gain some control of the direction of the AfPak war, there was never really any sense that he wanted to radically shake up the war effort, or that he ever contemplated a unilateral abrogation of American commitments. Meanwhile, although not adopting the same kind of extreme Realpolitik approach as Henry Kissinger, the current President does enjoy publicly bathing in the Kissinger persona whenever possible. Furthermore President Obama seems to quote Presidents Eisenhower and Reagan in his foreign policy speeches far more than he does any Democratic presidents.
The Second point follows from the first. President Obama in many ways sees himself constructing a Foreign Policy somewhat in the image of another conservative president, Dwight Eisenhower. The latter had inherited a fully symmetrical Strategy of Containment from President Truman, one that (Eisenhower believed) risked bankrupting the United States. As such Eisenhower tried to bring an element of asymmetry to U.S. containment policies, most ostensibly through ‘brinksmanship.’ Obama inherited an open-ended and ill-defined ‘war on terror’ that was sapping American prestige, military strength and Treasure. His foreign policy (much like his economic policy) has thus far been a large-scale clean up of the mess left by his predecessor and an attempt at imposing strategic limits and defining interests.
President H.W. Obama:
Of the three post-cold war presidencies that preceded his own (ignoring the fact that administrations have various iterations) the Obama foreign policy is most consciously modelled on that of George H. W. Bush. The current diplomatic imbroglio surrounding Libya is but further testimony to the similarity of their approaches, and the President’s own self-image.
Firstly, is their mutual desire for international legitimacy. Bush Senior aggressively pursued the support/acquiescence of the International community in his push to roll back Sadam’s aggression against Kuwait. Part of this stemmed from a desire for legitimacy; but also, it seems, from a recognition of the role these institutions would be called on to play in the post-Soviet era. Similarly, President Obama has sought to reinvigorate the international institutional framework post-'W' and use these as the ether for his multi-fronted diplomatic offensives. The centrality of the seemingly reinvigorated UN Security Council to the Libyan police action is just the latest instance of this.
Secondly, is a desire for limited and quantifiable commitments. Against a cacophony of neo-conservative displeasure, Bush Senior stopped his Iraq war at the border. The reasons for this decision were manifold, and read as an eerie forewarning to the troubles reaped by Bush Junior, as well as a homage to the intelligence and prescience of the Bush Senior administration. Similarly, President Obama has brought his lawyerly regard for semantic certainty to his recent Libyan commitments. These include a temporally limited military commitment and an absolute assurance of no ground offensive. The prospect of the President allowing U.S. boots to be dragged onto a third front in the middle-east seems highly unlikely.
Thirdly, is a concern for military fiscal conservatism. Part of Bush Senior’s fall from grace with many Republicans stemmed from his genuine fiscal conservatism and his rejection of the religious adherence to an insipid Keynesianism obsessed with tax-cuts. His desire to match America’s means with its desired ends is a prototype for the post hyper-power policies of President Obama. These are characterised by a consistent desire to share the responsibilities for international peace among the broader community of nations and an unwillingness to make open-ended unilateral commitments. The desire to shift responsibility for the Libyan police action to NATO is just the latest iteration of this approach.
Those who accuse President Obama of dithering ignore the three-dimensional geopolitical chess board his administration faces at the moment. It is true that his national security team is worryingly lacking in diversity, and that this may result in bad decisions in the future. For the moment, however, it seems that a cool head and sound realist principles are guiding his approach to the Libyan problem and the middle-east more broadly. In a time of immense international uncertainty this kind of careful approach seems most warranted.
