He was supposed to change Washington. But the president’s strategy in the Middle East and Afghanistan has lacked courage and creativity—and pales in comparison with Bush’s.
Just over three years ago, acclaimed author and campaign adviser Samantha Power published a memo outlining the foreign policy Barack Obama would pursue if elected president. It was called “Conventional Washington versus the Change We Need.” Power’s argument—aimed straight at then-candidate Hillary Clinton—was that merely replacing George W. Bush with a Democrat would not truly change American foreign policy.
It would not truly change American foreign policy because many of Bush’s policies had been supported by “the foreign-policy establishment of both parties,” which remained enthralled to a “bankrupt conventional wisdom.” Obama, she suggested, offered something different. As with his opposition to the Iraq War, he would offer “fresh strategic thinking” undeterred by charges that he was “weak, inexperienced, and even naive.” He represented “a break from a broken way of doing things.”
Just over three years ago, acclaimed author and campaign adviser Samantha Power published a memo outlining the foreign policy Barack Obama would pursue if elected president. It was called “Conventional Washington versus the Change We Need.” Power’s argument—aimed straight at then-candidate Hillary Clinton—was that merely replacing George W. Bush with a Democrat would not truly change American foreign policy. It would not truly change American foreign policy because many of Bush’s policies had been supported by “the foreign-policy establishment of both parties,” which remained enthralled to a “bankrupt conventional wisdom.” Obama, she suggested, offered something different. As with his opposition to the Iraq War, he would offer “fresh strategic thinking” undeterred by charges that he was “weak, inexperienced, and even naive.” He represented “a break from a broken way of doing things.”
The people Obama has installed in key positions are smart, earnest, and hard-working, but they lack exactly the quality that Power promised would define his foreign policy: a willingness to challenge conventional wisdom, even when it entails political risks.
To the contrary, the foreign-policy wonks who did stake out provocative positions—Robert Malley, for instance, who incurred the wrath of the “pro-Israel” establishment for questioning U.S. policy toward Hamas, or Kenneth Pollack and Michael O’Hanlon, who incurred the wrath of the liberal blogosphere for supporting the Iraq surge—did not get jobs. The people who did are, for the most part, foreign-policy versions of Elena Kagan: ambitious, talented people who have never publicly espoused a truly controversial opinion about anything. The difference is that in foreign policy, unlike the Supreme Court, there is no lifetime tenure, so habits of conventionality and caution, once learned, rarely go away.
All this helps to explain the absence of memorable Obama speeches about America’s relationship to the world. From his 2002 speech at West Point junking containment and deterrence to his 2005 inaugural promising a campaign to end tyranny, George W. Bush laid out his foreign-policy views in sharp, bold strokes. Most of Obama’s speeches, by contrast, are so exquisitely nuanced that they stop just short of saying anything that anyone could really disagree with.
The Bush administration was a festival of grand doctrines and controversial figures; the Obama administration, for all its brainpower, is intellectually bland.
That’s not to say Obama has no foreign-policy accomplishments. Using the financial crisis to replace the G-8 with the G-20 was a valuable shift in global architecture. America’s relationship with Russia has improved; Pakistan is getting more serious attention; U.S. diplomacy no longer needlessly alienates the world. But Power’s point was that true success would require fundamentally challenging the conventional wisdom in both parties, and that hasn’t happened.
Obama hired, for the most part, foreign-policy versions of Elena Kagan: ambitious, talented people who have never publicly espoused a truly controversial opinion about anything.
Consider Obama’s stance toward Israel and the Palestinians. Since taking office, he has maintained the Bush administration’s policy of opposing any reconciliation between Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah government in the West Bank and Hamas, which runs the Gaza Strip. Politically, that’s understandable, since lifting the U.S. boycott of Hamas would produce a nasty fight at home. But because Obama has succumbed to the pre-existing conventional wisdom, he must now try to orchestrate a peace process between Israel and a Potemkin Palestinian leadership in the West Bank. Hamas, after all, not Fatah, won the last free and fair Palestinian election, and it might have won again had Abbas not canceled local balloting this summer.
Peter Beinart, senior political writer for The Daily Beast, is associate professor of journalism and political science at City University of New York and a senior fellow at the New America Foundation. His new book, The Icarus Syndrome: A History of American Hubris, is now available from HarperCollins. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook.
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