The WSJ Analysis of the Obama Administration’s Foreign Policy

This morning the editors of the Wall Street Journal have enunciated a sweeping critique of the president’s and, indeed, all progressives’ approach to U. S. foreign policy. In contradiction of my longstanding policy I will quote the editorial in its entirety at the bottom of this post.

My own views on the best approach to U. S. foreign policy could hardly be more different from those of the editors of the Wall Street Journal but they’re also far removed from those of the Obama Administration. One need hardly point to the errors of the preceding Bush Administration but I find those of the Obama Administration objectionable as well. Although it isn’t frontpage news, the situation in Libya continues to deteriorate and the president’s foreign policy is responsible for that. Despite the Obama Administration’s proclamation of the war in Afghanistan as over (and successful!) U. S. casualties there continue the number of civilian deaths has never been higher.

I won’t belabor the point.

I believe that our foreign policy should be predicated on three principles:

  1. Our national interests and security should be considered much more narrowly. If we cannot muster the political will to achieve the objectives we are purportedly setting out to accomplish, they are not national or security interests.
  2. Other countries have national and security interests which they will not negotiate away and cannot be deterred from. We only have two alternatives in dealing with those. We can either accept them or use force.
  3. The use of force should always be a last, unavoidable alternative. It should never be just another tool in the diplomatic arsenal or, worse, a first resort.

In conclusion, I would appreciate your reactions to the WSJ editorial which I reproduce below:

As the calendar turns toward the final two years of the Obama Presidency, this is a moment to consider the world it has produced. There is no formal Obama Doctrine that serves as the 44th President’s blueprint for America’s engagement with the world. But it is fair to say that Barack Obama brought into office a set of ideas associated with the progressive, or left-leaning, wing of the Democratic foreign-policy establishment.

“Leading from behind” was the phrase coined in 2011 by an Obama foreign-policy adviser to describe the President’s approach to the insurrection in Libya against Moammar Gaddafi. That phrase may have since entered the lexicon of derision, but it was intended as a succinct description of the progressive approach to U.S. foreign policy.

The Democratic left believes that for decades the U.S. national-security presence in the world—simply, the American military—has been too large. Instead, when trouble emerges in the world, the U.S. should act only after it has engaged its enemies in attempts at detente, and only if it first wins the support and participation of allies and global institutions, such as NATO, the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund and so on.

In an interview this week with National Public Radio, Mr. Obama offered an apt description of the progressive foreign-policy vision. “When it comes to ISIL, us devoting another trillion dollars after having been involved in big occupations of countries that didn’t turn out all that well” is something he is hesitant to do.

Instead, he said, “We need to spend a trillion dollars rebuilding our schools, our roads, our basic science and research here in the United States; that is going to be a recipe for our long-term security and success.”

That $1 trillion figure is one of the President’s famous straw-man arguments. But what is the recipe if an ISIL or other global rogue doesn’t get his memo?

ISIL, or Islamic State, rose to dominate much of Iraq after its armed forces captured the northern city of Mosul in June, followed by a sweep toward Baghdad. With it came the videotaped beheadings of U.S. journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff and aide worker Peter Kassig.

Islamic State’s rise was made possible not merely because the U.S. wound down its military presence in Iraq but because Mr. Obama chose to eliminate that presence. Under intense pressure from the Pentagon and our regional allies, the White House later in the year committed useful if limited air support to the Iraqi army battling Islamic State. Without question the U.S. was behind the curve, and with dire consequences.

Islamic State’s success has emboldened or triggered other jihadist movements, despite Mr. Obama’s assurance that the war on terror was fading.

Radical Islamists are grabbing territory from U.S. allies in Yemen. They have overrun Libya’s capital and threaten its oil fields. Boko Haram in Nigeria, the kidnappers of some 275 schoolgirls in April, adopted the ISIL terror model. U.S. allies in the Middle East, such as Saudi Arabia and Jordan, are struggling to cope with the violence spreading out of Syria and Iraq. Mr. Obama can only hope that the Afghan Taliban do not move now to retake Kandahar after he announced this week with premature bravado “the end of the combat mission.”

The crucial flaw in the Democratic left’s model of global governance is that it has little or no answer to containing or deterring the serious threats that emerge in any region of the world when the U.S. retreats from leadership.

In February, the crisis in Ukraine began and worsened quickly, as Vladimir Putin ’s Russian forces occupied Crimea. Next came the Russian incursion into eastern Ukraine, with a Malaysian airliner shot down in July, killing 283 passengers. Through it all, Mr. Obama refused the pleas of Ukraine and staunch allies such as Poland to provide the Ukrainian army with the basic means to defend itself. He limited his support to non-military supplies, such as battlefield food rations.

The danger is that Mr. Putin, supported at home by a massive anti-U.S. propaganda campaign, will next move on Moldova or Estonia, even in the face of Western economic sanctions. The collapse of world oil prices has intervened to force Mr. Putin to confront his own weak economy, but the threat of Russian expansion remains.

In defense of his looming nuclear-weapons deal with Iran, Mr. Obama told his NPR interviewer: “I believe in diplomacy, I believe in dialogue, I believe in engagement.” He said Iran could be “a very successful regional power” that is “abiding by international norms and rules.”

Short of a miraculous change in the revolutionary Iranian leadership, such a worldview is at best willfully hopeful or at worst hopelessly naive. As former U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz has repeatedly pointed out, diplomacy and engagement are always good, but only if backed by a credible threat to deploy U.S. military resources. A fist inside a velvet glove. After five years of progressive foreign policy under Mr. Obama, the world sees the U.S. as an empty velvet glove.

***
The final two years of the Obama Presidency will thus be the most dangerous since the end of the Cold War as the world’s rogues calculate how far they can go before a successor enters the White House in 2017. A bipartisan coalition in Congress may be able to limit some of the damage, but the first step toward serious repair is understanding how Mr. Obama’s progressive foreign policy has contributed to the growing world disorder.

6 comments… add one
  • Modulo Myself Link

    I feel like these editorials are basically optimistic. The WSJ has been writing the same shit since the 80s–change the Soviet Union to jihadists, but the moral is the same: appeasement bad, being serious good. But aside from 9/11 and Iraq–what has ever changed? And what has happened? The Cold War ended, Iran has not fired nukes at Israel, North Korea has not invaded South Korea, Russia has not become a major power, no other major terrorist attacks have taken place in the US. The standpoint of the WSJ is basically we’re doing great, but part of that includes making sure you don’t look like a pussy. The world could go on for a hundred years like this. Every year, the same warnings about being a pussy. Every year, the same strategy.

    I don’t know that much about China, so I won’t even speculate, but I think a few problems–the effects of climate change, the failure of most Eastern Block countries and Russia to develop sophisticated economies, and the blowback from brutal civil wars in Syria, Iraq, Egypt and Libya–fall outside what we’ve had to deal with in the past. We need a shift in the gestalt first, since America is basically replaying the ordered hysteria that survived the Cold War.

  • Modulo Myself Link

    To be more concise: the US should be afraid of entities and situations where the Great Game is no longer being played, rather than Putin invading Estonia/Moldovia.

  • PD Shaw Link

    My initial reaction is that it is hard to get past the first several paragraphs which are less about Obama than about labeling his foreign policy as Progressive or Democratic Left. I guess the question becomes why? I am left to think that the next two years of the Obama administration’s foreign policy will largely be irrelevant, and the important thing is prepare the field for the 2016 elections.

  • PD Shaw Link

    (1) ISIL. I’m largely in agreement w/ WSJ criticism that the withdrawal was too soon. Don’t agree with the insinuation that this caused the rise of ISIL, I’m sure things happen in the world that the U.S. doesn’t cause. And I’m not sure the limited policy response so far won’t be successful, though again perhaps from multiple factors not all within U.S. control.

    (2) Radical Islam in general. The Administration has an ad hoc approach, and I’m not aware of any alternative unless we are going to have an undisguised foreign policy on ISLAM, which we won’t. Some places are more important than others, I say.

    (3) Russia. I don’t think arming Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression is a good policy. It might be an awful policy. If the WSJ was arguing for more affirmative steps to build up Ukraine prior to this year, I apologize for attributing blame for this fallout first to Russia, second to Europe, third to the U.S. media and fourth to Obama, in that order.

    (4) Iran is a big issue, probably requiring Russian help. Priorities needed.

  • ... Link

    If the WSJ was arguing for more affirmative steps to build up Ukraine prior to this year, I apologize for attributing blame for this fallout first to Russia, second to Europe, third to the U.S. media and fourth to Obama, in that order.

    LOL, my first good laugh of the new year!

  • steve Link

    Find it difficult to take serious any claims that the US under any president has been too reluctant to use military force. Is the WSJ suggesting we go to war over Moldova? That we invade Iran? If not, they, like all other critics, offer no alternatives of merit. IOW, this is just hack criticism and not serious.

    Steve

Leave a Comment