Following the West Point speech, disillusioned liberals were infuriated that Barak Obama chose to escalate the war in Afghanistan, while hawkish conservatives were pleased by the President's decision to follow the counsel of his generals (and not his left-wing base), but critical of the arbitrary timeline. Thus, both factions found the speech confusing; liberal doves could not understand how a Nobel Peace Prize winner could double down on President Bush's war, and conservative hawks didn't get why a necessary war mandated an arbitrary exit strategy.
After the Oslo speech, liberals were once again perplexed by the ostensible contradiction of sending more troops to promote peace (really, a non-contradiction as I explain in the Peace through War blog post) and conservatives resented the frequent admonishments of controversial Bush era policies.
No one seemed to be completely satisfied by the President's two major foreign policy speeches. But I think the larger story--and one that does not bode well for Obama's legacy-- is that no central Obama Doctrine emerged. There was nothing unique in either of the speech. Obama declared that as Head of State he has a responsibility to defend his nation. Ok. Obama argued that success in Afghanistan is critical to America's national security. Ok. Virtually everything Obama said has been said before, often by his much maligned predecessor. Interestingly, there were times when Obama enunciated elements of the Bush Doctrine:
And we must make it clear to every man, woman and child around the world who lives under the dark cloud of tyranny that America will speak out on behalf of their human rights and tend for the light of freedom and justice and opportunity and respect for the dignity of all peoples. That is who we are; that is the source, the moral source of America's authority.This is a fascinating declaration considering that the idea of America fostering freedom around the world is perhaps the central Bush Doctrine to which President Bush devoted the bulk of his Second Inaugural Address. The left never gave George Bush credit for establishing a link between America's national security and global freedom, and then candidate Obama joined the chorus of liberal detractors who mocked the idea of America's exceptionalism being used as a vehicle for freedom. But that is precisely what Barack Obama implies in his West Point speech.
To many liberals the President's Oslo speech was reminiscent of George Bush. And they are right. Throughout the speech Obama invoked numerous Bush themes, most notably his recognition that there is evil in the world. Recall how mercilessly the left mocked George Bush for his characterization of Al Qaeda fighters as "evildoers". Well, presumably to the chagrin of left-wing moral relativists, here was Obama making the identical claim.
In the end, President Obama made a case for war but he failed to unveil an Obama Doctrine. Liberals were left disheartened, conservatives lukewarm, and historians scratching their heads looking for the missing Obama doctrine.
Perhaps a lack of doctrine is a good thing... I don't want Obama to have a doctrine because I think it will be an appologetic one, or perhaps it is already the "We're Sorry Doctrine". However, I would suggest that not all presidents have defining doctrines in their administration, and that we can only hope that Obama upholds at the very least the values of the Monroe Doctrine...
ReplyDeleteAfter all, isn't the Bush Doctrine simply just a method of enforcing the Monroe Doctrine? It defines the methods the US uses to keep out other nations and NGOs from our hemisphere. It extended the doctrine to not just stopping imperial ambitions in the western hemipshere, but also to the idea of the creation of a military buffer zone between our hemisphere and world conflict. "We will fight you there so we do not have to fight you here." I would suggest that it is not really a major departure from history except simply that it applies to non-state actors - and even that is over-stated, because during the Barbary Wars we made a foreign government take responsibility for the action of non-state actors.
So with that in mind- does Obama need a decisive doctrine? No. He just needs to not trample one major premise of most past doctrines... which is that the US reserves the right to use force if you f*ck with us, if your caught f*cking around in our hemisphere, or f*cking around with things we consider as being part of our national interest. And with that premise being so strong in the Bush Doctine, its quite possible that Obama will be unable to define his own doctrine, unless it (a worst case scenerio) undermines the basic cause of American foreign policy since the founding of our country and pushes for increased world government.
That possible 180 of American foreign policy could be thought of as a Chomsky-esque rejection of the Monroe Doctrine as being a disguised attempt at hegemony -- and that would be a total shit for brains Doctrine.
ReplyDeleteLets just hope he is a one-termer and we never get that far.
Ero, I agree with everything you said. Certainly, the Bush Doctrine of fostering freedom and democracy in order to deter terrorist infiltration is analogous to the Truman Doctrine of propping up free democracies in order to deter Soviet aggression.
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