U.S. foreign policy

A year after Barack Obama's election, I'm seeing a lot of post-mortems on his administration's first year in foreign policy.  Ben Smith's Politico story is a nice template for them: 

Foreign policy never goes according to campaign plan, but for President Barack Obama, who promised a hardheaded new engagement with the world, the last week and the weeks he sees looming ahead must be discouraging.

Across a region spanning Pakistan to the Mediterranean, foreign leaders seem to be challenging the very premise of his policy: that foreign countries can reasonably be persuaded to move in the direction of common interests, and that a better-loved America can get more done.

In Afghanistan, an all-out effort to promote a legitimate election turned into a scramble to prevent a civil war and ease the defrauded challenger off the stage. Iran persuaded the White House to drop its late-September deadline for action and then appears to have rejected a deal on nuclear fuel. Great powers such as Russia and China show no appetite for crucial concessions, while the U.S. Congress continues to block major action on a pillar of Obama’s policy goals — international action on climate change.

To which I say:  meh.  First, Smith's premise about Obama's foreign policy isn't quite right.  Sure, I think Obama and his foreign policy team would love it if "foreign countries can reasonably be persuaded to move in the direction of common interests, and that a better-loved America can get more done."  But c'mon, these are not stupid people, and I'm pretty sure that they know the limits of diplomatic goodwill and reasoned discourse. 

Second, you always need to grade on a curve -- i.e., how has Obama's first ten months stacked up to prior administratons?  Most incoming administrations screw up plenty in their first year in office.  With Clinton, there was flip-flopping over Haiti, dithering over Bosnia, screw-ups over Japan, etc.  With Bush 43, there was a lack of consultation with allies over treaty withdrawals, a dramatic policy shift on North Korea that badly embarrassed South Korea's leadership and eventually had to be walked back, and that whole failure-to-prevent 9/11 problem.  Even with George H.W. Bush, the first six months primarily consisted of a strategic review of the Soviet Union that was overtaken by events the moment it was finished. 

Will Obama have to walk back or reverse course on foreign policy?  He's done so on Israel, to be sure, and might do so on Afghanistan.  He has had successes in Honduras, Russia and the Somali pirates, however.  So far, I'd say Obama is shooting par for the course. 

I haven't been a huge fan of certain aspects of Obama's foreign policy -- like Philip Levy, I'm not thrilled with his trade policy.  Mostly, however, I'd characterize his foreign policy actions as reasonable -- and pretty much what I'd expected a year ago today. 

What about you, dear readers -- how do you grade Obama's foreign policy? 

Bryan Bender had a long story in yesterday's Boston Globe about the Obama administration's aspirations for treaty ratification: 

Marking a major reversal from the Bush administration, which considered most treaties to be too restrictive of US sovereignty, the Obama administration says it will seek ratification of three major pacts aimed at reducing nuclear weapons. It also will seek approval of a set of regulations to manage use of the oceans and, by the end of the president’s first term, a new treaty to combat global climate change....

International treaties are signed by the president, but under the Constitution must be ratified by the Senate to become law. They need at least 67 votes to pass, not a simple majority of 51, typically requiring strong support from the president’s own party and a significant number of votes from the opposing party. Democrats now control 60 seats in the Senate, counting two independents who usually vote with the party.

Obtaining 67 votes has proved difficult under the best of circumstances and helps explain why fewer than 20 major security treaties have been ratified since the end of World War II, according to David Auerswald, a professor of strategy and policy at the National War College in Washington.

“The foreign policy consensus in this country has disappeared on many issues,’’ said Auerswald, a leading specialist on treaties. “Given that the Democrats only have 60 of the 67 votes necessary to approve a treaty, they have to hold their ranks and pick off seven Republicans. Yet moderate Republicans are a dying breed in the Senate, making the Democrats’ task that much harder.’’

At first glance, I'd share Auerswald's skepticism.  The Bush administration, for example, wanted the Senate to pass the Law of the Sea Treaty.  Despite Bush's support and the ardent backing of the U.S. Navy, ratification went nowhere -- there were a suficient number of "new sovereigntists" to kill the chances for a floor vote.     

Of course, that was a whole election cycle ago.  Looking at the U.S. Senate, let's do some arithmetic.  Assuming Obama has the backing of all 60 Democrat-ish Senators, who might offer support on the GOP side for, say, the Law of the Sea Treaty?  My tentative list: 

1. Olympia Snowe (ME)
2. Susan Collins (ME)
3. Richard Lugar (IN)
4. Orrin Hatch (UT)
5. Lisa Murkowski (AK)
6. George Voinovich (OH)
7. John McCain (AZ)

So it's possible... hmmm.... well, maybe not McCain.  It's a little unclear, actually. 

I suspect this is going to boil down to whether John McCain wants to be the Arthur Vandenberg of his era. 

Either way, however, I suspect the Obama administration would encounter difficulties getting these same seven senators to vote yea on a raft of international treaties.  Unless there are more GOP Senators available for the picking, I suspect Obama will have to pick only his favorites to push. 

In light of Hamid Karzai's agreement to go forward on a run-off election in Afghanistan, I was curious about special envoy Richard Holbrooke's role in this denouement.  Jon Western links to this Nukes & Spooks McClatchy blog post chock-full of some inside dirt: 

Three administration officials, who asked not to be identified by agency, told us that, while Holbrooke is laboring away hard behind the scenes, he's received direct orders from the White House to cool it publicly while Washington desperately tries to unscramble the Afghan electoral mess between President Hamid Karzai and his main challenger, Abdullah Abdullah.

"This process is so sensitive. He'd love to deal with this. The White House thinks ... it's not the time for him" to be out front, one of the officials said of Holbrooke...

To be fair -- and we do try to be fair here at N&S, we're told that the White House orders are not directed at Holbrooke alone. Everyone involved in Af/Pak policy has been told to keep a lid on it while President Obama deals with the difficult decision of how to keep the situation there from dropping into the abyss and whether to send more American servicemen and women to Afghanistan.

Everyone did keep quiet... except Senator John Kerry.  The Wall Street Journal's Jay Solomon and Peter Spiegel explain why: 

According to one Western diplomat, the Afghan president was more comfortable dealing with Sen. Kerry than with U.S. Ambassador Karl Eikenberry or the administration's special representative to the region, Richard Holbrooke. Mr. Holbrooke angered Mr. Karzai when he suggested shortly after the Aug. 20 election that a runoff might be needed.

I'm beginning to wonder if Hoobrooke is simply the exemplar of the bad cop in foreign affairs.  For his sake, I hope so.  Otherwise, he's stuck being an envoy to a region in which the Indians won't talk to him, the Afghans won't talk to hi, and the Pakistanis that will talk to him are feckless. 

My latest bloggingheads diavlog is with the New America Foundation's Flynt Leverett, who co-authored an op-ed last week that didn't sit too well with me.  We discuss the Leveretts' proposal for a grand bargain with Iran and all of its implications. 

 

 

I come away from the diavlog even more skeptical of the Leverett proposal -- the more I listened, the more I thought that:

1. Today's Iran would not go for it;
2. The collateral damage inflicted on our allies would be nontrivial;
3. There is no domestic political support for such an initiative; and,
4. From a realpolitik perspective, it's not demonstrably better than the alternatives.  

Opinions will vary, however -- give it a listen and let me know what you think in the comments. 

The Century Foundation's Jeffrey Laurenti earlier this week on the sharp differences between the Obama administration and its predecessor:

Barack Obama is reaping treble returns for America this week as he makes his first appearance as president at the United Nations.  Never has an American president been greeted on the U.N.'s unique global stage with such giddy anticipation, or undertaken so extensive and substantive a schedule there.... 

[I]t is Obama's dramatic realignment of U.S. policy away from American conservatives' unique fetishes, and to the mainstream goals and values that most of the American people share with the rest of the world, that explains the new opportunity for renewed American leadership.

From Helene Cooper's write-up of Obama's United Nations speech today in the New York Times: 

But even as Mr. Obama sought to signal a changed tone in America’s dealings with the world, much of his speech centered on old and intractable issues, including Iran’s nuclear ambitions and a Middle East peace process. And while his choice of words was different and more conciliatory, the backbone of American policy he expressed remained similar to the Bush administration’s in many areas.

Well, that clarifies matters, then. 

Matt Yglesias linked to this months-old Emily Stokes profile of Rory Stewart in the Financial Times.  Yglesias highlights one of the funnier metaphors I've seen about the trouble with advising policymakers:   

“It’s like they’re coming in and saying to you, ‘I’m going to drive my car off a cliff. Should I or should I not wear a seatbelt?’ And you say, ‘I don’t think you should drive your car off the cliff.’ And they say, ‘No, no, that bit’s already been decided – the question is whether to wear a seatbelt.’ And you say, ‘Well, you might as well wear a seatbelt.’ And then they say, ‘We’ve consulted with policy expert Rory Stewart and he says ...’"

OK, that's really funny, and I think it's true a fair amount of the time. 

On the other hand, I'm not sure that metaphor holds up all of the time.  Consider another possibility.  From the policymaker's perspective, getting outside advice is like trying to figure out which railroad track to take if you're driving a train.  There are three options ahead, and for myriad reasons each of the possibilities carries some risk.  So you go place an emergency phone call to the head of Harvard's Department of Railroad Studies to get a recommendation.  His advice?  "Why don't you go off-track?"  

To revisit a recurring theme on this blog, sometimes the outside advisor is right to make policymakers question core assumptions.  At the same time, however, sometimes a policymaker has neither the time nor the political capital to go back to first principles.  Sometimes they just need to know what is the least bad policy option.  And I guarantee you that having an academic tell them, "they're all bad policy options" is of no use whatsoever in that moment.   

I suspect that knowing which metaphor applies is more art than science, but I'm curious to hear from commenters on both sides of the policymaking divide. 

My latest TNI online essay is now available for viewing on the interwebs.  It looks at recent U.S. foreign policy actions through the ever-useful lens of the good cop/bad cop routine.  Can a gambit that always worked on NYPD Blue work on the global stage?  I have my doubts:

On the whole, the good cop-bad cop routine is of limited utility in world politics. Iran appears to be unbowed in the face of a hawkish Israeli government (though, to be fair, they have been preoccupied with other matters recently). A protectionist Congress has not made it any easier to complete the Doha round. Bill Clinton’s good cop was able to secure the release of the hostages, but at the price of a photo op that looked bad no matter how necessary it might have been. And while no one doubts that Biden occasionally goes rogue, it remains unclear just what policy benefits that strategy yields.

In theory, the best kind of bad cop is the one that seems genuinely unconstrained and ready to strike. An independent but allied government plays this part much better than a subordinate member of the executive branch. In other words, if you want to successfully execute the good cop-bad cop routine in world politics, the odds are long to begin with. To pull it off, however, under no circumstances should you let Joe Biden be Joe Biden.

Go read the whole thing. 

[Would a threat to display more of Dennis Franz's posterior work as a compellent threat?--ed.  Hmmm... let me check the Biological Weapons Convention to see if it's a legit move and I'll get back to you.] 

In a legen -- wait for it -- dary blog post, Belle Waring mentioned the pony problem in public policy.  Namely, "an infallible way to improve any public policy wishes. You just wish for the thing, plus, wish that everyone would have their own pony!"

I bring this up because of David Sanger's New York Times story about the prospects of imposing a gasoline embargo on Iran:  

The Obama administration is talking with allies and Congress about the possibility of imposing an extreme economic sanction against Iran if it fails to respond to President Obama's offer to negotiate on its nuclear program: cutting off the country’s imports of gasoline and other refined oil products....

But enforcing what would amount to a gasoline embargo has long been considered risky and extremely difficult; it would require the participation of Russia and China, among others that profit from trade with Iran. Iran has threatened to respond by cutting off oil exports and closing shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, at a moment that the world economy is highly vulnerable.

The rest of the story is kind of irrelevant -- because without China and Russia, this is just a theoretical exercise.  In fact, here's a good time-saver:  if you read any story about a gasoline embargo o Iran, just scan quickly and get to the part where the reporter explains how and why Russia and China would go along.  If it's not mentioned, the story is inconsequential. 

If you want China and Russia to agree to sanctions, should you wish for the free pony as well?  Here the growth of dissent in Iran complicates an already complicated picture.  I'm betting that Moscow and Beijing have observed the "Death to Russia!" and "Death to China!" chants among the protestors.  This is likely going to make them even more reluctant to do anything that undermines the current regime (even if this hurts their long-term interests).  Which a gasoline embargo would most certainly do. 

Do I think a gasoline embargo is a good idea?  Absolutely.  Do I think it will happen?  No, I don't. 

UPDATE:  Spencer Ackerman reacts the same way I do.  The Weekly Standard's Michael Goldfarb is more optimistic.