My post yesterday on following Vizzini's advice U.S. retrenchment from Central Asia generated a bit of pushback. I should point out that my concern here is that the U.S. husbands its power resources with a bit more acumen. Sure, Central Asia has some strategic significance, but the thing is, every region in the globe has some strategic significance. If I'm rank-ordering U.S. strategic priorities, it would go as follows: 1) East Asia; 2) Latin America; 3) Europe; 4) Middle East; 5) South Asia; 6) Central Asia; 7) Africa (there's also a big gap between 4 and 5 on this list). Scarce resources devoted to Central Asia have to be siphoned from somewhere, and I don't want too much of a diversion from other strategic priorities.

That said, I want to clarify that I'm not saying that the U.S. is in terminal decline and therefore should engage in a systematic strategic retreat. David Bell makes an excellent point in The New Republic today -- there has been a perpetual declinism industry in the United States since the launch of Sputnik.

Twenty-two years ago, in a refreshingly clear-sighted article for Foreign Affairs, Harvard's Samuel P. Huntington noted that the theme of "America's decline" had in fact been a constant in American culture and politics since at least the late 1950s. It had come, he wrote, in several distinct waves: in reaction to the Soviet Union's launch of Sputnik; to the Vietnam War; to the oil shock of 1973; to Soviet aggression in the late 1970s; and to the general unease that accompanied the end of the Cold War. Since Huntington wrote, we can add at least two more waves: in reaction to 9/11, and to the current "Great Recession."....

What the long history of American "declinism" -- as opposed to America's actual possible decline -- suggests is that these anxieties have an existence of their own that is quite distinct from the actual geopolitical position of our country; that they arise as much from something deeply rooted in the collective psyche of our chattering classes as from sober political and economic analyses.

For whatever reason, it is clear that for more than half a century, many of America's leading commentators have had a powerful impulse consistently to see the United States as a weak, "bred out" basket case that will fall to stronger rivals as inevitably as Rome fell to the barbarians, or France to Henry V at Agincourt.

On the foreign policy front, selective U.S. retrenchment doesn't imply terminal decline so much as a temporary realignment to ensure that American power and interest are matched up going forward.

Question to readers: does retrenchment presage resurgence?

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave a major foreign policy speech today at the Council on Foreign Relations office in DC.  This is interesting, as the Obama administration released its National Security Strategy only a few months ago, so one would think that a major speech by the Secretary of State would be pretty superfluous. 

The guts of Clinton's speech can be excerpted as follows: 

[L]et me say it clearly: The United States can, must, and will lead in this new century....

Architecture is the art and science of designing structures that serve our common purposes, built to last and withstand stress.  That's what we seek to build - a network of alliances and partnerships, regional organizations and global institutions, that is durable and dynamic enough to help us meet today's challenges and adapt to threats that we cannot even conceive of, just as our parents never dreamt of melting glaciers or dirty bombs....

After more than a year and a half, we have begun to see the dividends of our strategy.  We are advancing America's interests and making progress on some of our most pressing challenges.  Today we can say with confidence that this model of American leadership works, and that it offers our best hope in a dangerous world.

I'd like to outline several steps we are taking to implement this strategy....

First, we have turned to our closest allies, the nations that share our most fundamental values and interests -- and our commitment to solving common problems.  From Europe and North America to East Asia and the Pacific, we are renewing and deepening the alliances that are the cornerstone of global security and prosperity....

[T]he second step in our strategy for global leadership is to help build the capacity of developing partners.  To help countries obtain the tools and support they need to solve their own problems and help solve our common problems.  To help people lift themselves, their families, and their societies out of poverty, away from extremism, and toward sustainable progress.  The Obama Administration views development as a strategic, economic, and moral imperative - as central to advancing American interests as diplomacy and defense....

We must also take into account those countries that are growing rapidly and already playing more influential roles in their regions and in global affairs, such as China and India, Turkey, Mexico and Brazil, Indonesia and South Africa, as well as Russia, as it redefines its own role in the world.

Our third major step has been to deepen engagement with these emerging centers of influence....

[T]he fourth key step in our strategy has been to reinvigorate America's commitment to be an active transatlantic, Pacific and hemispheric leader....

[O]ur fifth step has been to reengage with global institutions and begin modernizing them to meet the evolving challenges of the 21st century.  We need institutions that are flexible, inclusive, and complementary, instead of competing with one another for jurisdiction.  Institutions that encourage nations to play productive roles, that marshal common efforts, and enforce the system of rights and responsibilities that binds us all....

As we strengthen and modernize regional and global institutions, the United States is also working to cement democracy, human rights, and the rule of law into their foundations.  To construct an architecture of values that spans the globe and includes every man, woman and child.  An architecture that can not only counter repression and resist pressure on human rights, but also extend those fundamental freedoms to places where they have been too long denied.

This is our sixth major step.  We are upholding and defending the universal values that are enshrined in the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (emphases added). 

So, what do I think of all of this?  Let's divide my reactions into what I think are the good, the bad, and the BS portions of Clinton's speech.

The Good:

1)  The Asia/Pacific.  Clinton shoehorned this into her fourth tactic, but it was an effective articulation of the administration's calibrated approach towards China. 

2)  Russia.  The Obama administration has certainly reversed what had been a badly deteriorating relationship with the Russian Federation.  One quibble:  Clinton said at one point that the relationship in January 2009, "invigorated spy novelists and arm chair strategists."  Gimme a break:  Anna Chapman did a much better job of invigorating spy novelists. 

The Bad: 

1)  The overestimation of shared interests.  Clinton talked about, "international diplomacy aimed at rallying nations to solve common problems and achieve shared aspirations" as a constant of American foreign policy.  That's great -- but what about the areas where values and aspirations are not shared?  There were far too many Pollyannish paragraphs in this speech.

2)  The underemphasis on patience.  Clinton used a good turn of phrase -- "strategic patience" -- to talk about the time required to see some of these foreign policy initiatives bear fruit.  This should have been played up much more.  Indeed, the exemplar Clinton gave of her foreign policy vision -- Iran -- does not really look all that successful right now.  The speechwriter should have also tied in this notion of patience with American determination and resolve. 

The BS:

1)  Europe.  The whole section on strengthening bilateral and multilateral ties to Europe almost caused me to lose my cornflakes.  I mean, c'mon.  Is forcing the Europeans to cut down their number of seats in the IMF an example of strengthening alliances?  I see the intrinsic merit in occasionally dissing the Europeans, but don't tell me that anything transatlantic has been "strengthened" over the past 18 months. 

2)  The entire "global architecture" theme:  You know, it's a funny thing:  the revamped G-20 is, in many ways, at the center of the whole "remaking the global architecture" idea.  Guess how many times it was mentioned in this speech?  Once.  If the State Department thinks the Iran policy is a more successful case than the G-20, then how can I possible have any faith in any new global governance structure? 

Am I missing anything? 

Well, it appears that Jeffrey Goldberg's warnings about Israel attacking Iran within the next year have been -- for now --  overtaken by events: 

The Obama administration, citing evidence of continued troubles inside Iran’s nuclear program, has persuaded Israel that it would take roughly a year — and perhaps longer — for Iran to complete what one senior official called a “dash” for a nuclear weapon, according to American officials.

Administration officials said they believe the assessment has dimmed the prospect that Israel would pre-emptively strike against the country’s nuclear facilities within the next year, as Israeli officials have suggested in thinly veiled threats.

As a general rule, a lack of bombing certainly seems like good news.  The question is, why?  What's slowing down the Iranians? 

It is unclear whether the problems that Iran has had enriching uranium are the result of poor centrifuge design, difficulty obtaining components or accelerated Western efforts to sabotage the nuclear program....

Some of Iran’s enrichment problems appear to have external origins. Sanctions have made it more difficult for Iran to obtain precision parts and specialty metals. Moreover, the United States, Israel and Europe have for years engaged in covert attempts to disrupt the enrichment process by sabotaging the centrifuges.

The sanctions and the lack of technical competence are probably heloping, but if I had to guess, I'd wager that the covert attempts at sabotage are yielding the most promising results.  The thing is, no administration can publicly say, "hey, everyone should relax about Iran's nuclear program, cause we've got covert operatives crawling all around Natanz, Bushehr, and Qom."  So, the public face of U.S. foreign policy towards Iran's nuclear program remains sanctions and a willingness to negotiate.  The optics of this policy posture don't look good. 

Now, I don't know this to be true -- it's possible that covert action has yielded little in the way of results.  Still, this might be a situation in which no news on Iran is actually good news. 

Developing....

Your humble blogger will be a bit more focused on the Middle East for the next ten days.  That's because I'll be going on the road to Israel and the Occupied Territories as part of IR summer camp a fact-finding trip sponsored by the good people at Academic Exchange.   

I tried talking the folks at MTV into bringing along a camera crew to film a Jersey Shore-type of show: 

ME:  This is an awesome trip.  You'll get lots of good footage!!

MTV:  Who else is going?

ME:  A bunch of other IR professors.

MTV:  No, no, what are their Jersey Shore monikers? 

ME:  Oh, well, let's see, there's LJ, Bobby, Debbie, Marty, Mad Skillz Mikey, Steph, Goldie, Work of Art, A-Down, KupKake, D-Lake, Valentino, B-Woww, and "The Drezner," among others.    

MTV:  Cool names!! Whatcha gonna be doing?

ME:  Meeting with high-ranking Israeli, Palestinian and civil society leaders to get a nuanced sense of what's really going on.

MTV:  Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.......

Well, their loss. 

Seriously, as embarrassing as it is for a Jewish kid raised in Connecticut to admit, this will be my first visit to Israel.  The trip will hopefully afford me an opportunity to be co-opted by the Israel Lobby get a better understanding of how Israelis and Palestinians think about the situation over there.  I'm sure I will learn a lot - and I'll be sure to provide the readers of Foreignpolicy.com plenty of updates about B-Woww's binge drinking what I've learned along the way. 

Shalom!! 

Mitt Romney wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post earlier this week calling the New START Treaty Obama's "worst foreign policy mistake yet."  This prompted a fair amount of blowback.  The New York Times' Peter Baker and Slate's Fred Kaplan tore Romney a new one dissected the substance of Romney's argument and found it wanting.  Senator John Kerry wrote a WaPo op-ed the next day that had a pretty contemptuous conclusion: 

I have nothing against Massachusetts politicians running for president. But the world's most important elected office carries responsibilities, including the duty to check your facts even if you're in a footrace to the right against Sarah Palin. More than that, you need to understand that when it comes to nuclear danger, the nation's security is more important than scoring cheap political points.

Now reading through all of this, it seems pretty clear that Romney's substantive critique is weak tea.  Objecting to the content of a treaty preamble is pretty silly.  Claiming that the Russians could put ICBMs on their bombers because of the treaty indicates Romney's ghost-writer doesn't know the first thing about the history of nuclear weapons some holes in the research effort. 

Putting the substantive objections aside, there are some interesting implications to draw from this kerfuffle.  First, START will be an easy test of the remaining power of the foreign policy mandarins.  As Time's Michael Crowley points out, START has the support of former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and James Baker, former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger, former National Security Advisers Brent Scowcroft and Stephen Hadley, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, and Senator Richard Lugar. 

If the Obama administration can't get Senate ratification of START despite the bipartisan support of the foreign policy community, well, it suggests that the foreign policy community doesn't have the political capital it once did.  I posited earlier this year that START would pass because it was pretty unobtrusive and wouldn't play a big role in political campaigns.  If GOP senators think differently, however, then you can kiss any foreign policy initiative that requires congressional approval bye-bye. 

This could seriously hamper U.S. foreign policy.  Politically, Romney was wise to pick on START, because its importance is not in the arms control.  Boosters like Kerry will talk about START like its the greatest thing since sliced bread, when in point of fact it's a modest treaty that yields modest gains on the arms control front.  No, START matters because its a signal of better and more stable relations with Moscow (much in the same way that NAFTA was not about trade so much as about ending a century-long contentious relationship with Mexico). 

So even if Romney gets chewed up and spit out by the foreign policy mandarins, there's a way in which he'll win no matter what.  By belittling the treaty, Romney will get its defenders to inflate its positive attributes.  This will force analysts to say that "both sides have exaggerated their claims," putting Romney on par with the foreign policy mandarins. 

Developing... in a bad way for the mandarins. 

UPDATE:  Barron YoungSmith makes a similar point over at TNR.  He's even more pessimistic than I am: 

[T]he responsible Republican foreign policy establishment is not coming back. Mandarins like George Shultz, Henry Kissinger, and James Baker, who have all testified or written on behalf of the START treaty—calling it an integral, uncontroversial way of repairing the bipartisan arms-control legacy that sustained American foreign policy all the way up until the George W. Bush administration—are going to be dead soon (or they've drifted into the service of Democrats). The people who will take their place will be from a generation of superhawks, like John Bolton, Liz Cheney, and Robert Joseph, who are virulently opposed to the practice of negotiated arms control. Mitt Romney, though a moderate from Michigan, is not going to be the second coming of Gerald Ford.

Well.... this might be true, if you think Mitt Romney has his finger on the pulse of the GOP voter.  Based on past experience, however, Mitt Romney has never been able to find that pulse. 

Still developing....

Hmmm.... which magazine should I peruse online this AM.... maybe TNR?  The National Interest?  Nah, I'm not in the mood for deep thinking.  I'll just look at Rolling Stone, that won't take much intellectual heavy lifting.... oh, look, a profile of General McChrystal.... hmmm.... um.... holy cats.

Since everyone and their mother has their take on this Mongolian clusterf**k imbroglio already, I'm not going to bother linking to the rest of the blogosphere.  Instead, just a few measured and a few off the cuff reactions: 

1.  Doris Kearns Goodwin makes the case in today's New York Times that Obama doesn't have to fire McChrystal, pointing out that Union General George McClellan was far ruder to Lincoln, and yet was not fired.  This is historically true, but I'm not sure it's really the best example.  To put it gently, McClellan was a lousy, timid general -- by letting him stay on, Lincoln accomplished little but to prolong the war. 

2.  I find myself in agreement with Tom Donnelly and William Kristol: 

McChrystal should not be the only one to go.  Ambassador Karl Eikenberry and “AfPak” czar Richard Holbrooke should likewise either submit their resignations or be fired by President Obama.  Vice President Biden and his surrogates should be told to sit down and be quiet, to stop fighting policy battles in the press.  The administration's "team of rivals" approach is producing only rivalry.

They're right (see also David Ignatius).  McChrystal did himself no favors in the RS article, but he's hardly the only Afghan policy heavyweight to be tarnished by the essay.  Eikenberry poisoned the well with his press leaks last year, and Holbrooke is, well, Holbrooke.  A clean sweep might be the best move Obama could make. 

3)  Speaking of neoconservatives, it's worth noting that, contra Josh Rogin's take, GOP policy wonks are reacting the way you would expect a loyal opposition to react.  That is to say, sure, they're making hay of the problems with the Afghan strategy, but they're also quite firm in saying that Obama should dire McChrystal.  See Kristol,  Eliot Cohen, John McCain, Joe Lieberman, and Lindsey Graham. 

This should not be terribly surprising.  Neoconservatives have been pretty clear all along about civilian control of the military, and McChrystal's gaffes cut right to the heart of this issue. 

4)  One final point:  beyond the descriptions of McChrystal and his aides acting like jackasses in Paris, the RS article was of little use.  It presented a slanted portrait of COIN and it's advocates, and seemed determined to paint McChrystal in the worst light possible.  As Blake Hounshell observed, it failed to note that at this stage it's impossible to evaluate the COIN strategy, because these approaches tend to have "darkest before the dawn" qualities. 

What do you think?

One of the occupational hazards U.S. foreign policy wonks possess in abundance is the tendency to forget that domestic politics is really important.  Regardless of ideology, most members of the foreign policy community despair of how little time the President devotes to foreign affairs -- because he cares about things like "getting re-elected" or "maintaining popular support" or "responding to public opinion." 

I'd like to think that I'm at least aware of this failing, and remind myself on a daily basis that Tip O'Neill had a point. 

So, with that bias acknowledged, it's still worth pointing out that Barack Obama has foolishly decided to blow off the most dynamic region in the globe -- again:

President Obama canceled his trip to Australia, Indonesia and Guam late Thursday night as oil continued to stream into the Gulf of Mexico in what he has called the worst environmental disaster in American history.

His decision came as officials reported progress containing the oil leak at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico.

Mr. Obama is to visit the Gulf Friday to assess the situation and meet with officials responding to the crisis. While the White House statement offered no reason for scratching the Asia trip this time, officials in recent days had grown increasingly convinced that it was untenable for the president to leave the country for a week with the oil spill still unchecked....

This was the second time Mr. Obama has scrubbed the trip to Australia and Indonesia. He was originally scheduled to travel there in March but canceled at the last minute to stay in Washington to lobby for passage of his health care legislation. He also had passed up a trip to Indonesia in connection with a regional summit meeting held in Singapore in November 2009 (emphasis added).

Correct me if I'm wrong, but for the past month President Obama has been in the country, making many, many pronouncements about the oil leak.  You know what effect that has had on the spill?  Absolutely zero.  There is no policy reason whatsoever for Obama to stay in the country because of the spill (at this point, I'm not even sure there's a political reason, but will defer to commenters on that question). 

What's particularly frustrating is that Peter Baker's story contains the seeds that contradict Obama's justification for staying in the country: 

White House officials said they will not let the focus on the oil spill detract from the rest of the president’s economic, legislative and foreign agenda, pointing out that he still seems likely to sign fiunancial regulation reform by next month, push through his Supreme Court nominee and win sanctions against Iran at the United Nations Security Council.

“The American people don’t elect somebody, I think, that they don’t believe can walk and chew gum at the same time,” Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, told reporters earlier Thursday. “Sometimes it feels like we walk and chew gum and juggle on a unicycle all at the same time. I get that.”

But, he added, “there’s a whole lot of people working on a whole lot of things in the White House, and we’re able to do more than several things at once.”  (emphasis added)

That's great, Bob -- except that there are certain things that only a President can do.  Unless he has some engineering expertise that he's been keeping under wraps, there's very little that Obama can do by staying in the countrry to focus on the spill.  On the other hand, Obama's comparative advantage has been to help improve U.S. relations with the rest of the world.  Australia and Indonesia are vital supporter states, and yet this president has just given them the cold shoulder -- for the second time, remember -- in order to focus on domestic politics. 

The Obama administration has dealt with North Korea as best they could, and after some stumbles have moved down the learning curve in handling the China portfolio.  Their approach to the rest of the Asia/Pacific region, however, has gone from sclerotic to just plain awful.  The United States needs good relations with these countries -- but this administration has plainly revealed its preferences on this issue.  If you look at the Obama administration's behavior, in their minds, the Pacific Rim simply doesn't count. 

Question to readers:  is the Gulf spill such a political crisis that it requires the Obama administration to blow off allies? 

The Obama administration has been trying to road-test the National Security Strategy.  Last month is was NSC Advisor James Jones' address to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy -- which is now remembered more for a politically incorrect joke than anything else. 

This weekend it was the president's turn in his commencement address at West Point.  Is there anythng of interest to note?  Some are focusing on what he said about Iraq (victory + withdrawal of combat troops this year).  Let's focus on Obama's bigthink, which I'd label realist internationalism. 

Here's the realist sections:

[W]e must first recognize that our strength and influence abroad begins with steps we take at home. We must educate our children to compete in an age where knowledge is capital, and the marketplace is global. We must develop clean energy that can power new industry and unbound us from foreign oil and preserve our planet. We have to pursue science and research that unlocks wonders as unforeseen to us today as the microchip and the surface of the moon were a century ago.

Simply put, American innovation must be the foundation of American power - because at no time in human history has a nation of diminished economic vitality maintained its military and political primacy. And so that means that the civilians among us, as parents and community leaders, elected officials, business leaders, we have a role to play. We cannot leave it to those in uniform to defend this country - we have to make sure that America is building on its strengths....

And so a fundamental part of our strategy for our security has to be America's support for those universal rights that formed the creed of our founding. And we will promote these values above all by living them - through our fidelity to the rule of law and our Constitution, even when it's hard; even when we're being attacked; even when we're in the midst of war.

Seriously, that last paragraph could have been the mash-up version of John Quincy Adams' 1821 July 4th speech. 

Here's the internationalist part:

Yes, we are clear-eyed about the shortfalls of our international system. But America has not succeeded by stepping out of the currents of cooperation - we have succeeded by steering those currents in the direction of liberty and justice, so nations thrive by meeting their responsibilities and face consequences when they don't.

So we have to shape an international order that can meet the challenges of our generation. We will be steadfast in strengthening those old alliances that have served us so well, including those who will serve by your side in Afghanistan and around the globe. As influence extends to more countries and capitals, we also have to build new partnerships, and shape stronger international standards and institutions.

Now, realism and multilateralism don't go hand in hand terribly well -- here's the key paragraph where Obama tries to link them:

The burdens of this century cannot fall on our soldiers alone. It also cannot fall on American shoulders alone. Our adversaries would like to see America sap its strength by overextending our power. And in the past, we've always had the foresight to avoid acting alone. We were part of the most powerful wartime coalition in human history through World War II. We stitched together a community of free nations and institutions to endure and ultimately prevail during a Cold War.

Essentially, the administration will try to argue that multilateralism serves as a force multiplier, allowing America to extend its reach while burden-sharing with supporters who benefot from an American-led international order.

Does this formulation work?  I like the emphasis on internal renewal, and I tend to think that the United States does retrenchment strategies better than most countries.  That said, one problem with multilateralism is that burden-sharing often turns into free-riding. 

Another p;roblem is that without an animating idea, it's difficult to retain multilateral solidarity.  "Multilateralism for multilateralism's sake" doesn't work unless you live in Brussels -- and even then it's a bit dodgy.  "All for one, and one for keeping order" has its virtues, but emotionsal resonance isn't one of them.  

There has to be a purpose beyond order to rally allies to a cause.  We'll see if the Obama team has one when the NSS rolls out. 

Developing....

There's been a raging debate the past few weeks over whether conservatives suffer from what Julian Sanchez labeled "epistemic closure."  If conservatives get their information and opinion only by listening to other conservatives, the argument runs, they will be unprepared and unconcerned about criticisms from outside their intellectual cocoon. 

The blogosphere has been having a grand old time with this debate, and whether the problem afflicts conservatives more than liberals (click here for Patricia Cohen's roundup in today's New York Times).  Paul Krugman goes so far as to argue that this problem has clearly affected macroeconomics in freshwater schools. 

This leads me to wonder if the problem affects the GOP wing of the foreign policy community.  And as much as David Frum might argue for greater internal debate within the GOP on the political facts of life, for example, he was never shy in attacking the realpolitik wing of the Republican foreign policy establishment (more here). 

A few years ago I implicitly made this kind of critique when it came to neoconservatives.  That saids, my gut instinct on this is that the epistemic closure problem is not nearly as big a deal in foreign policy circles as it is in domestic policy circles.  That is to say, conservative foreign policy wonks do collect their information from a diverse array of sources.  They might not agree with every scrap of information about a particular issue, but they usually acknowledge its existence.  A quick glance at FP's own Shadow Government tells me that even if I disagree with these bloggers on policy recommendations, I still think we're operating in the same epistemic universe. 

I'll get to why I think this is true later, but for now, I'm curious if my experience corresponds to my readers.  So, a genuinely open question -- is there an epistemic closure problem among the conservative foreign policy community? 

Andrew Sullivan flags the latest data point on the rebound in America's image abroad: 

Views of the US around the world have improved sharply over the past year, a BBC World Service poll suggests.

For the first time since the annual poll began in 2005, America's influence in the world is now seen as more positive than negative.

The improved scores for the US coincided with Barack Obama becoming president, a BBC correspondent notes.

As in 2009, Germany is viewed most favourably while Iran and Pakistan are seen as the most negative influences.

Nearly 30,000 people in 28 countries were interviewed for the poll, between November 2009 and February 2010.

Now, on the one hand, this is particularly impressive, because the people of the world are in a really sour mood.  If you look at the entire report, the United States is the only great power and one of only two countries (South Africa is the other) to record an uptick in positive influence over the past year.  This is also fully consistent with other surveys demonstrating an "Obama effect." 

On the other hand, it's worth asking whether this boost in U.S. favorability ratings has yielded anything in the way of tangible policy gains.  Sullivan avers that: 

[I]n trying to defuse as well as defeat Jihadist terror, this kind of profound change could serve America's interests well. The idea that a better reputation abroad is meaningless uplift is foolish. It helps the US leverage its power to greater ends. The more popular the US is, the likelier it is to have a positive impact on other countries' leaders.

There's some truth to this -- otherwise you don't get the largest number of world leaders on American soil since the founding of the United Nations.  That said, I do wonder just how much leverage this kind of soft power carries with it.  Consider the ability of the U.S. to enact multilateral economic sanctions.  The Bush administration, at the depths of its unpopularity, was still able to get the UN Security Council to pass three rounds of sanctions against Iran, as well as measures against North Korea.  The Obama administration, despite a serious effort to open a dialogue with Iran, is encountering resistance from China, Brazil, and Turkey in its efforts to craft another round of sanctions. 

All else equal, it's better to see these numbers going up.  I'm just unsure of how much this translates into usable leverage.

What do you think?   

Your humble blogger has long been a believer that, in matters of American foreign policy, the process can matter just as much as the outcome.  Sure, sometimes fortuitous foreign policies emerge from bad decison-making structures, and sometimes bad foreign policies have been thoroughly vetted.  On the whole, however, good decision-making processes should lead to good decision-making outcomes. 

What makes for a good foreign policy decision-making process?  That question comes to mind after reading David Sanger and Peter Baker's NYT story on the Nuclear Posture Review that's going to be unfurled today: 

The strategy to be released on Tuesday is months late, partly because Mr. Obama had to adjudicate among advisers who feared he was not changing American policy significantly enough, and those who feared that anything too precipitous could embolden potential adversaries. One senior official said that the new strategy was the product of 150 meetings, including 30 convened by the White House National Security Council, and that even then Mr. Obama had to step in to order rewrites.

That's a lot of meetings for a document of questionable utility. 

This also backs up the themese from last week's excellent  Financial Times story by Daniel Dombey and Edward Luce on the Obama administration's foreign policy decision-making process that's gotten a lot of play.  Over at Shadow Government, Peter Feaver provides some useful cautions about reading too much into stories like this.  For the purposes of this blog post, however, I'm just gonna throw those cautions right out the window.  Because after reading Dombeyand Luce, I'm both horrified and impressed by what the Obama administration is doing. 

Let's start with the good.  It's clear that this White House has centralized foreign policy decision-making in a way that we haven't seen since the Bush/Scowcroft years.  Presidents have to claim ownership of their foreign policies, so this is cheering news.   

There's also a lot of praise in the story for the revival of the NSC interagency process -- particularly the way Tom Donilon is running the deputies' committee:

Also the organiser of Mr Obama's 9.30am national security briefing, Mr Donilon reinstated the paper trails needed to prevent intra-governmental anarchy, using the model de-vised by Brent Scowcroft, national se-curity adviser to George Bush senior and Gerald Ford. Vice-president Joe Biden's team was also incorporated to prevent the kind of "parallel process" Dick Cheney used to circumvent the bureaucracy under George W. Bush.

"If you look for the 2002 or 2003 meeting where the decision to go to war in Iraq was taken, you cannot find it," says the senior official. "By getting the process right, we are improving the quality of decisions."....

The refurbished machinery was perhaps most in evidence during the build-up to Mr Obama's decision in December to send another 30,000 US troops to Afghanistan - a journey that took four months and involved him in 40 hours of Oval Office meetings.

Now, the bad -- and there's more of it than I would like to see. 

First, while the White House appears to be running the foreign policy machine, the parts of the White House that are involved should provoke serious consternation.  The National Security Advisor, James Jones, is characterized as disengaged.  As a result, we get this anecdote: 

The lack of a strong national security adviser has created recurring difficulties. Perhaps the best example is the Arab-Israeli peace process, which Mr Obama launched on his second day in office when he appointed George Mitchell as his envoy. Three months later, Mr Obama insisted Benjamin Netanyahu freeze all settlements activity in order to boost Arab confidence in the talks.

In a heated showdown in the Oval Office last May, in which Mr Netanyahu refused to accede to Mr Obama's demand, the only officials present were Mr Emanuel and David Axelrod, senior adviser to Mr Obama in office and during the campaign. Gen Jones was not there. The fallout put the talks in abeyance and damped high Arab hopes for Mr Obama.

"The question is, which bright spark advised the president to demand a settlements freeze without working out what the next step should be when Netanyahu inevitably said 'No'?" says Leslie Gelb, an official in the Carter administration and former head of the Council on Foreign Relations. "Why wasn't George Mitchell in the room? Where was Jones?"

Um... what Gelb said.  Seriously, having only Axelrod and Emanuel in the room is doubly disturbing.  First, they're not foreign policy experts.  Second, having political operatives in the room sends the signal to Netanyahu that the U.S. Israel relationship really is all about domestic politics for Obama.  I don't think that's true, but if Netanyahu thinks that it's true, then it could explain a lot of his recent behavior. 

Now we get to Obama himself.  The implicit message in the story is that he's his own NSC advisor: 

Only briefly acquainted with Mr Obama beforehand, General Jones, a retired four-star marine corps general, shows little interest in running the "inter-agency" process - a key part of the job. Somewhat unconventionally, Gen Jones travels frequently and is thus often out of town. Unusually, it is Mr Obama himself who usually chairs the weekly national security council, known as the "principals meeting", not Gen Jones.

Yeah, this is very unusual.  Sure, you might think, "hey, this is great, POTUS is really involved!!"  Except that when the boss is in the room, the staff will often have a tendency to bite their tongues and refrain from airing discordant views.  This will be true even with someone like Obama, who use to lead seminars for a living and by all reports likes having provocative discussions. 

There's more in the article, including what looks like growing resentment among the principals for Denis McDonough (though for compensating good quotes, check out this Ana Marie Cox blog post). 

Dombey and Luce note in the end that, "Mr Obama has a sharp learning curve, which means his administration continues to evolve."  I hope so, because if the article is accurate (and it seems to jibe with prior stories) then there are definite areas for improvement. 

My provisional grade:  a straight B. 

Passover begins this evening, and with it comes the Four Questions that are asked at the Seder every year.  Contra Slate's Micharl Rubiner, a good Seder should have some lively debate. 

I bring this up because Ethan Bronner's news analysis in the New York Times today nicely captures divisions within the United States and Israel over the importance of the peace process going forward.  It also suggests two more questions that should be asked: 

[T]wo main issues are keeping American-Israeli tensions on the front burner: disagreement on the effects of what happens in Jerusalem on the rest of the Middle East, and the strength of the Palestinian leadership.  

The Obama administration considers establishing a Palestinian state central to other regional goals; it also believes that the Palestinians, led by Mr. Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, are ready to run a country. The Netanyahu government disagrees on both counts. It thinks the issue of Palestinian statehood has little effect on broader American concerns and is also dubious about the ability of the Palestinians to create an entity that can resist a radical takeover.

So, my questions to you: 

1)  Do you believe that the Israel/Palestine issue is central to wider regional policy concerns?

2)  Is the current Palestinian leadership capable of running an independent Palestine?

Discuss. 

I'm still on  vacation -- did anything of note happen over the weekend? 

Oh, I see:  "probably the biggest thing to become law in 50 years."  Well, so long as no one is engaging in hyperbole.

I have nothing to say about the content of the health care bill, but I do wonder whether there will be any positive or negative foreign policy externalities.  FP's Joshua Keating provided one humorous example of how the passage of the bill can reframe the Obama narrative on foreign policy in a positive way. 

On the other hand, Shadow Government's Dan Blumenthal correctly points out the ways in which Obama neglected foreign policy during the run-up to the bill's passage.  This is not surprising -- presidents turn  their fortunes around through domestic accomplishments and revived economic growth, not foreign policy achievements -- but it's a reality that Obama needs to confront going forward. 

The one thing health care passage might do for Obama is add a dollop of respect for Obama's political acumen among other world leaders.  Obama just got the #1 Democratic policy concern written into law after a year of long, drawn-out negotiations, and that's not nothing.  Allied leaders might be more willing to give the Obama administration the benefit of the doubt when dealing with long, drawn-out international negotiations. 

What do you think? 

James Vreeland, international political economy (IPE) scholar extraordinaire, has started a blog -- the Vreelander.  James is one of the sharpest tools in the IPE shed, so it's to the good that he's started blogging (longtime readers might remember this guest post from last year). 

I, for one, would like to officially welcome my good friend to the blogosphere by questioning his political sanity. 

Last week he blogged about the Dalai Lama's meeting with Obama -- a fact that displeased Vreeland to no end: 

President Obama is planning to meet with the Dali Lama at the White House. This is terrible. He is the spiritual leader of Tibet, an advocate for autonomy from China, and the head of the Tibetan government-in-exile. And the visit with Obama implies a tacit US endorsement that will deeply offend the Chinese government, not to mention many of the Chinese people.

Right now we need close cooperation with China to address serious global issues ranging from the economic crisis, to the environment, and even global security.

Meeting with the Dali Lama is a major affront to Beijing and to many Chinese. They consider this an issue of national sovereignty....

China is a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, and multi-lingual country. It has to deal with some problems similar to those of the United States. The path is long, circuitous and difficult. And having the leader of a rival power meet with a head of government-in-exile doesn't help.

More importantly, we've got bigger issues to deal with regarding China. Rather than meet with the Dali Lama, Obama should be talking about Chinese currency revaluation. And he should be doing so on a daily basis. Leave China's sovereignty alone.

Oh, please.  First of all, the U.S. can't "leave China's sovereignty alone," unless we're also prepared to jettison the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act and fail to mention China's Internet restrictions.  That's clearly not going to happen.  Meeting with the Dalai Lama, in comparison to sending arms to Taiwan, seems pretty tame. 

It's also pretty routine, as CSIS's Charles Freeman pointed out.  He also provided some useful context: 

Presidents George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush have all met with the Dalai Lama. Indeed, an express refusal to meet with the Dalai Lama would not only stray from established principle but would engender a raft of criticism from Congress and human rights groups that might constrain the president’s efforts to conduct a China policy that emphasizes engagement and cooperation.

And this is the thing -- foreign policies are never crafted with a clean slate, even with a change in presidential administrations.  If no president had ever met with the Dalai Lama before and then Obama bumped into him in the Map Room, that sends one signal.  If every president for two decades met with the Dalai Lama and then Obama abstains from meeting him -- let's call this the Vreeland Gambit -- that sends another signal. 

 I understand Vreeland's concerns that Tibet will gum up the foreign economic policy works, but I also know that the signal Obama would have sent by canceling this meeting would not have been a good one. 

I would interpret this is a massive exercise in (oh, the irony) kabuki politics.  Obama has a meeting that leads to no real policy differences, and China gets visibly upset and the inconsequential meeting.  A week from now, neither side's rhetoric on this issue will matter all that much.