I see that while I was away my esteemed co-bloggers Stephen Walt and Marc Lynch have been evaluating Barack Obama's foreign policy performance -- start here, then go here and here. 

I'm still getting all the cotton out of my head from my Israel sojourn, but what I find striking about the debate is how Middle-East-focused it is.  Walt focuses on four key areas:  Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Israel/Palestine.  All important hot spots, to be sure -- but shouldn't a good realist be concerned about great power politics?  (to be fair, Walt does link to Thomas Wright's intriguing essay in The Diplomat about how the Obama administration is rethinking its China policy). 

As a global political economy person with a strong realpoliitik streak, here are the four issues I think should be given the largest weighting in any grading of Obama: 

1)  Great power politics:  This is where Obama deserves his best marks, despite some occasional rocky patches.  It's safe to say that relations with Russia have been on the mend for quite some time.  Wright is correct to point out the ups and downs with China, but the administration has reacted quite adroitly to China's renewed confidence on the regional and global stage.  U.S. relations with key Pacific Rim allies -- South Korea, Japan, Indonesia, India, and even Vietnam if you want to go that far -- have all been trending upwards.  China now has to process these events, and whether its desire to throw its weigtht around is worth the price of a balancing strategy.  This wasn't how Obama planned things to go with China, but given Beijing's behavior, I think they improvised and adapted quite well in this sphere.  GRADE:  A-

2)  Correcting imbalances in the global economy:  The last G-20 summit in Toronto demonstrated how poorly the Obama administration has done on this front.  The administration went into that summit arguing that some countries need to continue priming the fiscal pump.  The resulting communique did not reflect that assessment.  Deficit hawks have won the war of ideas here -- which would be fine if surplus countries like Germany and China balanced that approach by consuming more.  They ain't going in that direction, however.  There's been minimal progress on yuan revaluation, and real foot-dragging in the Eurozone about fixing what ails that region.  Given the high hopes Obama administration put on the G-20, this has been a thoroughly disapponting performance to date:  GRADE:  D 

3)  Trade:  Blech.  Let me repeat that -- blech.  I understand that the administration is on barren political terrain when dealing with this issue.  Still, the phrase "Obama administration's trade agenda" is pretty much a contradiction in terms at this point.  The Doha round is dead, and the only trade issue that has the support of policy principals is the National Export Initiative -- and you know what I think about that.  Unlike the other three issues, the administration hasn't even bothered to put much effort onto this one -- though the recent pledge to get the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (KORUS) ratified is promising.  GRADE:  F

4)  Nuclear nonproliferation:  Even an IPE guy like myself appreciates the virtues of a world in which nuclear weapons are heavily regulated.  The Obama administration's performance in this area has been mixed.  START has been negotiated but not ratified, and the Nuclear Safety Summit seems like it was a success.  Iran and North Korea seem unbowed, but at the same time the Obama administration has reinforced the multilateral arrangements designed to contain both countries (though this is interesting).  At the same time, you can't just grade for effort at this level, and the results have been disappointing with both countries.  There is also something of a strategic mismatch between the Obama administration's nuclwar ambitions and grand strategy ambitions.  GRADE:  B-

All grades are incomplete at this stage, but looking above, I'm more than a bit troubled.  I don't see the rebalancing or trade grades impriving anytime soon.  If Obamas was one of my advisees, I'd probably have him stop by my office hours for a friendly but firm chat at this juncture.

Question to readers:  what important issues did Walt, Lynch, and I overlook ? And how would you grade Obama?

Dear Peter Schweizer,

First off, thanks for writing.  Believe it or not, this is precisely this kind of exchange I was hoping for when I called Big Peace "unadulterated horses**t" in my last post.  I respect and admire writers who are not put off by a healthy use of Anglo-Saxon terms, as opposed to Latin, academic-y obfuscation. 

You raise some issues with my post, so let me respond in kind. 

First, you note that, "Drezner seems to have made a habit of coming to Mr. Soros’ defense," linking to a blog post from a few years back.  I wonder, however, if you read the entire blog post.  Here's how I closed it: 

I have very mixed feelings on Soros. The man is and was a first-rate philanthropist. That, said, having read The Bubble of American Diplomacy, I've concluded that Soros is a political loon of the first order. It is ridiculously easy to attack George Soros without ever discussing his religion.

....while Blankely was, to repeat, clearly way out of bounds, the Republican decision to go on the offensive against Soros is perfectly legit. He's dedicated large sums of money to attacking the Bush administration. According to the Post story, "Soros has said in interviews that he has concluded that ousting Bush is the most important thing he can do with his life." The trigger for the Hannity & Colmes discussion was Soros' statement comparing the Abu Ghraib prison scandal to the 9/11 attacks. In Bubble of American Diplomacy, Soros admits that he's become "quite rabid" in his political views. He's entered the political arena -- which means he's opened himself to political attacks.

Trust me when I say that this post didn't win me many friends on the left.  If this amounts to me "sucking up to a billionaire philanthropist," as you put it, well then, gee, I really stink at it.  If you think this still amounts to "sucking up," then I'm afraid we're going to have to agree to disagree.  To reiterate -- going after Soros' ideas is just fine.  I'm sure you'll agree, however, that going after him for being a Jew is both inflammatory and extraneous. 

You then go on to argue that Soros has influenced Obama, and provide links to stories in the Wall Street Journal and Time to back up this point.  Hey, this is great!  You have linked citations to back up your argument!!  That's what I like to see when an online article makes a non-obvious factual assertion.  Now go back and re-read Moriarty's column -- did he have any hyperlinks backing up any of his assertions linking Soros to Obama?  No?  Wouldn't some links on that point have been useful?  Indeed, dare I suggest that pointing out the need for evidence is kind of an editor's job? 

As for your cites, I'm afraid thay're not convincing at all.  Both of them are from November 2008, when there was speculation over who would influence then-President-elect Obama.  I haven't seen much since then about Soros' direct influence over Obama.  Soros is at best ambivalent and at worst disappointed with Obama's performance.  On the issue in which Soros has been the most outspoken -- financial regulation -- Obama willfully ignored Soros' recommendations.  So I'm not seeing a lot of influence here.  I'm seeing nothing that even approximates the overt and tight relationship that Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon shared during the latter's administration (which is what Moriarity stated in his essay). 

I could be persuaded otherwise on this point -- Obama and Soros probably do have some kind of relationship.  But I need to see the evidence, the unvarnished truth, if you will.  If you have any, please provide it and link to it.  

Finally, you sarcastically note my impending zombie book, concluding, "Wow. Serious stuff. Scholarly material. Certainly not horses***t." 

Well played, sir!!  Yes, I am indeed writing a semi-serious book on zombies and world politics.  I'm not sure I follow your line of argumentation, however.  Are you suggesting that writing on something frivolous (but pedagogically useful)  like zombies somehow diminishes my ability to analyze politics and international relations?  If that's your argument, then you're impeaching an awful lot of writers and analysts who dabble in hobbies like fiction-writing on the side.  It's a good thing you haven't done anything so frivolous as write fiction.  Oh, wait....

If you want to directly critique my writings on international relations, please feel free -- there's a lot of them.  Implying that the two months I spent writing Theories of International Politics and Zombies disqualifies me from more serious musings is... wait for it.... unadulterated horses**t. 

Sincerely,

Daniel W. Drezner

----

Dear Michael Moriarty. 

First off, again, thanks for writing.  Second, let me just say that you're a highly underrated actor.  Courage Under Fire is one of my favorite post-Cold War films, and I thought you were terrific in it -- an understated performance that deserved Academy Award recognition. 

 Now, to the matter at hand.  You write in your response: 

You say, “Seriously, I see no evidence of Soros’ alleged influence over Obama, nor do I see any evidence of Soros’ desire to bring down the United States.”

Dragging the United States, kicking and screaming, into the economic quick sands of not only Far Left false promises but, for example, handing the American Gulf oil market over to Brazil’s own predominantly offshore drilling is not a recent headline … of sorts?

Isn’t Mr. Soros a close friend of Brazil’s leadership and an actual investor in Brazil’s oil explorations?

Forgive my hyperbole, but isn’t a moratorium on offshore oil drilling, imposed by an American, Presidential friend of George Soros going to help Brazil … and therefore George Soros … EXPONENTIALLY?

But then again, you can’t even see a shred of “influence” from Soros to Obama (emphases in original).

Now I assume you are referring to this allegation with respect to Soros' investments in Petrobas and the links between Petrobas and the Obama administration.  I'm not sure, however, since once again, you failed to provide any links to back up your arguments.  On this matter, I suggest you peruse this FactCheck.org post about the issue, as well as this Bloomberg story about Soros' dealings with Petrobras.  

There's a phrase that I like a lot:  correlation does not equal causation.  It is probably true that a moratorium on offshore drilling would help Petrobas, which would in turn help Soros.  I seriously doubt, however, that this is what led to the moratorium in the first place, just as I find most conspiracy theories implausible.   The moratorium does not appear to reflect Obama's long-term preferences on the issue, given that he indicated he was open to drilling during the 2008 campaign and then announced an expansion of such drilling just a few months before the BP imbroglio.  Finally, a six-month delay is not really going to enrich Petrobas all that much. 

So no, the word "exponentially" doesn't hold up here.  Neither does the comparison you made between Nixon/Kissinger and Obama/Soros in your initial post -- those two pairings are apples and oranges, and there's nothing from your original post nor your follow-up letter that is persuasive on that point. 

You also write, "The rumor I’ve received about your publication, Foreign Policy, is that it is not just Left but Far Left."  Hey, why listen to received rumor?  Why not go for the unvarnished truth?  Check out Foreign Policy for yourself!!  I'm sure there will be plenty of content that you and your Big Peace readers will find to be on the left.  On the other hand, distinguished conservative writers ranging from Robert Kagan to Walter Russell Mead to Dov Zakheim have published here.  Even some less distinguished conservatives, like Peter Schweizer's business partner Marc A. Thiessen, have found their way onto Foreign Policy.  Read the whole thing!! 

One final, friendly suggestion from one writer to another:  bolded and italicized fonts have their place in making a point.  But bolded and italicized text, in and of itself, does not constitute evidence. 

Do keep checking out my blog -- I, for one, would welcome a whole new set of critical readers. 

Respectfully,

Daniel W. Drezner

Jesse Lichtenstein's New York Times Magazine profile of the State Department's Jared Cohen and Alec Ross does a fine job of discussing the pros and cons of government efforts to use Twitter, Facebook et al in order to promote U.S. interests.  FP's Evgeny Morozov is quoted liberally as the voice of skepticism. 

What I found particularly interesting was the way that this kind of advocacy has turned Cohen and Ross into Internet celebrities: 

On Twitter, Cohen, who is 28, and Ross, who is 38, are among the most followed of anyone working for the U.S. government, coming in third and fourth after Barack Obama and John McCain. This didn’t happen by chance. Their Twitter posts have become an integral part of a new State Department effort to bring diplomacy into the digital age, by using widely available technologies to reach out to citizens, companies and other nonstate actors. Ross and Cohen’s style of engagement — perhaps best described as a cross between social-networking culture and foreign-policy arcana — reflects the hybrid nature of this approach. Two of Cohen’s recent posts were, in order: “Guinea holds first free election since 1958” and “Yes, the season premier [sic] of Entourage is tonight, soooo excited!” This offhand mix of pop and politics has on occasion raised eyebrows and a few hackles (writing about a frappucino during a rare diplomatic mission to Syria; a trip with Ashton Kutcher to Russia in February), yet, together, Ross and Cohen have formed an unlikely and unprecedented team in the State Department. They are the public face of a cause with an important-sounding name: 21st-century statecraft....

One apparent paradox of 21st-century statecraft is that while new technologies have theoretically given a voice to the anonymous and formerly powerless (all you need is a camera phone to start a movement), they have also fashioned erstwhile faceless bureaucrats into public figures. Ross and Cohen have a kind of celebrity in their world — and celebrity in the Twitter age requires a surfeit of disclosure. Several senior members of the State Department with whom I spoke could not understand why anyone would want to read microdispatches from a trip to Twitter or, worse, from a State Department staff member’s child’s basketball game. But Secretary Clinton seemed neither troubled nor bewildered. “I think it’s to some extent pervasive now,” she told me in March. “It would be odd if the entire world were moving in that direction and the State Department were not.” Half of humanity is under 30, she reminded me. “Much of that world doesn’t really know as much as you might think about American values. One of the ways of breaking through is by having people who are doing the work of our government be human beings, be personalized, be relatable.”

I'm really not sure if network diplomacy will work, but these grafs highlight a looming problem even if it does work.  Web 2.0 users succeed when they generate idiosyncratic, personalized content.  Governments, on the other hand, are team operations, designed to harness different organizations into a common message.  Ross  and Cohen are clearly smart, talented people, but at some point they or someone like them in the government will commit an Octavia Nasr -- and what then?   

Question to readers:  is it possible for foreign policymakers to be good at Web 2.0 and good at traditional bureaucratese? 

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....

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?   

Everybody -- and by everybody, I mean FP --  is getting hot and bothered by this section of Peter Baker's New York Times story: 

If there is an Obama doctrine emerging, it is one much more realpolitik than his predecessor’s, focused on relations with traditional great powers and relegating issues like human rights and democracy to second-tier concerns. He has generated much more good will around the world after years of tension with Mr. Bush, and yet he does not seem to have strong personal friendships with many world leaders.

“Everybody always breaks it down between idealist and realist,” said Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff. “If you had to put him in a category, he’s probably more realpolitik, like Bush 41,” the first President George Bush, Mr. Emanuel said.

He added, “He knows that personal relationships are important, but you’ve got to be cold-blooded about the self-interests of your nation.”

Stephen G. Rademaker, a former official in the George W. Bush administration, said: “For a president coming out of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, it’s remarkable how much he has pursued a great power strategy. It’s almost Kissingerian. It’s not very sentimental. Issues of human rights do not loom large in his foreign policy, and issues of democracy promotion, he’s been almost dismissive of.”

Well, a couple of thoughts.  First, the idea of George H.W. Bush disdaining personal relationships is somewhat absurd.  Bush 41 was notorious for his thank you cards and supersized Rolodex.  On the margins, personal rapport among leaders does count for something, so this certainly helped Bush advance the national inrest. 

So that makes Bush different from Obama, right?  Well, let's click over to Scott Wilson's story in today's Washington Post now, shall we? 

[I]n convening his first international summit -- the largest on a single issue in Washington history -- [Obama] focused more squarely on his relationship with world leaders. He slapped backs, kissed cheeks and met one on one with more than a dozen heads of state, leavening his appeal to shared security interests with a more personal diplomacy.

The approach marked a shift for Obama as he seeks to translate his popularity abroad into concrete support from fellow leaders for his foreign policy agenda, most urgently now in his push for stricter sanctions against Iran.

"He's in charge, he's chairing the meetings, and this is where his personality plays a big part," said Pierre Vimont, the French ambassador to the United States, who compared Obama's role during the summit to the way he led the bipartisan health-care meeting at Blair House in February....

Obama's attention to his guests began on the summit's opening night, when he spent more than an hour and a half greeting the 46 foreign leaders and three heads of international organizations he invited.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whom administration officials describe as high on the list of the European leaders Obama most admires, received a kiss on each cheek at the final bilateral meeting.

Obama bowed formally to Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama. He used both hands to shake the hands of some leaders and joked with others.

David Miliband, Britain's foreign secretary, said such personal diplomacy is "quite important" at summits, especially one about an issue he said is "often seen as administrative."

"When Obama stands up and says 'My friend Dmitry Medvedev' or 'My friend Nicolas Sarkozy,' he's right, and that's important," Miliband said. "He's made a number of friends of world leaders, and I think that's a testament to why so many arrived to take part in this."

Wow, so it really is George H.W. Obama, right? 

As someone who thinks George H.W. Bush has been vastly underrated, I'd love to say yes.  But this gets confusing to your humble blogger.  After all, some have argued that Obama is really no different than George W. Bush.  I'm also pretty sure I've read somewhere, way back in early 2010, that Obama is really Jimmy Carter.  So I'm not sure  this comparison can or should stick. 

Moving from personalities to ideas, the realist/idealist divide, you still wind up with a muddle.  Bob Kagan is right to say that Obama's desire for a nuclear-free world is about as idealistic as one can get.  Similarly, Obama's affirmation of multilateralism doesn't seem terribly realist either.  On the other hand, his policies towards great power rivals like Russia and China, and dependent allies like Israel and Afghanistan, seem pretty damn realist.  Much like his Nobel Peace Prize address, the Obama administration's latest foray into the less shallow waters of international relations theory offers a sliver of support to all major IR approaches. 

Which box you put him in, I suspect, depends on which policy dimension you think matters most.  Human rights advocates will use the r-word; fans of nuclear deterrence will use the i-word.  As someone concerned with the management of great power politics, I'd be comfortable calling Obama an realist, but I'm biased  -- I speculated that this was the approach the post-Bush president would be forced to pursue. 

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? 

I was planning to liveblog last night's State of the Union address, but as the hour approached, your humble blogger couldn't muster the energy for it, and resorted to sporadic  tweets instead. 

As it turns out, that was the appropriate tack, because my lackluster effort to process the speech matched the Obama administration's lackluster effort to incorporate foreign policy into the speech (FP's Josh Rogin has expertly parsed the little foreign policy content there was).  As predicted, there wasn't a whole hell of a lot of international relations content in the SOTU, despite Heather Hurlburt's best efforts to argue otherwise. 

Politico's Laura Rozen noted "the seeming downgrading of foreign policy emphasis in the speech," and The Spectator's Alex Massie observed "Foreign policy received very little, even perfunctory, attention."  [UPDATE:  oooh, Jeffrey Laurenti has data]: 

[Obama] devoted just 14 percent of his speech to international concerns – a far cry from George Bush, who regularly devoted half his State of the Union addresses to foreign policy and national security themes (and fully 88 percent of the infamous “axis of evil” address in 2002, which laid out the road map for war in the Middle East).

What attention was paid to foreign economic policy was desultory when it wasn't firmly wedged in Fantasyland. 

In fact, let's deconstruct that entire section of the speech -- it won't take that long: 

[W]e need to export more of our goods. Because the more products we make and sell to other countries, the more jobs we support right here in America. So tonight, we set a new goal: We will double our exports over the next five years, an increase that will support two million jobs in America. To help meet this goal, we're launching a National Export Initiative that will help farmers and small businesses increase their exports, and reform export controls consistent with national security.

We have to seek new markets aggressively, just as our competitors are. If America sits on the sidelines while other nations sign trade deals, we will lose the chance to create jobs on our shores. But realizing those benefits also means enforcing those agreements so our trading partners play by the rules. And that's why we will continue to shape a Doha trade agreement that opens global markets, and why we will strengthen our trade relations in Asia and with key partners like South Korea, Panama, and Colombia.

 Now, let's see if there's anything of substance in there:

1)  "We will double our exports over the next five years..."  Well, the President said this would happen, so it must be so!!  I would humbly request that the president also decree that the pull of gravity be cut in half.  The government has an equal chance of making that happen. 

2)  "we will continue to shape a Doha trade agreement that opens global markets..."  The key word there is "shape."  I have every confidence the administration will do this, because they make this pledge in every communique they ever issue.  It's a tradition now, like playing "Hail to the Chief."  Play the music, pledge to work on Doha, and then go about your business.  

3)  "we will strengthen our trade relations in Asia and with key partners like South Korea, Panama, and Colombia."  You mean, by ratifying the threee trade agreements that have already been signed and negotiated?  Oh, you don't mean that?  Well, never mind, then. 

State of the Union speeches are usually about domestic priorities, and it's not surprising that this one played to type.  Still, I would have liked to have seen a more robust effort to link foreign policy priorities to domestic priorities -- because the two are more linked than is commonly acknowledged. 

Marc Lynch and Andrew Sullivan both have posts up today that share a similar theme.  Marc looks at Obama's effort to jumpstart the Israel/Palestine peace talks, while Sullivan looks at the efforts to close the Guantanamo prisons.  Both Lynch and Sully make the same points:

1)  These are good ideas;

2)  One year in, these initiatives are completely bogged down;

3)  A key reason they've been bogged down is the fecklessness of the Obama administration.

Well.... maybe.  External circumstanves play a role here as well.  I'm sympathetic to generating forward momentum for Israel/Palestine peace talks, but it strikes me that people who bewail the lack of progress on this issue suffer from the liberal variant of Matt Yglesias' Green Lantern Theory of International Relations.  Given the state of Israeli public opinion and the state of Palestinian political coherence,  a Netanyahu-led Israeli regime was not going to acquiesce to outside pressure.  An Obama administration that tried such pressure and failed would actually be in a weaker position than they are now. 

Similarly, on Gitmo, when Obama seemed to push forward on this issue, he ran up against the political reality that Americans like closing Gitmo down in theory more than in practice.  And Obama then acted... politically. 

What I find striking is that many people who consider themselves part of the "reality-based community" now want the Obama administration to absorb the Bush administration's ontological beliefs and thereby create their own realities. 

In a manner of speaking, the Bush team did have a small point.  What the Bush administration excelled at was making irreversible policy decisions.  You can't uninvade Iraq or Afghanistan -- and, as Obama is finding out, undoing Gitmo is much harder than it souds on the campaign stump.  There are some policy decisions that, once they are made, are so path dependent that they are either impossible or really difficult to reverse. 

The thing is, I don't see a lot on Obama's foreign policy agenda that qualifies (though Gitmo might).   Policy initiatives that require multilateral cooperation are pretty easy to undo.  So unless there's buy-in from other key actors, there's only so much the Obama administration can do on things like Israel/Palestine. 

Which is Reason #451 why Obama won't be turning to foreign policy post-SOTU. 

Everyone inside the Beltway is preparing their 500 words on what the  results in the Massachusetts special Senate election will mean for Barack Obama's domestic policy agenda.  It's worth speculating for a moment, however, about the implications of this election for Obama's foreign policy agenda.  What would a Republican victory signal to the rest of the world?  How would the rest of the world's policymakers react? 

The first and simplest answer would be that there would be no effect.  It's just a single Senate election.  Furthermore, one could argue that, on foreign policy, GOP hopeful Scott Brown is actually closer to Barack Obama than Martha Coakley.  Brown supports Obama's Afghanistan plan -- Coakley opposes it.  This election hasn't really been about foreign policy.  Surely, then, a GOP upset wouldn't have much impact on the realm of international relations. 

Not so fast, however.  The election will also be interpreted as a signal of Obama's domestic political strength.  Unless the numbers are way off, the Republicans will do much better tonight than anyone expected even two weeks ago.  Foreign leaders -- particularly those from countries not terribly well-schooled in electoral politics -- will undoubtedly interpret that as a sign of:

1)  Obama's domestic weakness; and

2)  The depths of populist outrage in the United States -- populist outrage that could bleed over into increased protectionism, isolationism, or "kill them all and let God sort them out" provocation on the foreign policy front.   

Soooo..... how they respond to this information depends on many factors.  If they prefer Obama and his foreign policies to the GOP (cough, Europe, cough), then they might prove to be more accommodating to U.S. positions.  If they like the  results from a United States foreign policy that is more hawkish (cough, Iran and Venezuela, cough), then they might amp up their belligerence to make Obama look weak and hamstrung. 

The one sure effect of the election is that it will throw a monkey wrench into international negotiations that require legislative approval.  Unless Obama can secure bipartisan support for, say, a replacement to Start II, other countries' negotiators are going to wonder why they should bother with the transaction costs of negotiation. 

Am I missing anything? 

My FP colleague Marc Lynch has dissected Alan Kuperman's New York Times op-ed on the wisdom of bombing Iran.  Lynch takes great pains (more on that in a moment) to rip apart Kuperman's argument so I don't have to, but I can't resist pointing out the most tendentious point in the essay:

As for the risk of military strikes undermining Iran’s opposition, history suggests that the effect would be temporary. For example, NATO’s 1999 air campaign against Yugoslavia briefly bolstered support for President Slobodan Milosevic, but a democratic opposition ousted him the next year.

Now, this assertion contains facts, but is so radically incomplete as to  be f***ing insane.  

To add a bit of detail:  maybe, just maybe, the reason Slobodan Milosevic was ousted had less to do with the bombing itself, but because the Serbian leader completely capitulated to NATO's demands on Kosovo after eight weeks of airstrikes.   The bombing angered those already on the outs with Milosevic; the acquiescence after costly punishment angered Serbian nationalists and technocrats.  So it wasn't just the bombing that affected Serbian politics -- it was Milosevic's decision to alter Serbian policy in a manner favorable to NATO.

So, yes, if the Iranian leadership does what Kuperman wants them to do after being bombed -- acquiesce on the nuclear program -- then yes, they'll be gone.  Now, raise your hand if you think the current Iranian leadership will respond to a bombing campaign by shifting their position closer to the U.S. position. 

So, yes, this is a pretty silly op-ed, and the New York Times wasted an awful lot of column inches on it.  Go ahead, heap some calumny on them. *

That said, the venom directed at it by Lynch and others seems a bit over the top.   Lynch's explanation for why is that unless these arguments hit some strident pushback, we'll be going to war again:

The Obama administration almost certainly doesn't want to make such a wrong-headed move --- but, then, there are a lot of things which the Obama administration doesn't want to do but has been forced into by political realities (Gitmo, the public option, escalation in Afghanistan) and intentions aren't enough.   Many people may have assumed that the legacy of Iraq would have raised the bar on such arguments for war, that someone making such all too familiar claims would simply be laughed out of the public square.  The NYT today shows that they aren't.  I suspect that one of the great foreign policy challenges of 2010 is going to be to push back on this mad campaign for another pointless, counter-productive war for the sake of war. 

I would interpret things differently.  Changing the policy status quo is really, really hard, and it's normally pretty easy to gin up significant political opposition to any proposed change.  The status quo on Iran is that we're not bombing them , so I expect that to continue for a good long while. 

Indeed, the reactions to this op-ed remind me of the panic among progressives in 2007 that the Bush administration was gearing up to bomb Iran.  The truth was somewhat different.  

By all means, critique Kuperman's argument.  But let's not pretend that Dick Cheney is still vice president, or that Bill Kristol can start a war with a Weekly Standard column.  The world really has changed a bit. 

*UPDATE:  The more I think about the massive flaws in this op-ed, the more I'm beginning to wonder if this wasn't a strategic move by the New York Times op-ed page editors to subtly undercut the neoconservative argument for war.  Indeed, I would not describe the GOP links to the essay as terribly enthusiastic.  I do love Tom Gross' characterization of it as, "dry and academic and long (it runs to two pages online)."  Yes, because if you can't make the case for military action in under 400 words, there's just no point in bothering.