Drezner vs. Walt.... vs. Walt

Posted By Daniel W. Drezner Thursday, October 27, 2011 - 3:35 AM Share

My FP colleague Steve Walt has responded to my Obama-praising blog post with a long litany of Obama foreign policy failures.  He includes climate change, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, the global economy, North Korea, failing to cure cancer.... you get the drift. 

Walt closes with the following observation: 

Where Dan and I agree, however, is the crucial role of domestic politics. For if you look at the failures listed above, what is striking is that most of them are heavily shaped by domestic constraints. Doing something serious about climate change would have real consequences for business and consumers, and that wasn't going to happen when we are teetering on the brink of another recession. Making progress on Israel-Palestine or on Iran would require bringing in a new Middle East team and taking on the Israel lobby (including the Christianist wing of the GOP), and Obama abandoned that course after the Cairo speech in June 2009. His decisions to escalate in Afghanistan and to try to stay in Iraq were clearly shaped by domestic political concerns, and especially the perennial Democratic fear of being perceived as "weak" on national security. Trade liberalization is always a contentious issue here at home, and especially tough to tackle with a weak economy.

In short, Dan's broader point about Obama's foreign policy successes is insightful: the president has done well in those relatively minor areas where domestic politics do not loom large and where he can exercise unilateral authority. But on the more important and more difficult issues where you would have to convince the American people to follow a new path, he's come up mostly empty.

Steve raises some interesting issues, and as I noted in my initial post, I absolutely agree that Obama's foreign policy has had flaws.  That said, I have a few quarrels with Walt's claims. 

First, in some cases, what Walt would consider a "success" might not be what others consider a success.  On Iran, for example, Walt laments that "the administration [has not] managed to think outside the box and try a different approach."  Beyond the Leveretts, however (and Ron Paul), I'm not sure anyone else would agree with Steve in that assessment.  Furthermore, to be fair, I think there's some pretty strong evidence that the administration did think outside the box in handling the nuclear issue.

Second, part of the issue here is how one defines a "success" in foreign policy. For example, Walt says the following on Libya as to why it's a failure:

[D]idn't the "Mission Accomplished" moment in 2003 in Iraq teach us about the dangers of declaring victory prematurely? We can all hope that the Libyan revolution fulfills its idealistic hopes and avoids the various pitfalls that lie ahead, but it is way too early to start bragging about it, or declaring it the model for future interventions. And if Libya does go south, enthusiasm for the "Obama Doctrine" will fade faster than watercolors in the Libyan sun.

Walt's observation is eminently sensible -- there are many ways in which Libya could evolve in a direction unfriendly to American interests. This gets to a deeper issue, which is how one defines "success" in politics vs. political science. Afghanistan looked like a success in 2001; Iraq looked like a success in 2003. Obviously, over time, these situations changed. As political scientists, we need to keep tabs on these developments.

In politics, however, voters tend not to do all that much updating, particularly in terms of foreign policy. It takes high-profile events for new information to filter down to candidates who read one whole page of foreign news almost every day the American public. It will be interesting to see how Libya (and Egypt, and Tunisia, and Syria, etc.) play out over the next few decades. My post was about the next year, however -- and Obama will be able to claim credit if it looks like things are going well, and fall back on "we didn't play that big of a role" if things fall apart. From a policy perspective, that's a very cynical way of looking at things -- but it makes sense from a political perspective.

Third, in many of the cases that Walt cites as failures, the problem isn't necessarily the domestic politics of the United States but the domestic politics of other countries.  On climate change, Israel, Pakistan, Iran, and Iraq, it's impossible to discuss the outcomes without recognizing the domestic political constraints/chaos in these countries.  While each of them possesses elements willing to cooperate with the United States, there are spoilers aplenty in all of these countries. This is a problem that Bush faced when he was in office, Obama has faced now, and will be a bigger problem over time.  It's a sign that the degree of difficulty in conducting American foreign policy has gone up. 

This brings me to my final cavil.  I'd really like the Steve Walt of this blog post to reconcile his arguments with... the Steve Walt who just published "The End of the American Era" in The National Interest. See, that Steve Walt views American decline as both inevitable and structural, which implies that these outcomes aren't a function of Obama's leadership per se but impersonal forces of history. Many of the cases Walt cites as Obama "failures" in his blog post are treated as ineluctable outcomes of relative American decline in his TNI essay.  Which is it?    

EXPLORE:U.S. FOREIGN POLICY, FOREIGN POLICY, FOREIGN POLICY COMMUNITY, GREAT POWER POLITICS, OBAMA, UNITED STATES
 

MERODRIGUEZ

9:30 PM ET

October 27, 2011

Unless...

There are distinctions to be made about American decline in regards to the rate of decline, the relative rate of growing power in other powers in relation to American policies, etc.

I think it's fair to simultaneously see some of those policy areas/events as failures and see American decline as systemic because one exists inside the other. If at the basic level, you take decline as systemically inevitable, it has just as much to do with other nations as it has to do with us. But, to keep it really simple, there's a big difference between a declining America that saves several billion dollars a year by realizing that it has nothing to gain in Afghanistan and instead reinvests in its education system and subsequently contributes to sparking a new technological revolution that is the birth of real alternative energy, or industrial dominance, or whatever; and on the other hand, a declining America that doubles down with resources that will never accomplish its nonspecific goals.

This applies to all the examples, not just Afghanistan. Obama is part of a string of small-picture thinking in the American government, and that thinking, through each individual policy area or event, creates an increase in the rate of degradation of American hegemony.

 

GRANT

12:26 AM ET

October 28, 2011

I agree in more than a few

I agree in more than a few areas, but I have to disagree on one point Mr. Drezner (or at least ask for clarification). The Bush team in 2001 and 2003 should have been fully aware from a wealth of data gathered over decades that would tell them the following:
It is very difficult for foreign powers to successfully install a government in another nation and can often accidentally arouse nationalist resistance.
It is very difficult for anyone to install a democratically-inclined state and society, especially in a nation where the people have not historically held power, warlordism is rampant and the elites aren't interested in democracy.
Nations that have not had functioning states for some time will not be able to create a state and provide efficient services without a powerful leader, frightened elites and considerable willingness to train a competent civil service free of corruption.
A central leader without power cannot do much to save their state*.
A small force of soldiers cannot police a nation.
Insurgencies are not easily dealt with unless the state can provide real benefits and less corruption.
At least some of the people near the top should have studied political science and stumbled across these points. It's not as though this is new data only available over the past ten years. This has been well documented and studied for the entirety of the Cold War. I would have hoped that whatever political scientists were there would do the title justice.

*As Goodman said in 1973 of South Vietnam and American pressure for it to devolve power "before power could be decentralized it had to be created".

 

BASE

11:55 AM ET

October 28, 2011

Iran

" Beyond the Leveretts, however (and Ron Paul), I'm not sure anyone else would agree with Steve in that assessment."

That is simply not true. *Outside* of the beltway many many people disagree with our policy on Iran and believe that we are trudging down a dangerous path [again]. Perhaps you need to read something written by someone other than the standard CFR shills like Pollock and Takiyah who have proven wrong time and time again..

 

BARKER13

3:16 PM ET

October 29, 2011

Getting back to Dan's Original "pro-Obama" post...

Hey Dan,

I understand that you can't reply to every comment.

That said... even if you don't address my comments per se (meaning, "Well, Bill... blah, blah, blah...) you might at least consider addressing the points I brought up.

Also... just an aside... while I'm not totally on board with each and every syllable coming out of Ron Paul's mouth, the Texas Congressman is far more right than he's wrong.

I'm just saying... it's one thing to disagree respectfully with specific points and proposals made by Paul... it's quite another to be obnoxiously (and wrongly) dismissive.

The fact that "most folks" agree with you is like bragging that "hey, in 2006 EVERYONE thought the housing boom would go on and on and on...."

(*SMILE*)

Get my point, Dan? Actually being RIGHT is what counts. Having a majority of elite opinion on your side is... er... how we get Ben Bernanke still running the Fed (and thus the country... into the ground)!

Anyway... reply - or don't - as you see fit.

Enjoy the weekend!

 

SEANMCBRIDE

3:18 PM ET

October 30, 2011

Credibility in the policy prognostication game

Shouldn't policy intellectuals who prominently agitated for the worst foreign policy disaster in American history (the Iraq War) get out of the policy advising and prognosticating business altogether? Find a new line of work? Seriously: what credibility do they have?

Does any serious person still pay attention to Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, William Kristol, Ken Pollack, Paul Wolfowitz, Robert Kagan, Martin Peretz and that entire circle of neoconservatives and neoliberals?

(But wait: Mitt Romney has just brought some of them on board as his lead foreign policy advisers: we're not out of the woods yet. Some Americans seem to be capable of being endlessly bamboozled no matter how many times they are burned.)

Daniel Drezner: "I supported the war going in, and if I could go into the way-back machine and do it all over again, I'd say "HELL, NO!" as loudly and as firmly as possible."

It was too late in 2007 to apologize for promoting policies that are on track to cost Americans several trillion dollars, that played a key role in producing our current financial crisis and which have severely damaged America's strategic position in the Middle East and the world at large.

Sean McBride
http://friendfeed.com/seanmcbride
http://friendfeed.com/mideast-politics

 

Daniel W. Drezner is professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.

Read More