The New Republic never stops embarrassing itself. Now they are publishing Eli Lake:
And, while it’s easy to dismiss the conservative critique of Obama’s foreign policy as a politically motivated caricature, you can see why McCain supporters have tried to tag him as a latter-day Jimmy Carter. During the primaries, Obama talked about the war on terrorism with the fastidiousness of a civil libertarian–emphasizing the constraints that he would impose on our military and CIA and rarely mentioning specific methods for prosecuting it. He has, for instance, talked extensively about closing the Guantánamo Bay prison and ending the policy of extraordinary rendition.
Fastidiousness? Lake goes on to lay out a case that Obama’s foreign policy will be more like Ronald Reagan’s than Jimmy Carter’s. Why? Because Obama won’t let human rights violations prevent him from partnering with the enemies of our enemies.
There’s an argument that Jimmy Carter was a little too fastidious in this regard, but there is also an argument that Ronald Reagan went too far in the other direction. What Lake actually argues is that Obama will split the difference. And that would be fine by me. But Lake only makes this argument reluctantly, after praising Reagan and attempting to tie Obama’s policies to William Casey’s.
What Obama foreign policy? I don’t think we have a clue as to what he’ll really do. Well, he won’t just invade some country for no reason at all except to get more contracts for his cronies. So not Bush/Cheney or Reagan. But will he keep kissing up to the neocon theocrats of AIPAC? Will he try to bring some measure of justice to the Palestinians?
So far we have no real evidence. Hopefully we will get some before this campaign is over. Anyway, the NR article is indeed remarkably stupid. This guy belongs on CNN.
Right now, his foreign policy looks like it is focused in three or four things:
It’s hard to get a read on the Israel/Palestine issue in the midst of a campaign, but he’s no neo-con and he knows he have to get back to the negotiating table somehow.
We Dems are whiners. Time is a running,, we need to win this thing. GOPers are putting aside their gripes and getting behind McCain. They just raised $40 million for their Convention while we’re a-whining and way behind.
Go read Obama’s foreign policy speech for starters.
I’ll leave you with Badtux, the Snarky Penguin
Moi, I plead guilty.
He’s not a right-centrist. That’s ridiculous.
He’s running to the left of Bill Clinton who was a left-centrist.
I wrote that before reading the speech. As noted in that topic, I’m encouraged. For the most part, an unexpectedly specific and gutsy presentation.
Part of the problem is that Carter wasn’t really even like the myth of Carter that has been created.
Despite his rhetoric Carter was perfectly willing to stick with dictators who violated human rights. Unlike what the far right wanted however, Carter wasn’t willing to stick with them till the very bitter end and he wasn’t willing to invade countries to prop up dictators. He was perfectly willing to overlook the extensive human rights violations by the Afghan mujahadin for example.
What Carter did do was to take some very modest steps towards putting more reliance on soft power. But fundamentally, he was not willing to entertain significant shifts in U.S. power and Zbigniew Brezinski tended to actually carry the day.
In a way, there are actually multiple myths here: one is the myth of “Wilsonian idealis” in U.S. foreign policy and the other is that Carter and Vance were Wilsonian idealists.
I’m not so enthusiastic about “splitting the difference” between Carter and Reagan. It might be the case that on some occasions we have to make some very distasteful choices-such as backing the Algerian regime over Islamicist rebels. But this all begs the question as to why and how radical Islamicism of varying stripes has gotten a following.
There are two points, that in my thinking are in actuality facts about U.S. foreign policy-regardless of what academic school of foreign policy one comes from:
The most dyed in the wool academic realist will admit to this fact. Yet it cannot be addressed in public political debate.
Until we are willing to address openly the arguments for and against maintaining U.S. hegemony, and the costs of doing so, we will continue to have these “taste great-less filling” debates about foreign policy.
You’ve pretty much said it all. I was hoping Obama might break through the wall of comforting lies, but so far it looks like he’s playing the same ol’ game in the non-existent center.
Thanks to the al Qaida/Bush synergy, the “war on terror” will preclude any rational policy discussion for some time to come, no matter who’s in the White House or Congress.
or not.
IT seems to me that while Obama’s speech is an improvement on Bush, it really doesn’t shift the debate.
It avoids the fact that the U.S. is a hegemonic power, continuing the myth of the U.S. as a benevolent power beset by enemies who attacked us with no provocation. The imagery is Wilsonian-the politics that of vital center cold war liberalism.
It doesn’t address the underlying dynamics of U.S. foreign policy. And to be fair-it can’t. I do believe that Obama believes his rhetoric. I think he really is the vital center liberal he portrays himself as. He’s not a secret radical.
Having said all that I think its important for quasi-left wing academics myself to articulate left criticisms of Obama. I’m not a purity troll-I still support him. I still think he will be a good President, within the confines of existing institutions.
His solutions-whether in foreign or domestic policy will make only minor adjustments and accommodate existing institutions-not seek to change them.
I don’t see that this speech changes the debate: it simply perpetuates the endless and what I think is a kind of mythological interpretaion of U.S. foreign policy as riven between Wilsonian idealism and Realism.
Obama is a Realist (in the foreign policy/international relations sense of the term). So is Bush. Obama is just a better Realist.
Like I said-I’ll vote for and work for smart over stupid realism. I won’t say this changes the discourse.
Is that your interpretation of changing the debate?
There’s nothing inherently wrong with being a hegemonic power. You had alternatives. The British Empire, the Thousand Year Reich, the Japanese Empire, Stalin’s Soviet Union…
You didn’t have the option of no hegemon. That doesn’t excuse bad behavior. But it’s not changing the debate to complain that we’re a hegemon. It’s just spitting into the wind.
You want an education on the upside of hegemony?
Take a look at this .pdf of a 12/27/68 Memo from Henry Owen, Director, Policy Planning Council, to Secretary of State Dean Rusk addressing the consequences of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Go to page 4 of the document and start reading.
I agree that there are worse things than U.S. hegemony. Hell, there were worse things than Roman hegemony-like warlordism.
What I want debate on is the fact that we are a hegemony. I want political figures to be able to acknowledge we are a hegemony and as such engage in actions that provoke attacks on us for being hegemons. That doesn’t make the people attacking us good necessarily. But it does put their attacks into perspective.
Or, put another way, I want us to be able to debate American exceptionalism. Obama is maintaining the belief in American exceptionalism.
And there are alternatives to U.S. hegemony that do not have to be ugly. For that matter U.S. hegemony could succeed in dispelling U.S. hegemony in a positive way. That future would be built on international institutions and the rule of law. So, for example, the U.S. could not try Taliban and Al Quaeda by its own military tribunals. It would have to bring charges at the Hague. And that would mean U.S. political figures would also be vulnerable to being charged at the Hague.
Now-Obama not only will not say that-he cannot possibly say that. In fact no U.S. politician save perhaps for Bernie Sanders can and will say that.
The single most important reason for the rise of Islamic terrorism is the money the Saudis send all over the world to teach their fucked up version of Islam. We found it convenient when the target was limited to the Soviet Union. Now, it’s not so amusing.
The other three factors are political repression, Arab underemployment, and anger of the Israel/Palestine issue. It’s important that the U.S. understand the problem even if there are not ready solutions in the short-term.
I should add that the invasion and occupation of Iraq is a major factor, too. But we can end that and it won’t do a thing to address the other issues.
Just as we found it convenient when our friends the Taliban’s target was limited to the Soviet Union. As the Rev pointed out, chickens coming home to roost. All over the place.
Obama’s Iraq plan is seen as identical to that of Zbig Brzezinski former National Security Advisor, also on the Obama team of wise people.
Obama’s foreign policy is a work in progress. He has no record so pundits and journo wannabees quote his advisors and surrogates but without an understanding of what is being said because it’s not a quote from a press release that can be photocopied.
Imho, the danger is not Iran or Iraq. Pakistan is where the focus should be placed. Afghanistan will propel us there. And Israel too will soon learn.
2011…all will come to a boil.
Not sure about what was so fastidious about East Timor during Jimmy Carter’s time. Kinda sloppy, in my opinion. And wasn’t there a massacre up in Korea about the same time?
Carter did do a housecleaning in the CIA, though, and he paid for it. He was the last President to try to rein in the CIA. And he paid for it. I don’t know exactly what the relationship is between the Executive Branch and the CIA, but I think that the Agency is a lot more powerful than most of us would care to admit.
So here is the line I find most interesting: “the constraints that he would impose on our military and CIA…” You see, that’s the big issue here. But I think that the real issue is what constraints the CIA would impose on Obama.