Over at Think Progress, Matthew Yglesias attacks my article in the current issue of Foreign Policy magazine.
Actually I think he’s more upset by the idea that Obama might end up remembered like Carter than he is about what I actually wrote. In the article I spent a lot of time comparing Obama’s foreign policy to the Nixon-Kissinger policy of retrenchment. Yglesias may not take that as a compliment to Obama, but it should have tipped him off to the fact that I consider Obama to be a anything but a lightweight. The President is a serious strategic thinker who could, if successful, put American foreign policy on a more solid and sustainable footing for some time to come.
Yglesias’ core criticism of the article seems strangely weak — but of course that could just be my ego talking. As far as I can make out, he thinks I’m so blinded and blinkered by my rigid adherence to the four schools of Special Providence that I can’t recognize the subtle grandeur of a man like Obama who eludes my narrow categories.
I’d hate to be that stupid; I don’t think that Mr. Yglesias would still feel that my errors, if errors they are, are quite this simplistic and absurd if we ever had a chance to sit down and talk about it. I hope someday we will.
When writing the article, I tried to make the point that there are two elements in Obama’s foreign policy that are in serious tension (a point I make in the article about Bush, who attempted a coalition between Jacksonians and Wilsonians). On the one hand Obama wants (wisely, as I say in the piece) to reduce America’s conflicts with other states to the necessary minimum in order to avoid antagonizing people and involving the US in more crises and disputes than absolutely necessary. I call this Jeffersonian; call it something else if you want, but it’s real. On the other hand, he has an expansive (and noble and idealistic) vision of what the United States should stand for in the world. I call that Wilsonian; you can call it liberal internationalist or anything else you like, but it still conflicts with his cautious or Jeffersonian instincts.
Take, for example, Iran. Do we avoid confronting the regime over its human rights violations in the hope of reaching an understanding over its nuclear program? Or do we stand up against a regime which is raping and torturing its citizens even at the possible cost of derailing any possible nuke deal? One course can be portrayed as weak and appeasing by the president’s critics; the other can appear strident and increase the chances that the US could find itself in Middle East War Number Three.
There are other relationships where Obama’s (pardon me) Jeffersonian instinct for peace and a quiet life conflicts with his Wilsonian instinct to promote and defend human rights. China, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Russia, Sudan/Darfur, Venezuela: it’s a long and a troubling list. None of this reflects any personal weakness or fuzzy mindedness in the President: these are conflicts and unsettled questions in American political culture generally and someone with a complex vision will often see more than one side to a question.
Jimmy Carter is an example of a president who never quite managed to make this all work. He started out hoping to end the Cold War and ended up escalating it (in Afghanistan!). His human rights agenda frustrated his hopes of progress with the Soviets on strategic arms reductions. His attempts to balance an idealistic human rights agenda with the strategic demands of the American world position left him open to criticism from the left and the right.
Obama won’t necessarily fail just because Carter did. Nowhere do I predict that. But in order to achieve his objectives he is going to have to succeed where Carter failed: he will have to stand up for both our values and our interests while reaching out to some (Putin, Hu Jintao, Chavez, Castro, Ahmadinejad) who despise the values and oppose the interests. Obama’s core strategy of reaching out to get agreements leaves him politically vulnerable if the other parties decide to stiff him.
None of this is easy and his domestic critics on both the left and the right will show him no mercy if and when he stumbles.
I’m not sure what bothers Yglesias about this analysis other than its general gloominess about the state of the world, but is it really a criticism of this President to say that he has a hard row to hoe?