RSS Feed MenuThe Obama administration at some point will have to decide if it is realist or merely anti-Bush in foreign affairs. The first choice would have its own challenges and trade-offs but at least it would be a serious foreign policy option. The latter approach would be a dumbing down to the extreme and dangerous oversimplifications of the Daily Kos variety with ominous consequences.
During the cold war, realists would criticize “hardliners” that they paid undue emphasis to factors like ideology at the expense of aspects like geography and history when it came to understanding the West’s enemies.
Now, despite all the criticism of Bush’s unbounded ideological drive in foreign affairs, Obama’s policy today seems to be merely an ideological reaction to his predecessor’s.
Recently President Obama visited Russia. “The United States and Russia have more in common than they have differences,” said the President. Quite the opposite is true.
Michael Scherer of Time in an article about what he called the pillars of Obama’s foreign policy said that “If It’s Good for the South Side, It’s Good for the World.” Adding that “Nothing has been more central to the President’s foreign policy approach than the theoretical lessons he learned as a community organizer in Chicago: listen to different views, understand the various motivations and then focus on the commonalities, not the differences.”
Despite all the recent talk about a return to realism one gets the idea that the President wishes to somehow transform our Hobbesian world into something like a globalized debate society where his rhetorical prowess will be the most decisive weapon.
It’s a persistent problem of a liberal foreign policy that contrary to its belief in the centrality of tolerance and understanding the modern liberal mind is only able to understand the world in its own very narrow terms.
Unable to grasp the historical and cultural milieux that generate stances which do not square with its own idea of how a rational world should operate, it opts to decipher hostility to the West into another expression of an aggrieved group’s discontent.
So the Obama administration is ready to “reset” the relationship with Russia by giving up something we need (missile defense) in exchange for something we have practically no use of (Russia reducing its nuclear stockpile – a reduction that would occur anyway).
If you understand Russian hostility and noncooperation as primarily the product of an arrogant and dismissive U.S. foreign policy then you will be inclined to enter into a nuclear deal like the one above. It will be a foreign policy of sorts, but it won’t be a realist one.
barker13 // Jul 20, 2009 at 2:48 pm
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124804541071763577.html
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/741cc2f0-748f-11de-8ad5-00144feabdc0.html
I could go on and on… but what’s the point?
God help us. (*SIGH*)
BILL
balconesfault // Jul 20, 2009 at 3:09 pm
“Despite all the recent talk about a return to realism one gets the idea that the President wishes to somehow transform our Hobbesian world into something like a globalized debate society where his rhetorical prowess will be the most decisive weapon.”
Nope. You don’t get it at all. There’s no debate to be won.
There is the acceptance that states will act in their own perceived self-interest. To that extent, if there is any ideology in play on Obama’s part, it is that we aren’t going to make other nations act in our interest just for our sake. We must convince them that their interests are aligned with ours.
Which isn’t really a departure from what the claimed ideology of the Bush Administration. If there’s a difference, it’s that Obama seems more serious about paying attention to what other nations claim to be their self-interest, rather than just trying to decide/announce it for them.
This, however, cracks me up:
“So the Obama administration is ready to “reset” the relationship with Russia by giving up something we need (missile defense) in exchange for something we have practically no use of (Russia reducing its nuclear stockpile – a reduction that would occur anyway).”
I strongly suspect that the Obama administration believes not only that we don’t need missle defense – but that deployment of the system will be phenomenally costly and simply put us on the hook for more and more expensive upgrades to the system over time, with little resulting permanent improvement in our security. In fact, if you want Russia to increase the size of their nuclear stockpile, there is no better way to do so than to move forward with a defense system, since it is clear that the Russians will not accept a non-MAD balance of power, and will simply increase the number of deployable warheads in order to raise the stakes of any failure of a missle defense system.
And of course, the US – even with a missle defense system – won’t accept a world where the Russians have more missles than us, and there will be political pressure for us to increase our warhead total.
For anyone interested in spending money on other things – say, energy programs, national healthcare, new transportation systems – saddling America with a committment to spend huge sums to deploy a missle defense system, to continuously maintain and upgrade it as technology and weapons balance changes, and to continue to increase our own nuclear arsenal, missle defense is not “something we need”. Rather, it is something we most certainly need to NOT deploy. It has far more value to America as a bargaining chip at this point, than as an actual installed system.
barker13 // Jul 20, 2009 at 4:46 pm
Another fine example of “no good deed goes unpunished”:
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NjgwYjE0MzBlYjFkYWNiOTEzMTZkMmFmNTAyN2NhZjE=
BILL
barker13 // Jul 20, 2009 at 5:17 pm
Nothing to do with foreign affairs… but what the heck… it reflects upon the present governmental mindset.
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZjRkZDYzYWM5YjJhYzMyNWRjMzE4YTJlM2VhMDFlYzU=
BILL
balconesfault // Jul 20, 2009 at 5:47 pm
From the second link:
“In the Netherlands, pretty much everyone over 47 who goes into hospital for a minor hernia winds up getting talked into ‘death with dignity.’ ”
I think that the piece reflects far more on the present mindset of the far right than it does on government. Two pages of red meat jokes about a bill that has less chance of getting passed by the Senate than a single-payer healthcare bill … which has no chance of getting passed by the Senate. A study in the pursuit of irrelevance by the National Review.
sinz54 // Jul 21, 2009 at 10:06 am
balconesfault sez: ‘if there is any ideology in play on Obama’s part, it is that we aren’t going to make other nations act in our interest just for our sake. We must convince them that their interests are aligned with ours.”
What about genuine adversaries like North Korea? There’s absolutely no way that their interests are aligned with ours.
What about genuine fanatics like Ahmedinijad of Iran? His interest is in seeing the entire world bow down to Allah, and seeing the Prophet’s green flag flying over the White House.
The problem with trying to persuade other nations that their interests are aligned with ours is, frankly, that too often they’re not aligned with ours.
sinz54 // Jul 21, 2009 at 10:09 am
balconesfault sez: “I strongly suspect that the Obama administration believes not only that we don’t need missle defense”
Really? Just a month ago, when North Korea began threatening to launch long-range missiles, the Obama administration moved Aegis anti-missile units into place around Hawaii. And the North Koreans backed down, launching only a few short-range missiles.
If a nuclear missile gets launched by Iran or North Korea at a U.S. ally, what would YOU suggest we do about it? Retaliate with nuclear weapons? Go crying to the U.N. Security Council? What?
Folks like you, from both left and right, always end up knocking down U.S. military preparedness–and then when a military crisis erupts, tell us we have no option but to surrender. Underlying all your rationalizations is a profound disgust at the idea of the U.S. prevailing in an international crisis.
Because no diplomacy ever works without the implicit threat of force.