Romney abroad: on culture, busts, and the categorical imperative of democracy

NOTE: I feel the need to introduce this post with a reiteration of the usual disclaimer. I'm not representing anyone else's views or analysis here but my own. I can't imagine why you would have assumed that I might be, but we don't normally veer into domestic politics and this post does so unabashedly. That said, I don't believe it's partisan, and I hope you'll evaluate the analysis as being up to the standards we typically uphold around here.

Mitt Romney’s recent travels abroad have caused a brief surge in commentary on the foreign policy and national security aspects of the presidential campaign. In this general category I include the re-animated flap over the Obama administration’s return to Britain of a Churchill bust that once graced the Oval Office; the sundry criticisms of the president for being “anti-Poland” in his Reset policy toward Russia; the hilarious and incredible suggestion that there are such things as pro- and anti-Israel camps among national politicians in America; and Governor Romney’s controversial and unsubtle suggestion that Israelis are rich and Palestinians poor because of something he failed to adequately explain but subsumed under the heading of “culture.”

It’s this last bit that has perhaps spurred the most discussion, if only because the rest is such well-trod ground. Social scientists and economic historians have criticized Romney’s claims in the press, both for oversimplification and for genuine factual errors. None of this will matter to potential voters, of course, who can’t be fussed to read the books that political candidates variously satirize, lionize, or otherwise caricature. By now we’re all very well acquainted with the fundamental reality of politics, which is that people don’t care so much about the truth as what their particular orthodoxy tells them is the truth.

But the “culture” comments – which are viewed as a gaffe by the left, but will likely serve as the sort of happily impolitic, plain-truth rallying cry so beloved by ignorant culture warriors of every stripe – are interesting for the way they distill right-wing ideology about ideas, circumstances, cause and effect in politics and history, and the triumph of one people over another. Put another way, what Romney said is the collectivized and nationalized version of basic conservative dogma: some people have good ideas, good values, good habits, and good personal qualities, and those people succeed in the world – including by getting rich – as a result. Be better, work harder, think the right way, and you’ll have a better life—it’s the foundation of the American Dream… isn’t it?

An admittedly amusing critical blog post on the Economist ignores the appeal of this thinking to a large segment of Romney’s base (and arguably to an even broader segment of the American electorate, including some voters who are currently undecided):

Comparing the income of the average Israeli to that of the average Palestinian, as though their prospects at birth had been equivalent and their fortunes today are largely the result of their own efforts and their "culture", is gratuitously insulting and wreaks damage to American diplomacy. Besides that, it's just wrong.

Wrong or right, this should sound familiar to those who have paid attention to other recent campaign imbroglios—most notably the “you didn’t build that” spat. With its efforts to paint the president as a socialist, a collectivist, an enemy of business, an impediment to Americans’ entrepreneurial spirit, the Romney campaign is catering to the sort of people who believe (against any and all evidence to the contrary) that personal success is far more attributable to hard work and right-thinking than to background, context, and circumstantial factors—including sheer good luck.

The entire American political and economic project is built around a shared commitment to this fantastical aspiration: that we can create a society that is so free, so fair, so basically egalitarian that the sole determinant of success and failure will be the quality of one’s ideas and one’s willingness to work. Left and right disagree, of course, about the various and competing merits of liberty and equality, and about whether the modern United States offers a sufficiently level playing field to permit pure freedom to fairly and effectively separate losers from winners. The important role played by American political and economic institutions and by the public goods that government has enabled are at the core of the Obama speech from which “you didn’t build that” has been so unceremoniously wrenched.

Romney understands this, of course, and his paean to the Israelis’ superior “culture” surely was founded on respect not simply for shared religious identity and classically liberal political ideals, but for the policies through which culture (and political culture) is mediated into economically productive activity. But he has a base to pander to, and that base includes a fair number of people who really do believe what Romney’s semantic imprecision made it look as though he actually meant: that Israelis are rich because they’re mostly Jews, while Palestinians are poor because they’re mostly Muslims.

But I digress a bit here. What we’re really dealing with is nothing more complicated than the most conservative (both in the literal and politically-partisan senses of that word) of all possible arguments: that the circumstances in which people and nations find themselves are fair and just, that they are a product of history’s implicit judgment (or fate’s, or God’s; Romney gave this one away in Israel when he referred to the “hand of providence”), and that as a result they ought generally to be left alone. What is is what ought to be. All is for the best in this best of all possible worlds! Israel’s triumph and prosperity is a validation of its goodness, to this strain of thought.

We needn’t look too far back in history for similarly conservative justifications of the status quo, and at least one bears in part an almost literally unbelievable similarity to Romney’s remarks in Israel. In his critical re-telling of Britain’s history abroad, Mark Curtis recounts a 1946 speech by a colonial administrator in Kenya who noted that

“the greater part of the wealth of the country is at present in [British] hands… This land we have made is our land by right – by right of achievement.” He explained to the Africans that “their Africa has gone forever,” since they were now living in “a world which we have made, under the humanitarian impulses of the late nineteenth and the twentieth century.” The Governor added: “We appear to Africans as being immensely wealthy and nearly all of them are in fact very poor… But these are social and economic differences and the problems of this country in that respect are social and economic and not political; nor are they to be solved by political devices.” Britain was in Kenya “as of right, the product of historical events which reflect the greatest glory of our fathers and grandfathers.” [Emphasis mine.]

One presumes that by characterizing inequality as “social and economic and not political” in origin, the governor meant to imply that social and economic change were a necessary precursor to the political resolution of the imbalance, or even that political arrangements were altogether irrelevant to it. (It takes no great imagination to see that this was wildly disingenuous. Britons justified their Empire with the perverse and thankfully obsolete rhetoric of the White Man’s Burden, but the practical administration of the empire was intended to head off the sort of independent political development that might threaten London’s essentially extractive relationship with the colonies, which were progressively liquidated as their economic value came to be outweighed by the complications and costs of their maintenance.)

Israeli conservatives and their American supporters view the matter of the Palestinian territories in a similar way: stop complaining about “occupation” and fix yourselves, as you’re the real cause of what’s wrong. Don’t tell us we’re responsible for your backwardness—look at how we’ve succeeded! We can talk about rights once you’ve built a properly liberal political culture and eliminated the extremist populism our own policies and attitudes help to perpetuate. And so it goes.

There’s intended irony in the parallel I draw between Romney’s attitude toward Palestinians and the British imperial view of Kenyans, considering the unhinged ramblings of Dinesh D’Souza and Mike Huckabee on the subject of President Obama’s alleged “anti-colonial ideology.” The author of a crypto-racist, pseudo-Freudian volume in whose telling the president’s position on everything from interior decoration to tax policy is foreordained by his father’s incontrovertible foreignness may assert that “my argument has nothing to do with the ‘birther’ claim,” but this is plainly untrue. As Amy Davidson notes in an excellent New Yorker piece on the aforementioned statuary controversy,  

[T]he shadow behind Churchill’s bust is birtherism, or its less conspiracy-minded companion, the conviction that Obama is, by virtue of his heritage, alien and un-American. This notion was most blatantly expressed by Dinesh D’Souza. […] This is part of a larger story about how Obama is really an anti-colonialist socialist who doesn’t like countries like Britain or America. In this telling, all that Obama keeps hidden about himself is exposed because he just can’t stand to look Churchill in the eye.

“Less conspiracy-minded” than a tale of document forgery is the belief that the President of the United States, driven by an un- and anti-American worldview, has repeatedly sought elective office in order to purposefully enact policies that would hamstring and damage a country that he secretly loathes? That even a writer unsympathetic to either narrative should describe them in this way reveals an unhealthy focus on the forms of criticism rather than their substance. To aver that the President is not legally an American is considered out-of-bounds to all but the most ridiculous figures in our political scene, yet it’s deemed acceptable and plausible for others to suggest not simply that Obama’s policies are bad for America, but that they are intentionally so!

A candidate for the presidency can’t say this, of course, lest he be made to look like a raving lunatic. Or worse, he may be accused of casting doubt on his opponent’s patriotism—and patriotism is a subject with which the American electorate simply will not tolerate you messing around. But he and his proxies and surrogates can insinuate as much, and this is exactly what both Bust-Gate and Culture-Gate are all about: boiling down complicated, ambiguous reality to proclaim an objective truth (Churchill was an unvarnished American hero! Israelis are comparatively successful because they think and act like Westerners!), framing that “truth” as an essentially American consensus, and then insinuating that the president simply stands outside this consensus. The message is this: Barack Obama does not share our American values.

You’ll note that I began this essay by referencing “the foreign policy and national security aspects of the campaign,” rather than simply “foreign policy and national security.” That’s because all of this has very little to do with other countries, or with advancing American interests, or with ensuring the safety of our people, a truth that’s made obvious by Romney’s adulation of foreign political figures (Churchill, Wałęsa, Netanyahu) whose own countrymen tend to view them with considerably more ambivalence. (The Republican often pays homage to Margaret Thatcher, which is risible when juxtaposed with his wife’s newfound enthusiasm about her Welsh heritage. The Iron Lady isn’t likely to have many fans in Nantyffyllon.)

Instead this talk of the special relationship is about – like everything else in the campaign – manipulating the feelings of U.S. voters by invoking code-words associated with the issues and seeding doubts about your opponent, signaling that I’m One of You and the Other Guy Isn’t. (This isn’t unique to Romney or to conservatives, as should be plain to see: the president’s campaign is largely based on the thinly-veiled assertion that his opponent is taking advantage of Regular People to further enrich the small minority of People Like Him.)

The code-words in foreign policy are simple to discern: victory, patriotism, American exceptionalism, American strength. Standing with the forces of freedom and democracy. Standing with those who Share Our Values. Standing with Churchill and Israel. Accept each of these elements wholeheartedly, without reservation or nuance, or be accused of enthusiasm for their Manichean alternatives: Defeat. Betrayal. Self-hatred. American weakness. Tyranny and terrorism. Appeasement.

Must it be this way? Surely the questions are not so simple, nor the answers so clear. Maybe D’Souza has done us all a favor by invoking the president’s alleged “anti-colonial ideology” instead of treating him as a “conventional liberal”; maybe we can pause and ask what exactly is so wrong with anti-colonial ideology? Are we only permitted to be anti-colonialists as private citizens, or as white people? Was not Dwight Eisenhower an anti-colonialist? Should we doubt the patriotism and integrity of that most eloquent critic of empire – a Serious Anti-Communist who wouldn’t be out of place on the list of Romney heroes – George Orwell?

And what of Churchill? His committed colonialism would surely find favor with D’Souza – in 1954 the prime minister wrote to Eisenhower that he was “a bit skeptical about universal suffrage for the Hottentots” – but he was far from uncomplicated. Does Romney name as “one of [his] heroes” not just the man who warned of “an Iron Curtain [that] has descended across Europe,” but the one who sat with Stalin and chopped up a continent on a slip of paper? What of the parliamentarian who introduced legislation creating a minimum wage and offering unemployment insurance? What about the man who supported eugenics, who wrote the prime minister in 1910 to warn that “the multiplication of the feeble-minded is a very terrible danger to the race”? Or the budgeteer who prioritized solvency over military strength, championing adoption of the Ten-Year Rule, whereby the armed services took as an indefinite and continuous planning assumption that no major war would occur in the upcoming decade? Are those Churchills among Romney’s heroes?

Such two-dimensional comic-book likenesses as we find in Romney’s description of foreign countries and leaders are not only inaccurate, they’re insulting. They lay bare a truth most thinking people will already know, and one that is far more damaging to American diplomacy than returned artwork: unless you can raise money, give money, or vote, you are meaningless to a U.S. political candidate, and so your proud history will be rendered in finger-paint to influence those who can.

Why do we allow these caricatures to dominate our politics? Why do even our very best indulge them, much as they do the flag lapel pin and the simple-minded platitudes about Supporting the Troops? Because they fear the consequences of trying and failing to broaden the discourse, of trying to lead and being seen to lecture or pontificate or condescend, of alienating voters by unreservedly embracing knowledge and nuance. Because the greatest sin in our democracy is not to lie, but to lose.

The sad reality is that it doesn’t matter a damn whether Mitt Romney is right or wrong about culture, or Solidarity, or Churchill, or whether he tells Americans the truth about them or just a pretty story. And the reason is doesn’t matter is even sadder: because we’re stupid, and we’re easily manipulated, and because we don’t care.

Shuffling the National Security Team Deck

In case you haven't heard yet, the President is making some serious moves with his national security team. In the past 24 hours we've heard that AMB Crocker is going to take over as Ambassador to Afghanistan, CIA Director Leon Panetta is going to DoD, and GEN Petraeus is going to CIA, with many more announcements to come, I'm sure. I'm a big fan of all three of these gentlemen - all of them have spent a lifetime of service to the United States and are extremely competent. They are, however, and like the preponderance of the President's national security team, products of previous administrations (Bush, Clinton, and Bush to be specific). This led me to make the following statement on Twitter: "Obama's nat sec team are almost entirely from prev admins. Not how one leaves their mark on the world."

Ex promptly and rightly jumped on me about that, using the Truman administration as an example. I'm sure that's not the only example. So as an universal statement, I was incorrect. I do believe that the Truman example is not exactly apt for the current situation. Truman faced a drastically changing world at the end of World War II and the beginning of the Cold War and guided his team to establish the basis of U.S. policy for the next forty odd years. While the world is constantly changing, Obama ran on a platform of changing how the United States approaches its defense and foreign policy engagement with the world in a relatively (operative word here) static global environment since 2001 (the Arab Spring may be the exception to this, but we're yet to see how the administration handles it in its totality beyond supporting European military operations). In spite of that platform of change, Obama filled his team with old hands from either the Clinton or Bush administrations or Congress.

I don't see that President Obama has yet left an indelible mark on the world - certainly not as was anticipated - nor is on a glide path to do so. I see that Guantanamo Bay is still open with military trials in the works, we are still in Iraq and have hinted to the Iraqis that we'd like to stay longer, we have escalated in Afghanistan and are talking about being there for the foreseeable future, we still do not have effective engagement with Iran or North Korea, and we have seen our relations with the UK decrease significantly. On the positive side, our relations with France have improved significantly, relations with Russia and China seem to have improved moderately, global public opinion of the U.S. has increased somewhat, and we haven't yet screwed the pooch on the Arab Spring. All things considered, it seems to me that the Obama administration has effectively maintained (second term) Bush admin policies with a smattering of Clinton policies. Not every president needs one, but there certainly isn't an Obama Doctrine. Yet.

I also question the likelihood of one coming about under the current circumstances if he keeps selecting old hands from other admins in the absence of a serious external cause for change (such as another Cold War or 9/11). Granted, an obstinate Congress is a huge impediment to significant change, but these old hands haven't produced the changes Obama's base was hoping for. Reshuffling those old hands doesn't seem to be the method to drive change at this point. Now to pose a question or two to our readers: Is my assessment of the Obama administration accurate? If it is, is the lack of change at least partially because there is little new blood in the national security team? If it isn't accurate, how has he left his mark or how will he and what role does his national security team play in that? If anyone actually reads this, I'm sure it will elicit opinions, so fire away (in accordance with our commenting policy of course).

Of course, this all raises an important issue: where do you find people to fill the highest positions in government if they haven't proven themselves in previous administrations? It's not the President's fault that he's using his predecessors' people - they seem to be the only folks most people trust enough to lead these huge organizations. I haven't the faintest idea where alternate candidates for these positions would come from - so in that I sympathize with the President and don't blame for just moving around those who are already around. He's also not the only president to do this - far from it. At some point though, age will require an infusion of new blood - specifically those people who now hold Deputy Assistant Secretary positions (or did in the Bush administration for the Republicans), but the line-up of the top jobs has been essentially the same for the past 10 years (or 20 in some cases). I don't know how to break this paradigm, or even that it should be broken (maybe expertise and experience is more important than change), but serious internal change, without an external catalyst (such as Truman experienced), in how we do business with the world is most likely to come from people who didn't play a fundamental role to establish the world we are in now.

The suckiest DoD job that's not in The Suck

As we've discussed in the past, Geoff Morrell's job sucks. Now he has to put up with this (though admittedly it's coming from known anonymous-quoter and wild speculator-of-professional-motives-and-personal-feelings Michael Hastings):

No one knew whether McChrystal would keep his job; NATO officials had prepared two press releases — one for if he stayed, another for if he was fired. Even the military's top brass was kept out of the loop: Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell, viewed as particularly untrustworthy by the Obama administration, was frantically calling NATO headquarters in Brussels to find out what was happening across the Potomac at the White House.

The emphasis, of course, is mine.

So now I've got to ask: WTF did Morrell ever do to you, White House? He's loyal to his boss, he tap-dances like crazy to pitch the administration's line to an adversarial press corps, he traded in a pretty good gig on the outside for this thankless bitch of a job, and he's "viewed as particularly untrustworthy"? If by "the Obama administration" you mean Tom Donilon and Mark Lippert, then I can buy this, but it seems like a pretty unfair and unsupportable characterization. Of course, Hastings won't support it -- anonymous sources, you see. Ethics and whatnot.

Snort.

The rest of the piece is about how Petraeus has been boxing in the president and vice versa, etc etc, a whole bunch of stuff that seems basically true to me, and that there's already generally pretty broad (if speculative) consensus about. But I guess it's flashier stuff when you run it under this byline, so there you are.

Support for the democratic aspirations of all people: why more talk, less action is the right way to go

In last night's State of the Union, President Obama made brief reference to the anti-totalitarian struggle of democracy activists and protestors in Tunisia, and also to recent elections in South Sudan. He failed to mention the burgeoning unrest in Egypt, something for which he was criticized as a sort of front-runner ("notice he mentioned Tunisia after the whole thing was settled, but didn't say anything about Egypt!", blah blah blah). Here's the bit from the transcript:

Recent events have shown us that what sets us apart must not just be our power -– it must also be the purpose behind it.  In south Sudan -– with our assistance -– the people were finally able to vote for independence after years of war.  (Applause.)  Thousands lined up before dawn.  People danced in the streets.  One man who lost four of his brothers at war summed up the scene around him:  “This was a battlefield for most of my life,” he said.  “Now we want to be free.”  (Applause.)

And we saw that same desire to be free in Tunisia, where the will of the people proved more powerful than the writ of a dictator.  And tonight, let us be clear:  The United States of America stands with the people of Tunisia, and supports the democratic aspirations of all people.  (Applause.)

After eight years of the Bush Doctrine ("The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world"; "...it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world"; "All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know the United States will not ignore your oppression or excuse your oppressors. When you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you"; etc.), there's been a lot of justifiable anxiousness to see how the Obama administration would shake out on the question of democracy promotion. The signs have been encouraging, at least from my perspective: repeated assurances that America favors liberty and democracy, but a steadfast refusal to let the perfect be the enemy of the good -- to let our inability to shape the world to our will frustrate us into bleating disengagement, or worse, aggressive war.

So how about the president's comments last night? They're the sort of thing that will surely disappoint (and perhaps outrage) folks on both sides of the democracy-promotion argument: realists and isolationists will contend that we ought not concern ourselves with the political struggles of others, while neoconservatives and liberal hawks will complain that the president wasn't concrete enough about the ways that our "support" will manifest itself (as they did during the Green protests in Iran). Unromantic as this parsing may be, the whole thing really comes down to what you think "support" means, and what it ought to mean. I happen to think that selective engagement -- that is to say deeper involvement in instances where we've determined that American influence can be meaningful and have predictable results, with a continuation of nice, flowery words about freedom and liberty and democracy, plus a helping of public-diplomacy and Radio Free _____, in all other instances -- is the right approach. I don't think a blanket expression of guaranteed material support for all pro-democracy movements in authoritarian countries is a great idea, and I'm happy that neither this president nor any other (even George W. Bush) has made any such pledge.

As Elliott Abrams has said, there is genuine continuity in U.S. foreign policy on this question.

Let me just say a few things first about the first question: Should we be promoting democracy? My answer is yes, we have been for decades under presidents of both parties.

But again, there have been some significant differences on what exactly "promoting democracy" ought to constitute. (I feel confident that Abrams and I disagree.) The real continuity is in rhetorical support, in the way American leaders formulate our counry's self-image. I've always loved this speech given to the House of Representatives by John Quincy Adams on July 4, 1821, when he was Secretary of State (a section of it was the epigram to my graduate thesis). This is the kind of "support [for] democratic aspirations" I can get behind:

America, with the same voice which spoke herself into existence as a nation, proclaimed to mankind the inextinguishable rights of human nature, and the only lawful foundations of government. America, in the assembly of nations, since her admission among them, has invariably, though often fruitlessly, held forth to them the hand of honest friendship, of equal freedom, of generous reciprocity. She has uniformly spoken among them, though often to heedless and often to disdainful ears, the language of equal liberty, of equal justice, and of equal rights. [...] Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.

To repeat a theme I've touched on in past weeks: if our foreign policy serves to destroy or disfigure beyond recognition our own constitutional republic -- even in the service of liberty for others -- then it has failed.

And so I pose a question to Elliot Abrams and Jennifer Rubin and those who criticized the White House and Congress over a "failure to act" during the Iranian elections and the Tunisian revolt and the current Egyptian troubles: what would you have us do? What is it that's expected of us? Hell, let's even forget about the comparatively simple case of Iran, where the government generally opposes U.S. policy aims and the populace seems predisposed to democracy and liberalism; what about in places where our foreign policy and security interests are generally served by an oppressive or even totalitarian government, as in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and in many cases even China? Shadi Hamid gets at the root of the problem in The Atlantic:

The Middle East just got more complicated for the Obama administration. The January 14 popular revolt in Tunisia, the first ever to topple an Arab dictator, has called into question a basic premise of U.S. policy in the Middle East - that repressive regimes, however distasteful, are at least stable. They can also be counted on to support key American interests, which is part of why the U.S. provides them with substantial assistance. Tunisia was considered one of the least likely to fall, but it fell. Across the region, opposition groups, hoping to repeat Tunisia's successes, are emboldened and increasingly active. For the first time, they know what change looks like. More importantly, they now believe it can happen in their own countries. But in the growing battle between Arab autocrats and popular oppositions, the U.S. is finding itself torn between the reliable allies it needs and the democratic reformers it wants.

I've added the emphasis at the end. Hamid continues:

But the problem the U.S. faces currently is the same it faced during the short-lived "Arab spring" of 2005: For now, it is difficult, if not impossible to have both a democratic Middle East and a pro-American one. Because anti-Americanism is so widespread (in part because the U.S. supports reviled autocrats), and because Islamist groups represent the largest oppositions, any freely elected government will want to distance itself from U.S policies.

And here's where we get to the crux of the whole democracy-promotion dilemma: free people do not define their own interests in the same ways, and those interests will not always stand in peaceful harmony with those of other free people around the world. Freedom may be a universal good, but universal freedom certainly will not result in universal peace. One more from Hamid:

The U.S., then, finds itself in the unenviable position of being a status quo power in a region where so many detest the status quo, wish to fight it, and may - or perhaps inevitably will - one day bring it crashing down.

I think this is a vitally important observation, because it helps tie democracy promotion into the broader context of U.S. efforts to shape and manage the international system -- that is, the broader context of U.S. foreign policy. The fact of the matter is that the U.S. is a status quo power on the global stage, and in almost every way: we benefit unequally from the international system as it is presently constituted, and in many respects it's in our interest to maintain it. This isn't universally true, of course: one could say, for example, that widespread global dependence on oil to meet energy needs is a fact of the international system (or a fact which bears on the international system) that is not an optimal condition for the U.S., and so we should work to shape the future in ways that mitigate in our favor.

That's what foreign and security policy is all about, and that's what our "democracy promotion agenda" and approach to human rights should also be focused on: managing change so that the world of the future is as favorable to U.S. interests as possible. When viewed in this light, Hamid's suggestion that we increase criticism of the Mubarak regime and deepen ties with opposition elements is a useful one. "It is better to have leverage with opposition groups before they come to power than afterward," he tells us; this isn't all that different from my desired approach to interstate relations, which (like Kissinger's) concedes those inevitabilities of China's rise that we're powerless to control while appreciating that American interests will be best served by creating and solidifying leverage where possible.

Obama and the world at the halfway point: An Ink Spots narrative report card

Two years ago today, Barack Obama was inaugurated as president. With the full extent of the economic downturn still somewhat obscure, there were high hopes for an era of American resurgence and a reconsideration of the indispensable nation's posture to the world.

Many of those hopes have been dashed as the dual shocks of a decade of war and a crumbling economy pull our focus inward. But foreign and security policy still matter, even if no one's paying attention. We here at Ink Spots wanted to take a look at the successes and failures of the Obama administration's first two years out in the world, to do a sort of mid-term report card. A few of us took a crack at the subject by answering a dozen questions about where we've been and where we're going.

1. What's been the biggest surprise to you about U.S. foreign policy over the last two years? Any pleasant surprises? Any significant disappointments?

Lil: The biggest surprise? I really don’t know. Pleasant surprises (in no particular order): the lifting of the peacekeeping cap, the passage of new START, increased attention to conflict/crisis in Africa. Significant disappointment: continued failure to adequately fund and staff State and USAID.

Alma: I was surprised that transatlantic relations did not warm up more. President Obama came to office with high popularity ratings on the part of Europeans—and their political leaders. “Old Europe” was hoping for a drastic change in attitude on the part of the United States after the eight years of the Bush presidency. However, the relations have remained oddly distant. There has been a similar disappointment with Africa. The rest of the world expected Obama to bring to the U.S. presidency a more internationalist view, based on his multicultural background and education. But the United States did not want a President who devotes too much time to foreign policy while there is a crisis at home. And President Obama himself had an ambitious political agenda, in the pursuit of which he needed to make major strides very quickly after his election. As a result, he focused—understandingly—on gathering domestic support and downplayed what the rest of the world saw as his value added. An illustration of this is President Obama’s facial expressions when he received the Nobel Peace Prize in December 2009 (“for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples”). Maybe I am reading too much into this, but I felt that in addition to the “Why, but why?” puzzled look, his uneasy smile hinted at a more daunting: “What is the backlash going to be at home?”

Gulliver: Frankly, I’m surprised the administration has spent so much time and effort on a subject that seems basically irrelevant to the president’s political fortunes: Afghanistan. Considering the state of the economy, it’s hard to imagine the mid-term elections having gone any worse for the Democrats if the White House had deemphasized the war effort and drawn down our overseas presence. The Woodward book gave me the strong sense that the president has a realistic view about OEF’s uncertain (and perhaps even damaging) relationship to genuine national security, so I’m shocked he lacked the conviction to stand up to senior military advice.

2. What do you think are Obama's, Clinton's, and Gates' biggest accomplishments and biggest disappointments in these two years?

Lil: I think one clear accomplishment is the improvement of relations with some of our key allies. Some of these relationships had been badly damaged during the Bush Administration and it seems to me that many of these problems, particularly in Western Europe have been resolved. Things have also improved at the UN, both with other Permanent Missions and in the Secretariat. I think a disappointment on that front has been the inability (or perhaps the unwillingness) to get the UN Secretary General to grow a spine and show some leadership. I really hope that the US doesn’t support Ban Ki-Moon running for re-election. His tenure has been disastrous.

Another, and I don’t know who the credit goes to on this one, maybe all three is the clear improvement in policy-making processes and dialogue at the most senior levels. It’s clear that the President, Clinton and Gates work together very well. That’s a good change. I think that the mutual support that Gates and Clinton provide each other has had clear positive repercussions.

I think one accomplishment for Gates has been his work to trim the defense budget. He’s been foiled by Congress at times but I think this is very important, along with his support for more capacity at State and USAID. It’s disappointing that he hasn’t been more successful so I guess a disappointment is the inability to work with Congress—though the passing of new START during the lame duck session was an accomplishment for sure.

Gulliver: I wrote this question, but I still have a hell of a time answering it. I think the president did great work to keep Bob Gates at the Pentagon longer than most people expected, and the level of coordination and collaboration – at least in the public eye – across the entire national-security team has to be considered as an accomplishment for all three. Avoiding a major political fight on the evolution of our missile-defense construct toward the Phased Adaptive Approach was another big highlight.

On the negative side of the ledger, I’m discouraged by the collective failure to take steps in the direction of major national security reform despite apparent (or at least expressed) unity of purpose across State and Defense. Without that, the QDDR doesn’t mean much of anything. And then, obviously, there’s Afghanistan: I wish one of these three would go beyond the boilerplate talking points and try to make a reasoned case for how the war will make Americans safer, but instead we’re treated to Bushian no-safe-havens rationales and appeals to the grievous threat of terrorism.

3. What do you think about the decisions the president has made about Afghanistan? Were you surprised about the escalation?

Lil: I think the civilian surge makes sense and I can’t remember whether I was surprised about it, more relieved I suppose. I was just at an event yesterday where PRT commanders complained (again) that they basically had four civilians on their team (though those numbers are growing). I think there are still huge problems with the amount of money we are spending in Afghanistan, mostly because Afghanistan lacks the capacity to absorb the money in a transparent and effective way. I haven’t yet seen the new US anticorruption strategy, which McClatchy said recently would instruct focus on low level corruption and avoid the political disasters of going after Karzai and senior Afghan officials. Of course, I think it’s disappointing that our leaders aren’t willing to go after officials whose corruption is so blindingly obvious that it makes us look like naïve children for not noticing (either that or hypocrites, depending on your perspective). I was shocked to discover that fighting corruption was not a focus on the Bush Administration and that efforts had basically begun just months after Obama took office.

Similarly, I think the troop surge also makes sense. I don’t feel like I know enough about how operations are being conducted to say how much it will help but it seems that if you say you’re doing population centric COIN and you want to secure the population, then you’ll need more troops to do it (so long as they’re not razing villages for obscure reasons).

Alma: Democrat presidents are rarely at ease with the military. They have to fight two common beliefs: that they do not know much about military issues and that they will make decisions that are generally adverse to the military. President Obama was aware of these pitfalls and accordingly refrained from micro-managing the conduct of the war in Afghanistan. He also gave a large amount of initiative to his top commanders there. And when is the last time a general asked for less troops rather than more? So: no, I am not surprised about the escalation.

Gulliver: I’ve already touched on this, but I think they’ve been almost universally terrible. “Obama’s Wars” probably made me feel even worse about this, because it reinforced earlier suggestions – contrary to campaign rhetoric – that the president is actually a thoughtful skeptic of the war-as-counterterrorism approach. So I suppose I’m retroactively surprised about the escalation, though it seemed basically preordained and unavoidable in December of 2009. There’s a lot of blame to go around on this one – the coordinated McChrystal/Petraeus/Mullen pitch for escalation, however inevitable and effective, was a real disappointment for me – but it comes back to the president giving strong guidance and having the confidence to make unpopular decisions. On this, he failed.

4. What's your expectation for what will happen to troop numbers in Afghanistan over the course of this year? How about by 2014?

Lil: I think there will be a small decrease this year and probably another in 2012 (basically for domestic consumption during the campaign). I think Administration have been steadily walking back the 2011 deadline and they’ll continue to do so. As for numbers by 2014, I think that will depend on how things go between now and then. The decision last week to push for a large increase in the size of the ANSF to me suggests that things aren’t going as well as military leadership would like and that increasing the nominal size of the forces will be the only way to ensure that there are enough forces, eventually, to guarantee some security. I don’t have much evidence to back to that but really the Pentagon’s quarterly reports on the state of the ANSF don’t give me much confidence.

Alma: Some U.S. troops will withdraw over the Summer, but most likely in very small numbers. The ¨surge¨ of troops has only now completely arrived to Afghanistan, and there will be pressure to use these big numbers to the fullest before they go back home—in other words, give the surge a chance. Also, since withdrawal has repeatedly been made conditional to improved security conditions on the ground, the whole process is likely to take years—probably extending beyond 2014. As for non-U.S. troops, the answer is easier: there will be fewer and fewer of them. There is no other country committed as deeply as the United States, and there is no other country that feels its credibility, where it to withdraw, would suffer as much as the United States’. This credibility issue has led U.S. presence in Vietnam or even Lebanon to last much longer than the interests they pursued and their chances of success warranted. Countries who do not have this credibility issue and public opinions hostile to the Afghanistan intervention will call it quits.

Gulliver: I think the numbers will remain basically static through the end of 2012, and that ISAF, the Pentagon, and the White House will juke the numbers by withdrawing support troops. I don’t envision widespread transfer of battlespace-ownership to the ANSF (maybe some in RC-West), though I don’t have nearly the detailed knowledge of operational geography to pass anywhere close to conclusive judgment on this. As for 2014… NATO’s on the record on that one, and I don’t see it slipping. Whoever’s in the White House will rationalize and justify, conclude that our work there has been productive and meaningful to national security, and we’ll keep a few thousand SOF and aviation assets at Bagram and Kandahar into the indefinite future.

5. Do you think the "Global War on Terror" still means anything? How about the Struggle Against Violent Extremism? Where do you think we are with AQ – do they still matter? Is terrorism the primary threat to the U.S., or should we be focused elsewhere?

Lil: Well, I don’t think either meant much in the first place. I think AQ (in its various regional incarnations) still matters but I don’t think that terrorism is the primary threat to the US. I don’t think I buy the argument that our focus on terrorism has been the reason why we haven’t been attacked again, I think we’ve just been lucky (and would-be terrorists were thwarted by their own incompetence). I think that rather than focus on AQ, we should be focused on what makes people want to join AQ. I know that varies from place to place but that’s what foreign policy is for. I’m not sure that we’ve yet achieved that balance in terms of either human or financial resources that are being spent on diplomacy and foreign assistance.

Alma: Did GWOT ever mean anything? It was a catchphrase whose reach and grandeur was a good match for the shock people felt after 9/11. As a political and military concept, it is empty of meaning and useless (and I feel like I am beating a dead horse here—so many people smarter than me have made that demonstration before me that I would not know where to start). Law enforcement is usually the appropriate response to terrorism—war is not. I am not denying the usefulness of a few well-targeted air strikes from time to time. But overhauling the entire political (and social) landscape of a country? This fulfills other aims: hubris, posturing, you name it. But not counter-terrorism.

Gulliver: I don’t think either of the terms have ever had any analytical or operational utility, but they’ve certainly informed the strategic context in which the military conceives of and explains its plans. There are other people who can speak in a far more informed way about the ongoing campaign against al-Qaeda, but I’d just say that I think we do a tremendous disservice to our national sense of self when we build our approach to the world around the one specific anti-globalist, rejectionist element that’s proven most capable of doing violence to our citizens. I don’t mean to suggest at all that 9/11 and terrorism aren’t a big deal, but I’d urge perspective: the reason AQAM are relevant is for their opposition to the global system of commerce and relationships that we’ve helped to create in our own image and still largely lead. Let’s not forget about the rest of it, and about how important it is to maintain that system and manage our place in it to positive effect.

6. Do you think "reset" with Russia is "working"? What does that mean to you? Do you foresee any further expansion of NATO during Obama's tenure? If so, which countries?

Lil: I really don’t have anything intelligent to say on Russia. So I’ll skip that. NATO expansion, something else I know next to nothing about so I’ll leave that to Gulliver and others. I do think though that it’s good that France came back.

Gulliver: I’m a Russia skeptic. I lived in a country that’s been partitioned and occupied by Russia four times. I wrote my master’s thesis about expanding NATO to hedge against Russian recidivism. I don’t believe Russia can be meaningfully deflected from the pursuit of its own interests. That said: yes, it’s working. A stable international system can only be maintained by taking Russia into account; this doesn’t mean we’re always going to win Moscow’s support, but Russian influence needs to be managed. Sometimes we’re just hoping they’ll clear a very low bar: continue to negotiate arms agreements, don’t escalate aggression in the Caucasus, don’t reflexively oppose U.S. interests in the Security Council. At other times, we’re looking for more meaningful and significant action: help crack down on piracy, line up with the rest of the world on Iranian nuclear progress, don’t sell sophisticated weapons to pariah states, take action to ease tensions with NATO. Sending the message that we view our relationship with Russia in a pragmatic, reasonable way – that we take their interests into account and don’t press for meaningless advantage – will pay off in the future, and we’re already seeing benefits.

I think NATO’s done growing, and that’s as it should be. There’s no one else the U.S. ought to commit to defending, no matter the circumstances – the Georgia troubles in 2008 underlined that – and such a pledge at this point could only be taken as a symbolic gesture of aggression (e.g. we’re going to protect Georgia because we like their political system better than yours, not because it serves our material interests). There could be meaningful progress with Ukraine, but their national politics have taken a turn over the last several years that makes that seem unlikely.

7. Can you envision a scenario where U.S. troops would be sent to the African continent in the next two years? Where might they go next, if anywhere?

Lil: I have to say, I really don’t see this happening, or at least not in very large numbers. Don’t get me wrong, I think that it would be great if the US sent more staff officers to work in UN missions. I’m not saying a US general should take command of a UN operation but really, after seeing for myself how the military parts of some missions suffer from lack of good staff, I think even a few US O-4s to O-6s could do a lot of good on jobs ranging from logistics, to operational planning, to intelligence.

US troops are doing things like training African militaries (for example in Congo) or providing support to operations in Uganda elsewhere. I don’t see US troops going into Côte d’Ivoire, I really hope there’s no need to go into Liberia Liberia and I just don’t see the US sending troops to Zimbabwe or Sudan, even if Mugabe’s regime collapses and Sudan implodes. I think the US should support another western country going in to help (say if the French increased their presence in Côte d’Ivoire or the UK went into Zimbabwe post Mugabe) but I really don’t see the US leading any kind of mission. As we’ve discussed before, I think the US could do a lot of good by helping to go after the LRA but since MK previously outlined how that would work, I won’t rehash it here.

Alma: US troops are already on the African continent, where they train numerous local armies. This “quiet intervention” should remain as quiet as possible to be effective, and I have no doubt it will continue in the next two years. But if we are thinking big deployment Somalia-style, then I very much doubt this will be happening.

Gulliver: I’ll let the others speak to possible African hot-spots, but I think the enthusiasm for deployments that could involve casualties is really, really waning. (One curious effect of the Bush Doctrine and the COIN revolution is that Americans are probably now even MORE opposed to overseas intervention in the absence of a strong self-interested rationale. “Counterterrorism” is the vestigial exception.) We’ll still do security cooperation and capacity-building, but the uniformed U.S. footprint for these missions is much, much smaller than most people think. (“U.S.-trained” Ugandan AMISOM peacekeepers mostly get their instruction from State-contracted DynCorp and MPRI folks in baseball caps, not green-suiters.)

8. Do you see isolationist/anti-engagement sentiment playing a significant part in the 2012 election? Or foreign policy at all?

Lil: Yes, I think this could play a big part, combined with concern over budget deficits, high unemployment at home, and a desire to appease the electorate here. I think that this could be a big problem because it could cause us to ignore problems or simply abandon challenging places and that this could later come back to haunt us.

Alma: Isolationism was already very present in the run-up to the 2010 elections. U.S. presidents are expected to focus on America first, and this is even more true in times of economic (and, inevitably social) turmoil. The President’s contenders are expected to show how the country’s leader really does not have his constituents’ interests at heart, and prefers to get busy with larger issues than help the average Joe get a job or keep his house. So yes, the 2012 election will be played largely on domestic themes, and with an isolationist mindset.

Gulliver: Perhaps surprisingly, I don’t. There might be some talk of restraint, retrenchment, or even isolationism among early Republican pretenders, but there’s simply no chance a Republican nominee will come at Obama talking national security as a fiscal responsibility issue. Eric Cantor and John McCain may make some noise about how defense spending is on the table for budget cuts, but no mainstream Republicans are prepared to reconsider firmly-entrenched ideas about American exceptionalism and global primacy, and the establishment is too afraid of tea-party extremism to propel an isolationist libertarian to the nomination.

The president, for his part, has spent the last two years insulating himself from traditional accusations of weak-kneed liberalism; the only way his opponents make any ground is by emphasizing alleged humiliations like “reset”, China’s rise, and “failure” on Iran. Foreign and security policy just doesn’t look like a useful campaign tool this time around, particularly with the economy in the tank. Engagement is here to stay, which is a good thing. Unfortunately, that means that interventionist mistakes like Afghanistan will probably stick around, too.

9. Any guesses on the next SECDEF? How long do you think Gates will stay?

Lil: Umm, I hope it’s not Joe Lieberman. Gates staying, I don’t know.

Gulliver: I keep hearing Danzig, and Flournoy’s an intriguing option, but I don’t think my guesses are better than anybody else’s. The fact of the matter is that the next guy (or gal) will 100%, ironclad, stone-cold, for certain not be as effective as Gates. And that’s a shame. Fingers crossed that he’ll stick around through the next election cycle, but I’m not even sure he knows the plan at this point.

10. Do you see a realistic possibility of significant cuts to the defense budget, significant increases of the State/foreign aid budget, or any combination of the two? Is a pooled resources proposal still alive? Do you think there's a chance of significant national security reform during the Obama administration? If so what should it (or will it) look like?

Lil: I think that budgets are going to be cut across the board but I hope that the cuts will be less significant at State and USAID. I think actually that rationalizing the Defense budget (or trying to) is one of Gates’ greatest accomplishments.

I haven’t heard about the pooled resources thing in a while. I wonder if it died with the UK budget cuts (my understanding is that was the model).

As for national security reform, I don’t know what the chances are (Congress) but I do hope we’ll end up sometime with some kind of national security career in the government that makes doing this job attractive and of course positive for our policies.

Gulliver: As I noted before, I consider it a massive disappointment that this isn’t already happening (at least not with any great alacrity) with a national security team in place that is perhaps more amenable to sweeping reform than any other ever has been or will be. We could use a root-and-branch reexamination of the fundamental roles and missions of our various departments and agencies, but I don’t think that’s going to happen: we’ll use the ongoing wars as an excuse (“you can’t drive and rebuild the engine at the same time!”), but that argument ignores the fact that in our new “security” paradigm, we’re always driving. Congress poses some pretty serious roadblocks to an effort like this, too, what with the impact on oversight and what could reasonably be seen as a consolidation of power in an Executive Branch optimally organized for operations. My great fear is that a failure to examine these important questions – what is the difference between foreign policy and security policy? Who should decide which partners we’ll build the capacity of? How do our security objectives nest within our broader foreign policy objectives… or have we unconsciously flipped the two? – will result in the accumulation of more authority, responsibility, and influence in the Pentagon: the much-feared “militarization of foreign policy” (a term that I really dislike despite its literal descriptive accuracy).

11. What's the national security/foreign policy story from the last two years that nobody knows, but everybody should?

Lil: No clue. I think we as Americans need to become better at educating ourselves about what other countries are like, what lives people have in countries we care about, and also what life is like in countries that have long suffered from conflict, violence, lack of resources, and the absence of democracy. I don’t think Americans should just be discovering that Ben Ali ruled Tunisia with an iron fist or that we care about Guinea because of tin (and of course pervasive human rights violations). I think though that this is a question of education. Maybe that’s the big story: how are problems in our educational system going to affect our ability to interact with the world and do so in a way that promotes peace, trade, development, and democracy. More generally, how is educational system going to help ensure that the next time we decide to intervene somewhere, we’re better prepared, we have more people available with language skills, cultural knowledge etc.

Gulliver: We’re spending billions of dollars a year trying to stand up and increase the capacity and capabilities of foreign security forces, and we really, fundamentally have no idea what we’re doing. The U.S. military knows how to translate weapon systems into capabilities with concepts, doctrine, training, TTPs, and so on, and then how to translate those capabilities into operational effectiveness; we don’t know how to teach a foreign partner to do this with any degree of consistency or effectiveness, and often the obstacles will be obscure and inaccessible to us. What’s worse is that we talk like we can do this in our sleep, and our senior leaders seem snowed enough by it to imagine that security force assistance is more about the sculptor than it is the clay. We’re a blind guy with four broken fingers trying to build the David out of tin foil and pebbles.

12. What's the most meaningful and effective foreign/security policy action Obama could take before 2012?

Lil: I think probably starting to increase capacity at State and USAID.

Gulliver: Predictable, but: withdraw the vast majority of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. It’s a shit sandwich, I know, but it’s one you’re gonna have to eat – letting it get cold isn’t going to make it taste better.

Overall F/SP Grade at mid-term?

Alma: There were some disappointments, but diplomatic efforts were made towards Muslims, the President handled well the McChrystal affair, and no outrageously wrong-headed foreign policy decision was made so far--a drastic change from the previous administration. So I think Obama's self-attributed grade of B+ is, overall, a rather fair one.

Gulliver: The president’s encouragingly pragmatic approach to our most important relationships and obvious willingness to manage the rise of global competitors have been outweighed by the lost promise of major national security reform and the disappointing cave-in on Afghanistan. I give the administration a D+.

Update on the purported political brilliance of the Petraeus pick

Here's a couple of U.S. Senators speaking yesterday about the selection:

Meanwhile, with Petraeus' confirmation hearing set to be held this week, [Sen. Lindsey] Graham said he wants the administration to clarify how hard-and-fast the withdrawal deadline is.

[Sen. Dianne] Feinstein said that if Petraeus asks for more time, "I would say give it to him."

That's one prominent senator from either side of the aisle suggesting that the timeline should be flexible, an opinion that in Feinstein's case, at least, seems to be predicated almost entirely on the fact that Petraeus is running the show now.

So if the president decides he wants to "finesse the 2011 deadline," he's got Petraeus' cred on the Hill to work with. If he decides he doesn't, then he's got Petraeus (and Gates, and Mullen) on the record in Johnathan Alter's book saying that he's not going to come back later and ask for more troops, that he's not going to try to flex the deadline, that he thinks significant progress can be made in 18 (now 12) months.

Politics is about options, and now the president's got all he wants.

Why the unexpected Petraeus pick is incredibly savvy (UPDATED)

UPDATE: I have no idea why comments were disabled up until this point, but they're not anymore. We're trying out a new system, so let us know how you like it.

The news is in: McChrystal out, Petraeus in. There's tons of analysis out there already, so I'm not going to waste your time and mine by parroting the same sorts of things everyone's writing. But here's my brief take on why this is an inspired pick, from both the political and practical perspectives.

Politics:

1. If King David can't do it, no one can. The president tapped the one guy more tightly associated with our chosen operational approach than GEN McChrystal was. If Afghanistan goes bad, it will look like it was because of an impossible mission... not a bad plan. The White House can complain that the COINdinistas sold them a bill of goods, an they didn't know any better. The president has put himself under GEN Petraeus' flag; as afpakchannel noted on Twitter, P4 "would probably have to punch Joe Biden in the face before Obama would fire him." Daddy's home from work, and he's gonna take care of everything.
2. The right has to shut the hell up. Republicans trip over themselves to compliment Petraeus, and none of them have the nads to publically question whether his success in Iraq is transferrable to other theaters. If the president sticks to his guns and his withdrawal timeline, or even reverses course and speeds up the drawdown, the right won't be able to suggest that he's sabotaging the effort or failing to support the troops. After all, he sent the number one guy!
3. GEN Petraeus is already on the record with his commitment to the drawdown timeline. Jonathan Alter reported on a conversation where P4, Secretary Gates, and Admiral Mullen all agree to the president's plan, and pledge not to come back for more troops in 18 months. GEN McChrystal did, too, but you'd expect the theater commander to say just about whatever he needed to to get his resources. GEN Petraeus has said he thinks it can be done, which insulates the president when it comes time to make the drawdown happen.

Practical:

1. We already know how GEN Petraeus does business. Look, there's always going to be a little bit of lag time while a new CG gets up to speed, especially in a coalition command the size and complexity of ISAF. Not too many people have ever done a job like that. P4 has. He's got a system, he's got a routine, he's got a way of doing business... and there are dozens, even hundreds of people who saw it up close.
2. CENTCOM's regional responsibility will help keep Afghanistan in perspective. GEN Petraeus has spent his time in Tampa looking at how Afghanistan fits into a broader regional picture, both with regard to Pakistan and to wider central and south Asian security. This perspective will hopefully help mitigate against the theater commander's natural tendency to think that his war and his command is the only thing that matters, and to ignore the consequences of his efforts on the bigger picture. Petraeus is going to do his damnedest to succeed in Afghanistan, but we can reasonably hope that his definition of success will be bigger than just that country.
3. There's no doubt about P4's COIN credentials. Whether you think it's good or bad, GEN Petraeus is the leading light of the COINdinista movement in today's American military. McChrystal could always be criticized as a door kicker, a special operator, a guy who "got it" because he had to, but didn't really get it. (Some have fairly criticized the outgoing COMISAF for trying to slap on the COIN template without really understanding the whys and wherefores. I don't know if this is true or not, but I do suspect that McChrystal's ideas about what was rhetorically necessary and what is tactically required were probably a touch out of synch.) You can't say that about Petraeus. If the execution of this COIN enterprise in Afghanistan fails, you can't say it's because of user error. So it's a win-win for critics and proponents: if we're successful, then great! If we're not, then it will demand a critical look at the failings of our doctrine and operational methods.

Like I wrote before, this is just a quick take. I know it's not exactly novel to say "Petraeus is a good pick!," but hopefully this helps illuminate why this is precisely so.

Do you agree?

Time to end the "Treat Them Mean and Make Them Like It" Doctrine

President Obama has cancelled a trip to Australia, Indonesia, and Guam. Again. Granted, I am not an expert on strategic issues in the Pacific, but this strikes me as a really bad move. Twice now the White House has cancelled this visit to an important ally and a country with whom we've been trying to improve relations because of domestic issues.

I'm not sure why the President has adopted a "treat them mean and make them like it" approach with many of our allies - especially our closest allies with whom we're trying to get support from for a number of missions around the world (mainly Afghanistan). While Obama is still highly popular in Australia, snubbing an ally twice with whom we have a (limited) mutual defense agreement will not help in maintaining Australian support in Afghanistan. Like most U.S. relationships, bilateral relations more important to the other partner and not to the U.S. Australia seems very aware of this fact and concerned that they do much more for us than we do for them - much like what has been happing with the UK as of late.

The consequences of cancelling this trip will probably not include any significant changes to U.S.-Australian relations directly. But it could have an effect on Australian politics - PM Kevin Rudd is getting hammered in the polls because of his own domestic issues and stands to lose his job some time in the fall. I have no idea if it means that Labor gets a new leader or the Liberals actually ascend, but KRudd was hoping for a bump in his numbers by the visit. Well, that's not going to happen now. I'm not saying that it's in the President's interests to ensure continuity of power in other nations, but with yet another Japanese government transition, I don't think a revolving door of governments with our closest allies in the region is in our interests. Who knows what effects that a new Aussie government would have on the Trilateral Security Dialogue when we're still trying to figure out how things are going to work out with Japan. With all the current shenanigans on Korean Peninsula and tensions over Okinawa, etc., helping shore up the current Australian government seems to me to be in the U.S.'s best interests.

I guess this wouldn't rankle me as much if there were a better reason for the cancellation. I thought the first trip was rightfully cancelled as getting the health care bill through required Obama's personal touch. But the oil spill? Unless he intends to go to Louisiana and start scrubbing crude off of birds, I don't see how he couldn't oversee this operation from Air Force One or Canberra like he does from the White House. Especially from a guy who claimed he could walk and chew bubble gum at the same time - the President needs to be better balance his domestic and foreign policies. I think it's time we start treating our allies like we actually like them.

DECISION: AFGHANISTAN -- a live-blog

Blitzer! Brazile! Obama! Axelrod! It's DECISION: AFGHANISTAN, 2009!

Ok, just kidding, that's actually CNN's name for their preview show. (Did anyone think for a second that I was serious about that?) Just trying to bring a little levity to what -- if the advance draft I've seen is correct -- is bound to be a depressing evening.

So instead of LIL! GUNSLINGER! ALMA! MK! In surround-sound and full effect!, you've just got me. The lady of the house is trapped at work (ironically, by the steaming pile of text that the President will deliver in about 14 minutes), and our little team is wracked by flu and overwork. But never fear, I've got my wine glass full of Guinness (and a backup bottle of Jim Beam), a 90-count freezer bag of Totino's pizza rolls, and no one to complain about the volume of the TV, so I'm ready to take this speech strong to the rack. (I guess I have to turn off the Wizards-Raptors game, first.)

1949: I just learned that we've yet to use the label "Barack Obama," or anything like it, in 200 posts and five months of blogging. Weird. You can't accuse us of being starry-eyed!

1951: We need about 500 pageviews in the next 250 minutes to top our all-time busiest day at Ink Spots. I have a good feeling I'll do that just by refreshing my own window, but help us out! Tweet us, or something (whatever that means).

1957: Check out Wings Over Iraq's "The Afghan Troop Surge Drinking Game." Make sure there's someone around who can take you to the emergency room.

2001: Charlie Gibson says the president has been considering this strategy for three months. The part before the March announcement doesn't count?

2002: Stephanopolous: Obama has to convince people in Afghanistan and Pakistan that we're staying, and convince Americans that we're coming home.

Gates, Clinton, Mullen, Petraeus all in the audience along with the Corps of Cadets. (A little surprised not to hear them all yell back "GOOD EVENING!" when the president greeted them.)

2004: "Important to recall why America and our allies were compelled to fight this war." Took under 30 seconds to bring up 9/11.

Al-Qaeda have "distorted and defiled Islam, one of the world's great religions."

President cites 2001 vote on Afghan war -- 0 votes against in the Senate, only one in the House. In other words "remember when you guys thought this was a good idea?"

2006: Interesting to hear reference to the fact that the Taliban were first given the opportunity to turn over AQ leaders, before U.S. invasion.

"Wrenching debate over the Iraq war is well-known, and need not be repeated here. But seriously dudes, it was really dumb." (Ok, he didn't say the last part exactly, but pretty close.)

2008: "Over the last several years, the Taliban has maintained common cause with al-Qaeda, as they both seek an overthrow of the Afghan government."

D/D/D al-Qaeda -- drink, Crispin!

"Afghanistan is not lost, but for several years it has moved backward."

"Our forces lack the full support they need to effectively train and partner with ANSF and better secure the population." Focus on training and partnering is fair enough, but there's gonna be some fighting.

2012: When is it going to be acceptable for presidents to stop wearing the American flag lapel pin? Dude, we know you like America -- you're the President of the United States! Seriously, one day somebody's just gonna have to man up and say "this is ridiculous."

2014: "If I did not think that the security of the United States and the safety of the American people were at stake in Afghanistan, I would gladly order every single one of our troops home tomorrow." Well, great. I mean, I'd hope so, right? But we need a more compelling explanation of the WHY part than just "there be TEERRRRRRORISTS tharrr!"

2015: D/D/D AQ in AF and PK again! Finish that drink!

2017: We're going to break the Taliban's momentum and build the Afghan government's capacity. Sounds like an awesome idea. How? And why haven't we been doing it up until now?

Boom, there it is: help create the conditions to transfer responsibility to ANSF. Because that seems imminent, right?

"Our allies have fought, bled, and died alongside us in Afghanistan." True: more than 600 non-US ISAF KIA in Afghanistan.

2018: And there's the money shot: American troops will start coming home in the summer of 2011. Apparently we need to make it clear to the Afghan government "and more importantly, the Afghan people" that they'll have to be responsible for running their own country. Geez, if we'd done that in the first place, they probably woulda tried harder! (Really, do we think it's just a failure of resolve?)

2019: I'm not gonna lie, I found it a little creepy when the President looked straight into the camera and said we're not interested in occupying Afghanistan. True, obviously, but a little weird in the delivery.

2020: Success in Af "inextricably linked with our partnership with Pakistan." This is consistent with the news stories we've seen today that talk about a new package of incentives for Islamabad, a more expansive relationship, a longer-term outlook, and so on.

This part about the relationship with Pakistan and our long-term, post-war interest in that country is actually pretty strong.

2023: Vietnam comparisons dependent on a "false reading of history," according to the president. Unlike Vietnam, Americans "were viciously attacked from Afghanistan." Fair enough, but if the Soviets had launched an ICBM at us from a platform in Hanoi, then run back to Moscow, we wouldn't have been fighting in the jungle, would we?

2024: Ha, now the president dismisses a nation-building campaign as being too difficult, too long, and too divorced from our interests. (Someone should tell him that building up security forces and governance is nation-building.)

2025: ANV says that the stare-into-the-camera shot was a producer's fault, but I'm not buying that -- it's the only time he's done it in the whole speech!

2026: Life is hard in America, "so we can't simply afford to ignore the price" of the war. Fair enough. But if it's too expensive, then it's too expensive for half-measures. Prez says that this plan is going to cost us "$30 billion this year." Would like to see where he got that number.

2027: "The nation that I'm most interested in building is our own." Good line, but I bet the Republicans will have fun with that one.

2028: Af-Pak a test of our leadership in the world. "America will have to show our strength in the way that we end the wars and prevent conflict." Ok, good. But then: AQ's appearance in other places will have to be confronted by "growing pressure and strong partnership." Er... And dudes in ninja suits and black helicopters, and Tomahawk missiles, and Reaper drones. How about that?

2030: We have to make it clear to people everywhere that America will speak out for their human rights. For at least 18 months.

2031: Man, now he's got to go making me all mushy by talking about how badass America is, and how no one thanks us for being badass, and how we underwrite global security. All true, all awesome. All largely irrelevant to this, but it gives me a semi just the same.

2032: The Prez is rounding into form now. Very good when he gets into the soaring stuff, as expected. A little bit nebulous to the task at hand, but certainly moving.

"Now we must summon all of our might and moral suasion to meet the challenges of a new age." Damnit, we're getting into the goosebumpy stuff.

Anybody expect Dick Cheney to give a damn about how united we were when this war began, or how rancor has poisoned our discourse?

2035: "America, we are passing through a time of great trial. And the message that we send in the midst of these storms must be clear: that our cause is just, our resolve unwavering. We will go forward with the confidence that right make might, and with the commitment to forge an America that is safer, a world that is more secure, and a future that represents not the deepest of fears, but the highest of hopes."

Unfortunately, the highest of hopes ain't gonna square this thing away in 18 months. Not with 30,000 troops, and probably not with 300,000 troops.

What we were missing here was any sort of elucidation of HOW THIS IS GOING TO HAPPEN. Are we going with the McChrystal plan? Some other variant of counterinsurgency? An oil spots approach that concentrates on population centers, as has seemed to be the case over the last several weeks?

We heard some vague noises about training and mentoring Afghan forces, and it sounded a lot like what President Bush and his folks said about Iraq in 2005: Iraqi security forces that are capable of maintaining order in their own country are our exit strategy, as they stand up, we'll stand down, etc etc etc.

But what exactly are they going to stand up to? Getting their asses kicked by insurgents? If 100,000 ISAF troops can't quell the insurgency in 2009, and 130-140,000 can't in 2010, then how will even 200,000 ANA do so in 2011 without American/ISAF enablers? Without American kinetic power?

BOTTOM LINE DOWN BOTTOM (to reverse a military custom): 30,000 additional troops, as if you didn't already know that. They'll start getting there in the late spring or early summer of next year, which the President insists is as quickly as they could possibly have done so even if he'd made this call three months ago. (What he didn't mention is that he's basically giving you everything that's available, there, that there's not a whole lot of slack in the ARFORGEN cycle to ship over another 40K for GEN McChrystal's "low risk" option.)