After two stalemated wars, Obama is right to shore up the domestic foundations of US power. But he also needs to tend to its international foundations.
It is easy to forget that when Barack Obama ran for re-election in 2012, his foreign policy was a huge asset. The US was out of Iraq and doing OK in Afghanistan, and had killed Osama bin Laden. Mitt Romney had nothing to shoot at. Today the president finds it harder to explain his global strategy. His emphasis on “nation-building” at home seems to point in one direction, Secretary of State John Kerry’s activist diplomacy in another. Uneasy allies worry that Washington has lost interest in them. Congress is challenging the president on issues from trade to Iran. Critics say American leadership is in decline.
The best way to understand Obama’s predicament is to compare it with that of previous presidents who wound down major wars. He’s not the first to promise a less expensive, more sustainable foreign policy at a time when the country feels overextended. Dwight D. Eisenhower after Korea, Richard M. Nixon after Vietnam and the first George Bush, after the Cold War, said much the same thing. Their less-is-more record contains good news for Obama, and clear warnings.
The public has always supported presidents who get America out of stalemated wars. Obama has not lost the argument that America needs relief from global burdens. Past retrenchments bring good news for Kerry, too. Military downsizing has never ruled out diplomatic activism. The two go hand in hand. To reduce East-West tensions, Eisenhower proposed Atoms for Peace, Open Skies, a nuclear test ban and more. Nixon pursued his “Generation of Peace” through an opening to China, détente with the Soviet Union, and Henry A. Kissinger’s razzle-dazzle Middle East diplomacy. Even the first President Bush, whose last two years were a mini-retrenchment, had his own big-think slogan, a “New World Order”. These presidents sought global stability with less American policing. By comparison, Obama’s rhetoric is standard stuff. Critics ping him for wanting to heal the planet and reconcile with adversaries. But that’s how presidents in retrenchment talk. Mopping up after disaster requires compensatory inspiration.
For Obama, that is the reassuring part. But play out the comparisons further, and they become less encouraging. Once presidents exit the wars they were elected to fix, their job gets harder. The accompanying diplomacy, energetic at first, tends to sputter and die.
The Obama administration has built new leverage in one crucial case. A tough American-led sanctions regime has gotten Iran’s attention. Elsewhere, Obama and Kerry count too much on negotiation to achieve their goals. History has another sobering lesson: retrenchment always strengthens Congress’s role in foreign policy. Eisenhower ridiculed Congressional proposals to increase the defence budget. Obama faces similar pressure. In his recent State of the Union address, he threatened to veto any bill that imposed new sanctions on Iran while talks were underway.
Let’s hope he also knows how badly previous administrations handled similar challenges. Obama won’t abandon retrenchment, nor does he need to. The domestic foundations of American power do need shoring up. But he needs to tend to its international foundations as well.
