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August 24, 2007
Open policy
Over the past few weeks, amid of the summer's political doldrums, the 2008 presidential campaign has heated up. On the Democratic side, Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) has found his foreign policy views placed under increasing scrutiny by his competitors and by electorates in the early-voting primary states. First, during a Democratic debate, Obama expressed his willingness to meet with unfriendly foreign leaders. The next week, Obama gave a speech in which he suggested that he would strike high-value al Qaeda targets in Pakistan as president. Finally, a few days later, he let slip his objection to using nuclear weapons against al Qaeda targets in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Critics interpreted these episodes as evidence that Obama was naïve, irresponsible, or just plain unprepared. But taken together, Obama's pronouncements can be seen as constituting a broad critique of the largely opaque manner in which the Untied States has conducted its foreign policy for decades. His campaign is mining this critique for all its political value, framing it as a debate between “common sense” and “conventional Washington thinking.” Says Obama, “It's time to turn the page on conventional foreign policy thinking.” Perhaps the more relevant question, however, is whether the critique has any practical value.
“Conventional Washington thinking,” as defined by Obama, is manifested through a time-tested means of conducting foreign policy. Such an approach has a long history, but really came into its own during the Cold War, when slight diplomatic miscues could upset the delicate balance of power between the United States and Soviet Union. In the dawn of the nuclear age, an entire vocabulary was developed to manage a foreign policy increasingly fraught with risks and consequences. In the diplomatic world, this vocabulary became familiar. The foreign policy establishment in government, business, and academia spoke mutually intelligible languages, and countries conducted business with each other in a well-orchestrated charade of communiqués, joint declarations, and multilateral resolutions.
This specialized, nuanced manner of conducting foreign policy essentially created an elite class of foreign policy practitioners that reigns to this day. Such foreign policy elitism possesses many inherent advantages. All the key players know the rough parameters of the debate and can easily self-regulate their diplomatic discourse. The opacity that comes from foreign policy elitism allows for a great degree of discretion; certain goals or objectives that are best kept secret can be obscured through the complexity of foreign policy discourse. Even when broad objectives are clear, diplomatic opacity can keep adversaries guessing regarding preferred methods or approaches—for example, an unfriendly regime is not sure if the United States will confront it with sanctions or with force.
When dealing with allies, too, foreign policy elitism has its advantages. The specialized vocabulary and expertise that define the foreign policy elite provides a venue and a means to communicate quickly and efficiently across international borders. Such elitism offers domestic political advantages, as well. It provides politicians with a ready-made means to control their foreign policy message and allows them to offer stock platitudes to describe their foreign policy views in a consistent manner. Once accepted by the electorate—which historically has viewed foreign policy as secondary to domestic concerns—such consistent salesmanship allows policymakers the freedom of maneuver on the international stage that they require.
Foreign policy elitism also has a negative side. In a republic, political transparency is more than just a virtue. It is an indispensable prerequisite of an honest government that is responsible to its constituents. To be sure, the complexity of modern public policy precludes absolute transparency—not all information can be made available to all citizens, and not all citizens would be able to evaluate policy information in a substantive manner. But the aphorism that “politics stops at the water's edge”—a reference to the supposed nonpartisan continuity of U.S. foreign policy—is easily abused. To make informed political decisions, citizens must engage (and be engaged) in an open and transparent debate about the foundations of U.S. foreign policymaking. Such a debate surely would highlight differences between political candidates and parties. But the argument that an open airing of such differences would severely harm U.S. interests overseas is difficult to support. The expertise offered by the foreign policy elite is surely required at the level of policy implementation, in much the same way that government requires a technocratic and bureaucratic class to manage complex domestic programs such as Social Security and Medicare. But at the point of policy formulation, republican government requires transparent, honest debate. To suggest that foreign policy should be immune from such a requirement strains credulity.
For example, when a presidential candidate is faced with a question about meeting with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran or Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, the safe answer prescribed by the foreign policy elite would be a resounding “no.” Certainly, the foreign policy elite allows for some modest variation of that answer, to account for partisan politics. But the ultimate answer will always be the same, and for more or less the same reason: U.S. enemies could use diplomatic meetings as propaganda tools. The validity of this claim is never really tested—it is simply taken at face value. So when Obama provided an answer that contradicts the established views of the foreign policy elite, he presented a challenge that extended beyond partisan, presidential politics. The merits of his statement became obscured in the process.
The same is true with Obama's comments on U.S. nuclear policy, which has always been a particularly sacred issue with the foreign policy elite, and for good reason. The standard, public response to questions concerning U.S. nuclear posture has been to avoid addressing specific hypothetical scenarios. As with much of the foreign policy elite's thinking, the premise of this response is actually quite sound. A reliable nuclear deterrent is dependent upon U.S. adversaries believing that the United States would be willing to use nuclear weapons. If a nuclear-armed adversary doubted U.S. will in this regard, an attack on the United States could become much more plausible. But this traditional response to questions of U.S. nuclear policy needlessly stifles nuance for the sake of absolute consistency. For his part, Obama noted that he would not use nuclear weapons to attack al Qaeda targets in Afghanistan and Pakistan. On a gut level, Obama was right—the use of nuclear weapons in any setting is difficult to contemplate. And on a substantive, rational level, Obama was also right—nuclear weapons would be the wrong tool for the hypothetical job presented. But his response contradicted the traditions of the foreign policy elite, and for that reason alone, Obama's comments became controversial.
Obama's critics, and defenders of the foreign policy elite, suggest that international relations is a field that requires immense delicacy. Essentially, tone matters as much as substance, and words uttered in a domestic political campaign can easily be disseminated around the world and mistaken as quasi-official pronouncements of U.S. policy. This is surely a valid critique. Obama's expressed willingness to attack al Qaeda targets in Pakistan stirred protests in that country and earned pointed denunciations from its government. “It's a very irresponsible statement, that's all I can say," said Pakistan's Foreign Minister Khusheed Kasuri. "As the election campaign in America is heating up we would not like American candidates to fight their elections and contest elections at our expense." It's unclear if this suggests that U.S. political candidates should censor their thoughts on foreign policy when they contradict those of the Washington elite. But it does demonstrate that the United States faces a unique level of scrutiny that derives from its global standing. Local issues in this country can have consequences around the world, and politicians of all stripes need to be mindful of this reality.
The question of tone is also relevant in the domestic sense, amid the battlefields of presidential politics. Upon close inspection, it becomes clear that Obama's Democratic rivals do not disagree much with the substance of his positions. Seeking an opportunity for political gain, their critiques of his foreign policy pronouncements largely boil down to questions of tone: They don't disagree on the value of greater diplomacy, but on how open the United States should be in pursuing it; they don't disagree on the use of military force or nuclear weapons to fight al Qaeda, but on how clearly U.S. policy should be articulated. In one sense, this minimizes the recent debate surrounding Obama's foreign policy by placing it firmly within the realm of electoral politics. But tone matters in international relations, too, and as events in Pakistan demonstrated, allies and adversaries around the world are not ignorant about U.S. domestic politics. As the presidential campaign continues to unfold, and as the political bickering rises to a fever pitch, domestic and foreign audiences alike will be watching with a keen eye.
Foreign Policy Association, 24 August 2007
Posted by Daniel Widome at 02:25 PM to Trans-geographical, U. S. Politics | TrackBack (0)
August 07, 2007
On foreign policy: Obama's choice
After months of enduring repeated accusations that he lacked policy substance, Barack Obama now faces the opposite problem. In recent weeks, as the Illinois senator has fleshed out his foreign policy agenda, he has encountered increasing criticism from across the political spectrum. Liberal bloggers suspect Obama is a closet neoconservative, while conservative pundits declare him unsuited for the presidency. He has lately been called naive, irresponsible, unpredictable, confused, and reckless - among other, less diplomatic labels.
In reality, most of these attacks have little substantive basis, and they simply represent the standard give-and-take found in all presidential campaigns. But beyond that, the attacks are rooted in a basic misunderstanding of Obama's unconventional approach to both policy and to politics. Essentially, they reveal something fundamentally unique about Obama's political character and his overall worldview.
Substantively, the specific questions about Obama's foreign policy proposals are not exactly unimportant, but they are off base. In a Democratic presidential candidates debate several weeks ago, Obama expressed his willingness to meet with unfriendly foreign leaders, such as those from Iran and Venezuela. Contrary to charges of "naivete" from Sen. Hillary Clinton, he actually made no commitment or pledge to hold such meetings. Forced into political battle by Clinton's attack, however, Obama fought back, portraying his unvarnished emphasis on diplomacy as transparent, sensible, and entirely uncontroversial. Indeed, each of Obama's fellow Democratic candidates has stressed a need for greater diplomacy throughout their respective campaigns, but in far hazier terms. Obama's position, then, was notable more for its tone than for its substance, which itself was a relevant distinction. In politics as in diplomacy, style often is substance.
In a speech outlining his anti-terrorism proposals a week later, Obama suggested that he would attack high-value al Qaeda targets in Pakistan, if that country wouldn't do so itself. This assertion was welcomed with attacks from the political left, which seemed to confuse Obama's opposition to the Iraq war with an opposition to fighting al Qaeda. On its merits, Obama's statement was hardly scandalous. The area in which Osama bin Laden is suspected of hiding - in the rough terrain bordering Afghanistan - is a veritable no-man's land, nominally part of Pakistan, but in reality beyond any state's control. For more than a decade, U.S. policy has held that al Qaeda targets in such regions were fair game for attack. President Bill Clinton launched cruise missiles against al Qaeda targets in Afghanistan and Sudan in 1998, and President Bush used a missile-carrying drone to destroy a vehicle carrying an al Qaeda leader in Yemen in 2002. Obama's position, then, was more sensible than revolutionary, as the subsequent concurrences of his fellow Democratic candidates only confirmed.
Finally, in a recent interview, Obama ruled out the use of nuclear weapons against al Qaeda targets in Afghanistan and Pakistan, raising suspicions that he was somehow "weak" in his determination to defend the United States. But like Obama's other statements, the controversy surrounding this one was more contrived than useful. Al Qaeda is, by definition, a non-state actor. It does not wield any degree of territorial sovereignty, and it will never offer targets so large, so fixed, or so hardened as to justify a nuclear strike. As Obama limited his statement to al Qaeda-related targets only, his assertion had no bearing on the grisly, but necessary, deterrent role played by the U.S. nuclear arsenal against potential state-based threats. As several foreign policy experts subsequently noted, Obama's sin (if any) was one of excessive honesty, not of policy impropriety.
Even beyond the substance of these recent spats, and essential to understanding their real significance, Obama presents a fundamental challenge to the reigning political orthodoxy. This challenge is rooted in his political upbringing as a pragmatic community organizer, not as an ideological street fighter. Obama's instincts emphasize results, consensus, and transparency over doctrinal loyalty, needless conflict, and self-serving obfuscation. His more myopic critics deride this emphasis on pragmatism over ideology as a kind of soft bipartisanship. To be sure, compromise for its own sake - bereft of independent principle - can be as useless and damaging as ideological artifice. But this has never been Obama's political style. Instead, he regularly attempts to transcend the self-limiting political constructs of "left," "right," and "centrist" with an approach that emphasizes results.
These political instincts were best demonstrated in 2002, with Obama's succinct explanation of why he opposed the impending invasion of Iraq: "I am not opposed to all wars. I'm opposed to dumb wars." At that time - in the wake of 9/11 and before the quagmire of Iraq - political passions were uniquely inflamed. For many, the choice was stark: support the Bush administration's aggressive policies in Afghanistan and Iraq, or oppose them. Defenders of the reigning political orthodoxy portrayed these policy options as a binary choice, on opposite ends of a two-dimensional spectrum, with seemingly little tolerance for a position that didn't fit into their prescribed framework. Obama's position - in support of the effort in Afghanistan, but opposed to an invasion of Iraq - seems strikingly sensible today. But in 2002, it was something of a heretical view on the national stage, and it flouted the political orthodoxy ensconced in Washington.
Obama's critics, then as now, are unable to pin him down ideologically. They find themselves unwittingly confounded by his refusal to play the traditional games expected of a national political figure. The choice that Obama implicitly offers to voters is not between competing ideologies, which is the choice traditionally presented in presidential elections and was the one provided prior to the invasion of Iraq in 2002. Rather, the choice offered by Obama is between pragmatism and ideology. Lacking the appropriate political vocabulary, and threatened by Obama's campaign success thus far, his critics mistake his unconventional thinking for naiveté, his nuance for inconsistency, and his clarity for obfuscation.
Contrary to the assertions of many of his critics, the policy positions revealed by Obama in recent weeks are part-and-parcel of an entirely consistent worldview. In April, Obama delivered a comprehensive foreign policy speech that was peppered with just the kind of sensible, pragmatic, and straightforward ideas that have come to define his politics. Although he reiterated his initial opposition to the Iraq war and his desire for a U.S. withdrawal from that country, he resisted the impulse from the political left for a U.S. disengagement from the world, asserting that, "the security of the American people is inextricably linked to the security of all people." Although he called for the renewal of diplomatic partnerships and alliances, he also spoke of rebuilding and expanding the U.S. military, "to protect ourselves and our vital interests when we are attacked or imminently threatened." This was all topped off by a strong emphasis on stopping the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, a niche issue of limited visibility but tremendous importance that Obama has quickly made his own during his brief Senate tenure.
Such a plan is very characteristic of Obama's political instincts. He has just as little patience for the principled gridlock that comes from ideological artifice as he does for the unprincipled compromise that comes from self-serving bipartisanship. In other words, Obama regularly gives ample fodder for political extremists of all stripes to both praise and criticize. Ideological purists loathe it. Many voters seem to love it.
San Francisco Chronicle, 7 August 2007
Posted by Daniel Widome at 04:01 AM to U. S. Politics | TrackBack (0)
