The president's zigzagging approach to foreign policy sacrifices the idealistic to the demands of the moment.
Who says President Obama isn't a unifier?
Last week, this newspaper's Edmund Sanders reported from Cairo
"As rival camps of Egyptians protest for and against the toppling of
President Mohamed Morsi, there is a rare point of agreement: America is
to blame." Both the Muslim Brotherhood and the coalition arrayed against
it believe that the United States is against them. And, amazingly, both
sides have a point.
Obama supported Hosni Mubarak, our geriatric dictator-client, right
up until the moment Mubarak needed us most. But when events, or just the
news cycle, made that support difficult, Obama abandoned a longtime
ally and supported the forces of democracy. Then, just as many had
warned, the Muslim Brotherhood rode democracy into power, putting Morsi
in charge.
Recognizing the demands of the moment, Obama then supported Morsi. As
did his ambassador to Cairo, Anne Patterson, who reportedly stiff-armed
democratic and human rights activists. Indeed, Patterson scolded
protesters for naively thinking demonstrations were superior to
elections. The administration's support for democracy's verdict lasted
right up until the moment Morsi needed Obama's support the most. Then,
Morsi too was gone, and so was America's defense of democratic norms.
One has to wonder what the next Islamist movement will say when
America counsels it to put down its weapons and take up the ballot
instead.
The most plausible interpretation of Obama's zigzagging approach to
foreign policy is that he is simply "winging it," as Robert W. Merry,
editor of the National Interest, writes.
It is difficult to find much, if any, intellectual coherence to the
president's foreign policy. He fought for a surge of troops in
Afghanistan, but then refused to rally public support for the war he
escalated. Worse, he later rendered the surge moot by announcing to our
enemies that we'd soon bug out, no matter what.
During Iran's Green Revolution, he stood pat as the mullahs crushed a
democracy movement seeking to overthrow a regime hostile to U.S.
interests. In Libya, he intervened to oust a dictator, who had become a
de facto ally, insisting he couldn't stand by as innocents were
slaughtered. In Syria, a vassal of Iran, he has stood by as innocents
were slaughtered.
Again, the winging-it theory of Obama's behavior has a lot going for
it. My only objection is that it strikes me as indistinguishable from
so-called realism.
While Obama usually likes to triangulate himself between realism and
idealism, "realist" is the label his biggest fans in the foreign policy
establishment use most.
"Obama is a realist, by temperament, learning
and instinct," Fareed Zakaria wrote in Newsweek in 2009. "More than any
president since Richard Nixon, he has focused on defining American
interests carefully, providing the resources to achieve them, and
keeping his eyes on the prize." More recently, Harvard's realist guru,
Stephen Walt, saluted Obama's "buck-passing" as a feature rather than a
bug of his realist foreign policy.
Among the many problems with realism is the fact that it sits on a
tower of questions. Realists say we should do only what is in our
national interest rather than pursue ideological goals. But what is our
national interest? Nearly every so-called realist position is in fact
ideological from someone else's perspective. And pretty much every
ideological position can be defended in terms of the national interest.
The realist's answer to this pickle is to be so smart that you can
always know what's in the national interest at every moment.
Except nobody is that smart. During a crisis, the temptation is
always to sacrifice the idealistic to the demands of the moment, i.e. to
be a buck-passer. Why create problems by supporting this dissident or
condemning that stolen election? Why make a ruckus about freedom of the
press or the rule of law? Why honor this inconvenient treaty when we
have so much to gain from trade with our ally's enemies? Save the
idealism for later.
That's the process that kept Mubarak in power for 30 years. It's also
the process that, over time, leads to everyone hating you, because no
one trusts you. Just ask the Egyptians.
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