Obama has turned Teddy Roosevelt's famous maxim on its head
By John Judis, The New Republic
Theodore Roosevelt won fame, and was later lionized, as the leader of
the Rough Riders in Cuba and as the bellicose advocate of American
expansionism in the Pacific. “I should welcome any war, for I think the
country needs one,” Roosevelt wrote
a friend in 1897. But Roosevelt’s most important contribution to
American foreign policy came later—when he became president in 1901 and
when he replaced his colonel’s spurs with a subtle understanding of what
diplomacy entailed. During his two terms, Roosevelt wound down the war
in the Philippines that he had helped start in 1898, thwarted European
designs upon Latin America, and mediated the Algeciras Crisis and the
Russo-Japanese War, for which he won the Nobel Peace Prize.
Barack
Obama promised to bring a fresh perspective to American foreign policy.
He had been raised overseas, and could see the U.S. from the outside;
he had captured the Democratic nomination for president partly on the
basis of his opposition to the Iraq War. He has had some success—notably
in killing Osama Bin Laden and in initiating negotiations with Iran
that could, if they succeed, transform the politics of the Middle East.
But Obama has also stumbled—initially, out of inexperience (his awkward
mix of escalation and withdrawal in Afghanistan), but more recently in
Syria and the Ukraine out of disregard for the principles of successful
diplomacy that Roosevelt enshrined. Roosevelt summed up presidential
diplomacy in what he claimed to be a West African adage, “speak softly
and carry a big stick.” By contrast, Obama’s recent diplomacy in Syria
and Russia could be described as “speak loudly and carry a little stick,
or no stick at all.”
What
did Roosevelt’s “speak softly and carry a big stick” mean? It’s not as
obvious as it might seem. “Speak softly” draws an implicit distinction
between the public space of, say, a domestic political campaign or a
courtroom drama and the public space of international relations. In a
political campaign, candidates often say nasty things to each other.
They want to rouse supporters and discredit their opponents. After the
campaign is over, these accusations are often forgotten. But in
international relations, the very success of a negotiation can depend
upon adjusting one’s rhetoric so that, if an opponent does concede, he
still saves face and maintains his nation’s honor. If the goal of the
negotiation is to change another country’s behavior, putting the
country’s ruler down publicly may make success less likely and also
imperil cooperation in areas that don’t directly pertain to what is
immediately at issue.
The meaning of “carry a big stick” is more
obvious. If you want to change another country’s behavior in ways it
might not initially desire, you need to have a credible threat to back
up your demand for change. Roosevelt primarily thought in military and
specifically naval terms—the U.S. economy was not yet large enough for
economic sanctions to be a credible threat. During Roosevelt’s
presidency, the U.S. added eleven new battleships
and almost doubled the size of the navy. Roosevelt was intent,
Frederick Marks wrote in his study of Roosevelt’s foreign policy Velvet on Iron,
on “tailoring policy to power.” He rejected the idea that conflicts of
national interest could be settled through good will—or in contemporary
terms, by sitting adversaries down in a room and insisting that they
come to an agreement. Roosevelt described that kind of diplomacy as
“slop,” and designated “Thou shalt not slop over” as the Eleventh
Commandment.
Roosevelt applied these principles in the Venezuela crisis
of November-December 1902. Britain and Germany threatened to blockade
Venezuela if it did not repay its loans to them. Roosevelt was not
concerned about Britain’s intentions, but he did worry that Germany
would demand territory for failure to repay the loan, as it had done in
China. When the Germans and British started firing at Venezuelan ships,
and Venezuela’s president called for arbitration, Roosevelt gave the
Germans ten days to agree. If they did not, he threatened to send the
U.S. Navy, whose ships in the Caribbean outnumbered the Germans. But
Roosevelt did not announce this publicly.
Roosevelt issued his ultimatum entirely in private—the visit by the German ambassador was not even listed on the White House calendar. Roosevelt distrusted German Kaiser Wilhelm, but he also knew that he was vain and subject to delusions of grandeur. “It would be foolhardy to humiliate a person like that in the Caribbean,” Roosevelt explained. On December 17, convinced that Roosevelt was serious, the Germans backed down and agreed to arbitration, but the details of what had happened weren’t known until Roosevelt was out of office.
Roosevelt issued his ultimatum entirely in private—the visit by the German ambassador was not even listed on the White House calendar. Roosevelt distrusted German Kaiser Wilhelm, but he also knew that he was vain and subject to delusions of grandeur. “It would be foolhardy to humiliate a person like that in the Caribbean,” Roosevelt explained. On December 17, convinced that Roosevelt was serious, the Germans backed down and agreed to arbitration, but the details of what had happened weren’t known until Roosevelt was out of office.
Roosevelt
succeeded with the Germans in Venezuela because he actually had a big
stick that he was wielding. But the corollary of Roosevelt’s adage was
that when a president doesn’t have a big stick, it’s best not to make
hollow threats. Roosevelt was wary of trying to enforce the American
Open Door policy (for free access to markets) in the Far East because
the U.S. couldn’t compete there with the British, German, French, and
even Russian and Japanese forces. Roosevelt acquiesced to Japanese
control of Korea and sought a compromise when the Chinese boycotted
American imports in 1905. He was also attuned to domestic opposition.
Faced with a war-weary Congress in 1907, he opted not to intervene
militarily in Venezuela when it reneged on loans from the United
States.
Consider by contrast Obama’s policy toward Syria. On August 18, 2011, Obama issued
a statement calling for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to leave
office. “The future of Syria must be determined by its people, but
President Bashar al-Assad is standing in their way,” Obama said. “For
the sake of the Syrian people, the time has come for President Assad to
step aside.” This was speaking loudly, but Obama was not prepared to
follow it up when Assad failed to step aside. He rejected arming Assad’s
opposition. In January 2012, he told The New Republic, “In a situation like Syria, I have to ask, can we make a difference in that situation?” There was no stick.
On
August 20, on the eve of the party conventions, Obama warned that if
the Assad government either used or transferred its chemical weapons, it
would constitute a “red line” that would invite military action. The
next spring, Assad was widely believed to have used chemical weapons
against the opposition. After a month of dithering, the White House
announced that the intelligence community had judged with “varying
degrees of confidence” that Assad had used gas on a “small scale.” But
it did not propose any military response. Six weeks later, it finally
promised to provide some military equipment to the rebels, but the aid
failed to arrive.
Last August, the administration affirmed that
the Assad regime had launched a large-scale chemical attack in the
rebel-held Damascus suburbs, and this time Obama threatened military
reprisals. But he had done nothing to build support for a military
response. The British balked, and then majorities in Congress indicated
they would not support military action. Obama was bailed out by the
Russians, who obtained a promise from Assad to destroy his chemical
weapons arsenal. But the failure to take action when the Assad
government crossed the “red line” undermined America’s credibility in
the Middle East. The Syrian red line fiasco showed that the Obama
administration was reluctant to make good on its threat to use military
force to back up its diplomacy. In Rooseveltian terms, the
administration should either have not threatened military action in the
first place or carefully laid the basis for its use.
America’s
relations with Putin’s Russia are now being seen through the prism of
the Cold War past, but that vantage obscures the degree of cooperation
that occurred between the nations during Obama’s presidency. The two
nations signed a new START treaty in 2011; Russia continued to assist
the United States in Afghanistan; it backed UN resolutions against Iran
for its nuclear program and signed the interim agreement last November.
However, Obama, also angered Russia by deceiving it in United Nations
negotiations over intervention in Libya. (The U.S. claimed its purpose
was limited to humanitarian intervention.) And Russia, for its part,
backed Assad in Syria; and defied the Obama administration by granting
asylum to Edward Snowden. (By refusing to hand over Snowden, the
Russians actually did Obama a favor by sparing him the uproar and loss
of popularity that prosecuting the whistle-blower would have deservedly
cost him.)
The United States had a similar mixed record with
China, but it acted far differently toward its rulers. With them, Obama
engaged in respectful competition; with Putin, he conveyed a lack of
respect toward someone who, like the Kaiser in Roosevelt’s time, craves
respect for himself and for his country. Obama skipped meetings; He sent
an underling—former Homeland Security Janet Napolitano—to represent the
United States as the Winter Olympics in Sochi and a delegation headed
by gay athletes to protest a recent Russian law banning gay
“propaganda.” Obama’s sending Napolitano was a gratuitous snub and made
it more likely that Putin would refuse to cooperate when the U.S.
needed Russia’s support. Sending a delegation that not merely included,
but was headed by gay athletes, was an important moral statement, and
perhaps was appropriate, but it also turned the game’s ceremonies into
an overt attempt to embarrass their host and threatened America's
ability to influence Russian behavior in other areas.
The events
that occurred in the Ukraine during the last week of February remain
murky. Did the United States and European Union put sufficient weight
behind a transitional solution to the crisis that was worked out with
Russian representatives present? Or did they encourage a new
anti-Russian government in Kiev that ended up eliminating Russian as a
second language and replacing pro-Russian governors in the Eastern
Ukraine and Crimea? Could Obama, if less intent on dissing Putin, have
engineered a compromise during that fateful weekend that would have
prevented Russia’s invasion of Crimea? If Obama had followed TR’s
principles, he would not have gone out of his way to insult Putin at the
Olympics. There was some domestic political advantage to doing so
(Putin is not popular and gay rights are), but there was a diplomatic
price to be paid. And he would have recognized that he had limited
ability to affect events in Ukraine and would have attempted at the
beginning, as trouble was brewing, to mediate between the Russians and
the E.U. But that’s not what he did.
On February 28, Obama warned
Putin that “there will be costs” if Russia sent troops to the Ukraine.
That had an all the earmarks of an ultimatum, but it was delivered
publicly and not backed up by credible threats. By the next day, Russian
forces were spotted taking control of government buildings. The White
House then raised the possibility of Iran-style sanctions against
Russian banks. Secretary of State John Kerry indicated that
“all options” were on the table. But as happened with Syria in August,
the White House had issued threats before assembling the appropriate
coalition to back them up. On March 4, Germany, the United Kingdom ,and
France, which had far deeper economic ties to Russia than did the United
States, all indicated they would not go along with punitive sanctions
against Russian banks, only with restrictions on visas for Russian
officials linked to the invasion. In his attempt to pressure Putin and
Russia to withdraw, Obama had come up empty again. He had not put any
power behind his policies. And he may have forfeited any Russian
cooperation in the Middle East.
Why
at critical times has Obama conducted diplomacy in this way? Final
answers will have to await the release of his papers decades hence, but a
few factors come to mind. First, in these cases, Obama publicly
articulated ends but ignored or slighted the development of the means to
achieve them. That’s been characteristic of his governing style. Think
of the failed rollout of the Affordable Care Act last fall. In domestic
policy, a failure to match means to ends can lead to falling approval
numbers. In foreign policy, it can lead to the perception of
fecklessness, which can severely limit a country’s effectiveness.
Secondly,
in these cases, domestic political considerations may have impinged on
Obama’s foreign policy decisions. He issued his “red line” warning to
Syria in the wake of Republican attacks that he was displaying weakness
toward Assad. His Republican challenger Mitt Romney had accused him of a
“lack of leadership” and a “policy of paralysis.” During the last
month, Obama may have been responding to John McCain, Lindsay Graham and
other Republicans who attacked him for showing weakness toward Putin
and in the Ukraine. These critics advocated even louder speech, but they
usually did not offer substantive alternatives to what Obama was doing.
Third,
Obama, particularly in the case of Putin, may have fallen into the trap
of personalizing his international adversaries. There is no question
that some of Putin’s policies—including his support for Assad and his
apparent to desire to restore the old Soviet Union—run counter to what
the United States and any proponent of democracy and human rights would
like to see happen. But Obama—again prodded, perhaps, by Republican
critics—has inserted Putin into that pantheon of demonic foes that
includes Fidel Castro, Mao Zedong, Saddam Hussein, and Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad. That has obscured past areas of cooperation, and made
future cooperation much less likely. Kaiser Wilhelm was no bargain
either, and Theodore Roosevelt knew it. But he also knew that he had to
be handled carefully, and if handled carefully, could even occasionally
prove useful to the United States. Obama, and much of the rest of
official Washington, forgot that lesson in dealing with Putin.
Obama
and American diplomacy may still emerge unscathed from the crisis in
the Ukraine. Putin, fearful of the E.U.’s and America's disfavor, may
opt for an autonomous rather than annexed Crimea. Or he may annex Crimea
and leave the East Ukraine alone. That will be a setback, but not
necessarily the beginning of a new twilight struggle with the Russians.
Putin could, however, attempt to stir up trouble in the Eastern Ukraine
and to encourage a partition of the country. Here, finally, is the
question for the future: Is the Obama administration preparing for that
possibility by drawing up with the relevant European countries a
sanctions strategy that could quietly deter Putin from moving ahead? Or
will it settle again for angry declamations and denunciations?
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