Judy Asks: Has Obama Finally Discovered Foreign Policy?

From his 2009 inaugural address onward, U.S. President Barack Obama has talked about foreign policy. But he has consistently overestimated his ability to achieve his ends by rhetoric and underestimated the value of using overwhelming force against people who respect the sword more than the pen.

If the Islamic State threatens “American citizens, personnel, and facilities” in the Middle East and could pose a threat to the U.S. homeland, then why stress that the United States will not have combat forces in Iraq? Either the Islamic State is a real threat to the United States, in which case Obama should use any means necessary, or it is not, in which case listing the things that make the jihadists uniquely evil is an empty gesture.

The same applies to Ukraine. When Obama said in June that “the United States is absolutely committed to standing behind the Ukrainian people and their aspirations,” did his words mean anything? When he said in August that “a military solution to this problem is not going to be forthcoming,” did he wonder why Russian President Vladimir Putin took the opposite view?

The problem is not that Obama has failed to discover foreign policy, but that he has failed to learn how to harness diplomacy and force together.

Throughout his presidency, U.S. President Barack Obama has significantly engaged on one major foreign policy issue after another.

In 2009, he spent enormous amounts of time working on the revamp of U.S. policy toward Afghanistan, as well as some time on a “reset” of relations with Russia. Since then, it has been—to quote British historian Arnold Toynbee’s definition of history—“one damn thing after another,” as Obama has been kept occupied with the U.S. extraction from Iraq, talks on Iran’s nuclear program, drone strikes and the raid that killed former al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, the NATO-led intervention in Libya, the attempted U.S. pivot to Asia, and much else.

Whether the public side of these efforts has been well handled and whether the results of the policies have matched the intensity of the efforts are open questions. But the notion that some have that Obama has only recently woken up to the need to make foreign policy a priority is a mistaken one.

No, U.S. President Barack Obama has not finally discovered foreign policy. He has discovered public opinion and attendant political pressure.

The so-called Islamic State does not present a materially greater threat to the United States today than it did one month ago, before its savage beheadings of U.S. journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff. What has changed is that Americans want revenge for the killings and are more fearful of possible attacks against the United States. These two sentiments—magnified by sensationalist media reporting before a midterm election—have forced the president to act.

Most telling is the high level of public support for air strikes against Islamic State forces inside Syria. Interventionists on both sides of the political spectrum in the United States have tried to portray this as a public abandonment of isolationism because Americans previously opposed air strikes against the Syrian regime. But taking revenge on a group that has killed two Americans—unavoidably helping Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the process—is entirely different from intervening in a civil war against Assad and assuming responsibility for postconflict Syria.

This leads to two more questions. First, how long will Americans feel the way they do today? And second, what will Obama do if and when public attention moves elsewhere?

The United States appears to be tired of foreign policy. The general feeling in the country is that the costs of former president George W. Bush’s attempts to reshape the world after the September 11 attacks were too high.

The job of the current president, Barack Obama, is therefore to manage the transition to a diminished U.S. role in international politics—from the global policeman to just one great power among others. Obama has sought to end wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and to limit America’s responsibility for crisis management and upholding the global order.

But U.S. retrenchment has opened up a power vacuum that has been filled not by like-minded partners prepared to share the burden but by forces who are hostile to liberal democracy. In the Levant, the breakdown of order has allowed the most ruthless fighters to gain the upper hand. Russia feels emboldened and is using military means to regain control over Ukraine. In Russia’s shadow, China is slowly but surely changing the status quo in the South China Sea and East China Sea.

These developments led to a downward spiral that was starting to threaten Washington’s credibility as an international actor, making even the country’s closest allies wonder whether they can still count on the United States. That’s why Washington has reemerged to help Europe in its wrestling match with Russian President Vladimir Putin and to fight the Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria. But these engagements may be short-lived as they are reactive rather than driven by a broader vision of the role of U.S. power in the world.

To paraphrase Russian Marxist revolutionary Leon Trotsky, Barack Obama has learned that while he may not be interested in the world, the world is interested in him. The U.S. president has been reluctantly pulled back into Iraq after spending his first six years in office disengaging from that country. Syria may not be far behind. Obama has wisely subcontracted the Russia and Ukraine dossiers to Germany and the EU.

Obama’s focus on nation building at home and leading from behind abroad reflects a general U.S. sentiment that domestic issues should take priority. The president is unlikely to suddenly and seriously reengage in foreign policy. His approach—shared by his close-knit White House team—is to view foreign policy through a domestic lens, especially a party-political one. Obama has not risen to be a national leader.

This is both surprising and unfortunate. Given that he is already becoming a lame-duck president, one would expect Obama to act in the one policy arena where he is relatively supreme: foreign policy. His failure to do so is not all bad, as the United States is still dealing with the legacy of an overactive national security policy, and Obama is wise to avoid operations that will further sap U.S. treasure and lives. He will be president for two more years and will have to devote more time, thought, and action to foreign policy.

Despite his fiery speeches, Barack Obama has not produced a coherent foreign policy or convinced his adversaries that he means his words.

The U.S. leader has spent the first six years of his presidency “retrenching” and avoiding U.S. engagement. Under his watch, the United States has withdrawn from Iraq and is now pulling out from Afghanistan. America’s role in Libya was decisive but minimal by U.S. standards, while a threatened operation in Syria never materialized.

Obama alone shouldn’t be blamed for retrenchment. In truth, it was not just the president but the nation that was tired of former president George W. Bush’s expansionist policy and his war on terror. Obama’s caution is, in many respects, a reaction to Bush’s adventurism.

However, it is clear now that excessive caution can be dangerous, as it is destroying allies’ trust in the United States and its global role. Obama’s failure to act in Syria meant that the Gulf states no longer believe that America has the stomach to fight. Middle Eastern countries are therefore hesitant to join the international coalition proposed by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to fight the militant Islamic State. Turkey has already said it is staying out.

Meanwhile, the 2009 “reset” with Russia led America to make certain concessions but produced no reciprocity. The reset only encouraged Russian President Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine while dismissing warnings of how the United States would react.