The Foreign Policy Difference

[rmncwrtr]

Not sure if this has been posted or not, but this article (opinion piece) was in the WSJ today. Fouad Ajami writes about the foreign policy differences of Obama and McCain. It's worth a read regardless of what candidate you support.

Edited September 11, 2008 by rmncwrtr

[kublaicon]

i realize that this is an opinion piece but this is by no means an unbiased comparison of foreign policy as i initially believed. answering very few questions, this is a one sided picture and simply put writes off Obama as way too liberal and too... i believe the word was 'aloof' to even be considered. also the underlying theme that Obama never served as military shows. Fouad Ajami himself does not have an unbiased view of things... and is fairly outspoken in support for the war in iraq. this article is utterly worthless.

 

[akhalteke]

i realize that this is an opinion piece but this is by no means an unbiased comparison of foreign policy as i initially believed. answering very few questions, this is a one sided picture and simply put writes off Obama as way too liberal and too... i believe the word was 'aloof' to even be considered. also the underlying theme that Obama never served as military shows. Fouad Ajami himself does not have an unbiased view of things... and is fairly outspoken in support for the war in iraq. this article is utterly worthless.

 

1) Its an Opinion piece douche-bag

 

2) Your 1st tip should have been the picture ofthe barrel chested McCain waving the flag and Obama looking like he was dropping a barbed wire turd.

[akhalteke]

3) It is actually a pretty good article if you ignore any bias.

[mattp]

Yup. A good read. Thanks, Romancewriter.

 

For sure, one of the fundamental differences between Obama and McCain is that Obama HAS said he'd apologize to the world for what George Bush has done and he HAS said that the U.S. cannot aspire to dominate the globe militarily whereas McCain has said that we can and should dominate the world and that we have nothing to apologize for. The writer suggests Obama's position in this regard would be the weaker of the two. I disagree.

[mattp]

I'd like to see some more serious discussion of the surge. Here's a start:

 

Guardian editorial

 

It's be refreshing to see McCain and Obama talk about these matters with a recognition that it is not as simple as "we can win," or "we should get out with dignity."

[tvashtarkatena]

The article, other than being just another plug for McCain, has the fatal flaw of assuming the American's somehow favor unilateralism and are strangers to internationalism. More accurately, America is split down the middle on the subject; hillbilly drug addicts who can't recognize through their methed out haze that 8 years of strident, radical unilateralism have fucked us in the ass, and Us, the smart ones who've actually had a passport stamped at least once in our lives.

 

If you thought that was elitist, you should probably just die of a meth overdose in your trailer.

[akhalteke]

Mr. Steele was obviously in one of the provinces that were turned over to the Iraqis. He makes some good points and makes some incorrect assertions. IE Is is any better now than a year ago? "Probably not." WTF is that? Obviously a little research would have been prudent here. I think that the increase of Iraqi security is a good thing. It means that we can get them independent and get the fuck out of there.

[akhalteke]

The article, other than being just another plug for McCain, has the fatal flaw of assuming the American's somehow favor unilateralism and are strangers to internationalism. More accurately, America is split down the middle on the subject; hillbilly drug addicts who can't recognize through their methed out haze that 8 years of strident, radical unilateralism have fucked us in the ass, and Us, the smart ones who've actually had a passport stamped at least once in our lives.

 

If you thought that was elitist, you should probably just die of a meth overdose in your trailer.

 

Pass the sudafed

[mattp]

Regardless of whether you think TVash is being bombastic or not, Alhalteke, wouldn't you say that the last 50 years of history pretty clearly debunk the Reagan-Bush-McCain idea that U.S. military dominance will get what we want and diplomacy is for chumps? I know you like the strong posturing they suggest, but can you really say it has worked or will work?

[billcoe]

Regardless of whether you think TVash is being bombastic or not, Alhalteke, wouldn't you say that the last 50 years of history pretty clearly debunk the Reagan-Bush-McCain idea that U.S. military dominance will get what we want and diplomacy is for chumps? I know you like the strong posturing they suggest, but can you really say it has worked or will work?

 

Uhhh, it has been working since ww2 Matt.

 

Nice find Mel. I thought the artical was weak on specifics and was an attempt to show deep thought by being written as if for a university audience. As far as Obama being the "Commander and Chief", I too wish he had more experience as well doing ...anything. The choice of Biden was a good one which helped alleviate some of my concerns. Somewhat but not fully.

 

Full text:

 

"OPINION

 

The Foreign Policy Difference

By FOUAD AJAMI

September 10, 2008; Page A15

 

The candidacy of Barack Obama seems to have lost some of its luster of late, and I suspect this has something to do with large questions many Americans still harbor about his view of the dangerous world around us. Those questions were not stilled by the choice of Joe Biden as his running mate.

 

 

To be sure, the Delaware senator is a man of unfailing decency and deep legislative experience; and his foreign policy preferences are reflective of the liberal internationalist outlook that once prevailed in the Democratic Party. To his honor and good name, Sen. Biden took a leading role in pushing for the use of American military power in the Balkans when the Muslims of Bosnia were faced with grave dangers a dozen years ago. Patriotism does not embarrass this man in the way it does so many in the liberal elite. But as Bob Woodward is the latest to remind us, it is presidents, not their understudies, who shape the destiny of nations.

 

So the Obama candidacy must be judged on its own merits, and it can be reckoned as the sharpest break yet with the national consensus over American foreign policy after World War II. This is not only a matter of Sen. Obama's own sensibility; the break with the consensus over American exceptionalism and America's claims and burdens abroad is the choice of the activists and elites of the Democratic Party who propelled Mr. Obama's rise.

 

Though the staging in Denver was the obligatory attempt to present the Obama Democrats as men and women of the political center, the Illinois senator and his devotees are disaffected with American power. In their view, we can make our way in the world without the encumbrance of "hard" power. We would offer other nations apologies for the way we carried ourselves in the aftermath of 9/11, and the foreign world would be glad for a reprieve from the time of American certitude.

 

The starkness of the choice now before the country is fully understood when compared to that other allegedly seminal election of 1960. But the legend of Camelot and of the New Frontier exaggerates the differences between Richard Nixon and John Kennedy. A bare difference of four years separated the two men (Nixon had been born in 1913, Kennedy in 1917). Both men had seen service in the Navy in World War II. Both were avowed Cold Warriors. After all, Kennedy had campaigned on the missile gap -- in other words the challenger had promised a tougher stance against the Soviet Union. (Never mind the irony: There was a missile gap; the U.S. had 2,000 missiles, the Soviet Union a mere 67.)

 

The national consensus on America's role abroad, and on the great threats facing it, was firmly implanted. No great cultural gaps had opened in it, arugula was not on the menu, and the elites partook of the dominant culture of the land; the universities were then at one with the dominant national ethos. The "disuniting of America" was years away. American liberalism was still unabashedly tethered to American nationalism.

 

We are at a great remove from that time and place. Globalization worked its way through the land, postmodernism took hold of the country's intellectual life. The belief in America's "differentness" began to give way, and American liberalism set itself free from the call of nationalism. American identity itself began to mutate.

 

The celebrated political scientist Samuel Huntington, in "Who Are We?," a controversial book that took up this delicate question of American identity, put forth three big conceptions of America: national, imperial and cosmopolitan. In the first, America remains America. In the second, America remakes the world. In the third, the world remakes America. Back and forth, America oscillated between the nationalist and imperial callings. The standoff between these two ideas now yields to the strength and the claims of cosmopolitanism. It is out of this new conception of America that the Obama phenomenon emerges.

 

The "aloofness" of Mr. Obama that has become part of the commentary about him is born of this cultural matrix. Mr. Obama did not misspeak when he described union households and poorer Americans as people clinging to their guns and religion; he was overheard sharing these thoughts with a like-minded audience in San Francisco.

 

Nor was it an accident that, in a speech at Wesleyan University, he spoke of public service but excluded service in the military. The military does not figure prominently in his world and that of his peers. In his acceptance speech at the Democratic Party convention, as was the case on the campaign trail, he spoke of his maternal grandfather's service in Patton's army. But that experience had not been part of his own upbringing.

 

When we elect a president, we elect a commander in chief. This remains an imperial republic with military obligations and a military calling. That is why Eisenhower overwhelmed Stevenson, Reagan's swagger swept Carter out of office, Bush senior defeated Dukakis, etc.

 

The exception was Bill Clinton, with his twin victories over two veterans of World War II. We had taken a holiday from history -- but 9/11 awakened us to history's complications. Is it any wonder that Hillary Clinton feigned the posture of a muscular American warrior, and carried the working class with her?

 

The warrior's garb sits uneasily on Barack Obama's shoulders: Mr. Obama seeks to reassure Americans that he and his supporters are heirs of Roosevelt and Kennedy; that he, too, could order soldiers to war, stand up to autocracies and rogue regimes. But the widespread skepticism about his ability to do so is warranted.

 

The crowds in Berlin and Paris that took to him knew their man. He had once presented his willingness to negotiate with Iran as the mark of his diplomacy, the break with the Bush years and the Bush style. But he stepped back from that pledge, and in a blatant echo of President Bush's mantra on Iran, he was to say that "no options would be off the table" when dealing with Iran. The change came on a visit to Israel, the conversion transparent and not particularly convincing.

 

Mr. Obama truly believes that he can offer the world beyond America's shores his biography, his sympathies with strangers. In the great debate over anti-Americanism and its sources, the two candidates couldn't be more different. Mr. Obama proceeds from the notion of American guilt: We called up the furies, he believes. Our war on terror and our war in Iraq triggered more animus. He proposes to repair for that, and offers himself (again, the biography) as a bridge to the world.

 

Mr. McCain, well, he's not particularly articulate on this question. But he shares the widespread attitude of broad swaths of the country that are not consumed with worries about America's standing in foreign lands. Mr. McCain is not eager to be loved by foreigners. In November, the country will have a choice between a Republican candidate forged in the verities of the 1950s, and a Democratic rival who walks out of the 1990s.

 

For Mr. McCain, the race seems a matter of duty and obligation. He is a man taking up this quest after a life of military and public service, the presidency as a capstone of a long career. Mr. McCain could speak with more nuance about the great issues upon us. When it comes to the Islamic world, for example, it's not enough merely to evoke the threat of radical Islamism as the pre-eminent security challenge of our time. But his approach and demeanor have proven their electoral appeal before.

 

For Mr. Obama, the race is about the claims of modernism. There is "cool," and the confidence of the meritocracy in him. The Obama way is glib: It glides over the world without really taking it in. It has to it that fluency with political and economic matters that can be acquired in a hurry, an impatience with great moral and political complications. The lightning overseas trip, the quick briefing, and above all a breezy knowingness. Mr. Obama's way is the way of his peers among the liberal, professional elite.

 

Once every four years, ordinary Americans go out and choose the standard-bearer of their nationalism. Liberalism has run away with elite culture. Nationalism may be out of fashion in Silicon Valley. But the state -- and its citadel, the presidency -- is an altogether different calling.

 

Mr. Ajami is professor of Middle Eastern Studies at the School of Advanced International Studies, The Johns Hopkins University. He is also an adjunct research fellow of the Hoover Institution."

[mattp]

Uhhh, it has been working since ww2 Matt.

 

There's where you and I disagree. I believe we need a strong military to protect our interest, but it has been an obvious disaster to use it as we have in places like Vietnam and Iraq, and less obvious perhaps, but I think similarly ineffective in trying to intimidate Iran, or any number of troublesome adversaries all around the world. Is Russia going to back down in Georgia for fear of a U.S. intervention? Will we be able to keep China from buying our oil in the middle east through threat of force or might we do better with diplomacy and dollars? Is Hugo Chavez shaking in his boots? Are the terrorists more or less likely to want to show how badass they are by striking against the U.S. now? Are we more or less likely to gain the cooperation of our former allies the next time we want something?

 

I hope that in the next 50 years we will attempt more diplomacy and less military deployment.

[billcoe]

wouldn't you say that the last 50 years of history pretty clearly debunk the Reagan-Bush-McCain idea that U.S. military dominance will get what we want and diplomacy is for chumps?

 

No - we have been successful as a country and for 50 years we have used both the military and diplomatic channels. That is not to say we have been perfect. I use the word successful...and we have been by anybody's estimation. Not perfect.

[rbw1966]

I agree with Bill. The cold war was not won by diplomacy alone. Nor was the Cuban Missile Crisis. Had we not a strong military things might be dramatically different today.

 

[mattp]

Agreed on both counts, RBW. The Cold War and the Cuban Missile Crisis - two instances where we did not actually engage in combat -- turned out well. Our recent engagements -- like Iraq, Somalia, Lebanon -- turned out worse than "imperfect," wouldn't you say? And our President's "with us or against us" rhetoric after 911 -- do you call that simply "imperfect" or was it in fact a bad idea?

 

Clearly, there are known knowns and known unknowns... errh... I mean we don't know what would have happened if at any point we'd done something different. But I think it is a mistake to tell the world "we don't care what you think" and a disaster for our politicians to tell our people that "we can and should rule the world."

 

Wolfowitz Doctrine

[JoshK]

What is particularly sad is how BushCoInc. has applied the "fuck off, we'll do what we want" doctrine to not only our enemies, but our allies. No single nation is going to be able to maintain power over the world in the coming 50 years or so. Buiding our alliances stronger and working with our allies is what will keep us ahead.

[Winter]

A strong military works pretty well as a deterrant to the invasion of the homeland, but pre-emptive invasions over seas seem only to weaken the military and threaten national and economic security.

[tvashtarkatena]

America has had so much fucking smoke blown up its ass regarding how much of a military we need. It's now just a big, cost plus bidness, nothing more.

 

I just drove through an 80 square mile Army ammunition depot in Hawthorne, NV. Thousands of house sized bunkers. And that's just one depot.

 

In what universe would we ever need that much ordnance? In case the Mexicans or Canadians or, Dios Mio, the CUBANs ever decide to invade? Like, you know, when the Russkies come pouring over the pole like in Red Dawn?

 

Uh, yeah, God Bless America and all that drivel.

 

 

 

[billcoe]

What is particularly sad is how BushCoInc. has applied the "fuck off, we'll do what we want" doctrine to not only our enemies, but our allies. No single nation is going to be able to maintain power over the world in the coming 50 years or so. Buiding our alliances stronger and working with our allies is what will keep us ahead.

 

Well spoken.

 

I think we all agree that the current US policy of "we're angry douchbags and don't care what you, our friends or enemy's, say or do, we'll take care of it any way we damn well see fit" is one of the most counterproductive long term strategy's available to us 99% of the time.

[fear_and_greed]

In the not too distant future when you're a bankrupt nation, the powers that be will just decide the only way out will be to wage war with the largest of your foreign debt holders. Declare the accounts balanced and continue to force feed you non stop sports and reality TV.

 

[akhalteke]

In the not too distant future when you're a bankrupt nation, the powers that be will just decide the only way out will be to wage war with the largest of your foreign debt holders. Declare the accounts balanced and continue to force feed you non stop sports and reality TV.

 

...and you will continue to be the little pimple on our ass.

[bradleym]

3) It is actually a pretty good article if you ignore any bias.

 

hah! if you remove the bias then nothing remains. this article is a jingoistic hackjob, dressed up in some high-falutin' lipstick. i don't know anything about this guy, but would suppose from this read that he is a dis-credited neocon, who is angry that his cozy, simplistic view of the world has been so thoroughly discredited by events and results.

 

the author sets up (yet again) a false dichotomy between the 'warrior' and the defeatist from the left. he dresses his argument up in subtle and reasonable sounding language, but he no more cares about the real subtleties of the historical picture and the present situation than cheney does.

 

he portrays mccain's rival as a 'post-modern', arugula-eating, elitist and 'aloof' strawman with no military experience (as though that were some sort of requirement to understand the foreign situation), who will always shrink from the use of force and who feels guilty about what has happened since 9/11.

 

he also apparently believes that nationalism is a good thing, and expects his audience to agree. there is patriotism, there is healthy love of country, but nationalism is pure evil, folks, and has been employed by nutjobs for a couple of hundred years now to dupe and manipulate the public into supporting evil and myopic actions, not just in this country, but everywhere.

 

ultimately, the writer appeals to a past, simpler time when men were men and knew how to take care of things (o tempora, o mores), but now we're called upon to become uncertain, moral relativists who no longer believe in our 'exceptionalism' and who will become weak if we heed the siren call to being cool and modern.

 

and to add to the farce, he then claims that mccain will be nuanced whereas Obama is glib. mccain delivers a simple message that rings true, whereas Obama is befuddled by his desire to appeal to foreigners.

 

none of these assertions is correct, or recognizes the subtlety of the situation, the error of our ways, nor does it take note of the fact that hundreds of thousands of non-americans have died since 9/11 due to our wrong-headed and very simplistic actions. they didn't need to die, but they are nonetheless dead now.

 

the only thing the writer is correct about is that mccain may in fact be in tune with the majority view, and that will win him the election. whatever. might makes right.

[mattp]

I think the question here is this: can Obama talk about "the foreign policy difference" that was noted in the editorial cited above?

 

As soon as someone says "we've been following a mistaken path" the alarm bells go off and many folks think the speaker "hates America" or will be "weak on defense." Even our esteemed BillCoe and Mr. RBW balked at my suggested criticism of the US' overall posture, though I clearly wrote that I believe we need to maintain a strong military and there's a good chance our assessment of the recent US involvements won't differ by near as much as how we'd want to talk about them.

 

McCain can say "America First" ... "We must Stand up to Russia..." "Losing in Iraq is not an option..." It plays well.

 

How does Obama talk about the reality that it is not that simple -- assuming that he actually wants to?

[tvashtarkatena]

Obama speaks very clearly and plainly about his foreign policy plans: pull out of Iraq, defeat Al Quaeda and stabilize Afghanistan for starters. Repair international friendships as a second course.

 

That doesn't make a lick of sense at all to me.

[akhalteke]

Obama speaks very clearly and plainly about his foreign policy plans: pull out of Iraq, defeat Al Quaeda and stabilize Afghanistan for starters. Repair international friendships as a second course.

 

That doesn't make a lick of sense at all to me.

 

1) He changed his mind; His view are very similar to McCain's now

 

2) Defeat AlQueda? Why didn't we think of that?

 

3) Stabilize Afghanistan. Now were talking.

 

How.