Foreign policy is a bit like insurance. Most voters don’t think about it very much, and it doesn’t make the front page news, until something really bad happens. Foreign policy–in particular, foreign policy failures–have much to do with any president’s legacy. Upon assuming office, Bush had a real passion for tax cuts, legalizing Mexican illegal immigrants, and moving Medicare and Social Security towards privatization. Instead, after 9/11, he became a “war president,” and his deep unpopularity stemmed in large part from the long duration and indifferent results of the Iraq War.
Obama has never apparently thought much about foreign policy before becoming President. His passions were personal and domestic: a quest for identity through inner-city black power politics. To the extent he has expressed thoughts about foreign policy at all, he has been vaguely anti-imperialist, anti-military, and pro-Third-World. Such views dovetail nicely, after all, with his domestic politics. In addition, he fancied himself during the presidential campaign as the master of nuance, whose soft touch and appreciation for complexity stood in sharp contrast to Bush’s expressions of American exceptionalism.
How’s Obama doing? Well, perhaps still angry at his father’s treatment under British rule of Kenya, he recently, and without provocation, insulted the British Prime Minister, our long-standing ally in a great many wars and crises.
Now, in a story not widely reported, he’s formally committed to continuing American military support for Georgia, a nation run by the madman Saakashvili with whom we share few interests. This action’s only strategic importance is that our presence there is considered extremely provocative by its Russian neighbor. Everyone now pretty much acknowledges that Georgia started the war in South Ossetia last summer, that it is an indefensible country that must make peace with its large neighbor, and that any commitment thereto would further extend our thinly stretched military leading to a possible disastrous clash with the world’s second largest nuclear power. No change to believe in here.
On his centerpiece concern of Afghanistan, for no apparent reason, Obama has publicly insulted its Prime Minister, Hamid Karzai, apparently shifting the blame for our lackluster results in Afghanistan to this unlikely scapegoat. This kind of comment suggests someone unable to switch his tone from the variously permissive venues of academic hall, senior staff meeting, and public square. In other words, you don’t think out loud when talking about other nation’s leaders. Further, the content itself evidences willful ignorance, letting Pakistan’s occasionally disloyal intelligence operatives off the hook, and, to be fair, not grappling with our own mistaken strategy and tactics. Anyone genuinely concerned with U.S. counterinsurgency must notice that the U.S.’s extensive use of aerial bombs and penchant for heavy firepower routinely kills innocent rural Afghans and further alienates them from our goals and the Karzai government.
Finally, his economic policies have annoyed the Chinese, Germans, and French. Chicago politics did not require ideological choices rooted in principle, but rather chiefly consisted of payoffs to aggrieved ethnic constituencies. After leaving Chicago, as U.S. Senator, Obama focused on himself, the lunacy of the Iraq War, and uncontroversial projects like the Lead Free Toys Act. Now he must deal with genuine, principled, and likely irreconcilable conflicts regarding a complicated and worsening economic crisis. I predict many more stumbles, some with real consequences.
How could this all be? Even I’m a bit surprised. I would suggest that Obama is an example of what teenagers call “a legend in his own mind.” He never really considered these issues deeply. And his political life has been characterized by incubation in super-liberal Hyde Park, relatively liberal Illinois, nonideological Chicago ethnic politics, and a successful confrontation with an uninspiring GOP candidate in the general election. Obama’s always been introspective, race-obsessed, and self-obsessed as evidenced by the tortured prose of his first book, Dreams of My Father. But foreign policy requires more than brains and self-knowledge, but empathy, perspective, good sense, a deep store of knowledge, a good decision-making process, and a sense of limitations. For America, at this time, it calls above all for humility. Nothing in Obama’s policies or personal story exemplify much of this, nor does he have the personal failures, setbacks, and chastening confrontations with disaster that gave men like George Bush Sr., Harry Truman, and Richard Nixon a great deal of foreign policy horse sense.
Obama’s a conventional and very lucky politician, surrounded until recently by a sycophantic press corps. In his chosen arena, he has mostly faced opposition from weak and (with the exception of McCain) scandal-ridden competitors. Throughout his adult and political life he’s been coddled in one way or another by the high hopes and guilty fears of liberal whites. This is bad training and has bred in Obama an overinflated ego and sense of ability. This schtick won’t fly so much overseas, not least because, for the rest of the world, Obama’s simply the head of a very powerful nation with policies that many oppose for reasons of perceived interest rather than bad faith. His words won’t soothe foreign nations and foreign peoples, because they are much more focused upon the ways obscure U.S. policies may harm their interests. Worse still, a great number of foreigners want to see the U.S. fail because of lesser motives like pride and envy. Obama thinks that he can get a pass on this last piece because he too is one of the erstwhile oppressed, but I would suggest that it’s pretty hard to play that card when travelling by Air Force One and commanding the still mighty wealth and power of the United States.
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Nicely said. It will be interesting to see how much diplomatic leniency will be provided to him while he’s still trying to get his feet in the stirrups, if they ever reach. I think what he does receive will be garnered chiefly as a result of ambassadors and heads of state attempting to avoid the egg on your face syndrome because they were so deftly wooed by the teleprompter or by true socialists nursing the spread of their plague.
Notice the craftsmanship of Karzai’s reply, whatever you think of him. Diplomacy 101 is now in session.
He’s a classy guy and has an aristocratic lineage, Karzai, a rare treat today. I also think he’s as reasonable as it gets in that part of the world, and he should be supported, not least because there is no viable alternative that is also friendly to the U.S.
Obama’s a conventional and very lucky politician, surrounded until recently by a sycophantic press corps.
He reminds me of movie stars who undertake absurd projects that bomb at the box office because they believe the hype about themselves. When everyone around you sucks up to you, when the media write glowing stories about you, it’s hard not to fall into a frame of mind that tells you can do no wrong. You imagine you are such a genius that everything you say and do will cause the results to fall neatly into place. Hasn’t the New York Times canonized you?
While I don’t like analyzing public figures in terms of their psychology, Obama makes it hard not to. There is a sense that everything he says or does isn’t about the ostensible subject, but rather about his emotional need. For him, the political is the personal.
Driven by personal deficit filling, he is both angry and at a loss when faced with a line not in the script, one that doesn’t match the self-image he is still trying to construct. I perceive him as having a borderline personality disorder, a condition in which everything and everyone revolves around oneself.
That’s especially dangerous in foreign affairs, where his admiration society is not in charge. To be effective in that arena, a politician needs to be analytical, objective, strong but flexible. He has to get outside himself, see things from others’ viewpoint, whether benign, hostile, or some combination. None of those qualities cohabit well in someone who must believe that his magic touch will overcome the ignorance, inexperience, and emptiness inside him.
Let’s not forget Obama’s complete lack of understanding in the Middle East. First he says that no one suffers more than the Palestinian people. Then he says he is all about a 1-state solution. Then he backs off and says he’ll support whatever brings peace. Then he claims he is for Israeli security. But he is willing to talk to Hamas and Iran, two supporters of terror and avowed enemies of Israel. John Kerry comes for a visit and accepts a letter from Hamas. The Sec. Hillary comes in and bad-mouths Israel on a state visit.
Obama, and the complete lack of trust in his policies for Israel, is likely a strong reason Netanyahu was elected in Israel.
Apparently Obama’s plan that the Israelis and Arabs would smoke a peace pipe together and start getting along did not quite pan out.
Let’s try this again, shall we:
For all his multy-culty, citizen-of-the-world schtick, Obama is surprisingly Amero-centric. He also lacks social nuance and has a poor sense of humor, both of which surprise me in an Ivy League grad. Compare Obama to his polar opposite, Ronald Reagan, who had an affable, respectful manner with foreign dignitaries, and everyone really.
I think the Hollywood analogy is a good one, but it extends probably to high school for Obama. He’s like this very bright black kid surrounded by white liberals who all want a token friend, for him to be a success, and who probably fawned on every word he said, and this continued at Univeristy of Chicago Law School–where he did nothing of note, I know, I was there–in the Senate, in the campaign, and as President. Now that we’re realizing he’s raising taxes, the economy is in free fall, and his promises do not match reality, he’s starting to slip. His prickly response to anyone that dares to question him–his first visit ot the press, for example, or the stuff about “needing to figure out what he wants to say” on AIG–is a cross between college Kabuki Theater protestations of offense by NAMs and the typical sociopathic CEO who will brook no criticism. Dangerous.
I like how he condenscendingly announced that he wasn’t going to the G20 to “lecture” the other nations, but to “listen” to them, as if this was some special dispensation he was affording them.
You know I thought him saying that he wasn’t going to lecture but listen was possibly more a clever ruse than anything else, covering up the fact that he really has nothing to bring to the table. By stating it in the way that he did he is instead implying that he does have all the answers but wants to be the beneficent listener and let the little fish have a chance of swimming in the big pond. Another stroke towards “renewing” our “global image”.
As far as a personality disorder I read this interesting article on that:
http://www.globalpolitician.com/25109-barack-obama-elections
“Finally, his economic policies have annoyed the Chinese, Germans and French.”
The first is disconcerting, the other two, meaningless. China has all the cash-the G20 is little more than an overbaked multiple of, well, the G2.
If the US taxpayers qua AIG weren’t subsidizing French and German banks to the tune of 100 cents on the insurance dollar, Sarkozy and whatshername would be working the soup lines.
Say hello to the Queen, eat some duck, and move on.
Perhaps I’ve missed something. What was “insulting” about the DVD gift?
I think the problem with the DVD gift was, first, that British DVD players use a different standard than US, and second, that it was just a bunch of movies. Usually diplomatic gifts are less pop-culturey. Then again, I’m just guessing, I don’t know what sorts of gifts are usual.
This all seems quite sensible to me. And correct.
Okay… will next up be an essay on why Hillary’s copied Obama’s stupid mistakes and gaffes? Apparently Obama’s psychology is infectious.
tehag
[...] I wrote something on this earlier this year, and it’s notable that Obama’s experience with the presidency is much like the rest of [...]