The Water's Edge: Presidential Ironies in Foreign Policy

As the U.S. prepares for the 2012 election, the role of foreign policy on everything from democracy promotion to the drawdown of troops from Iraq and Afghanistan are on the table.  FPA contributor Daniel Widome examines the implications of these and other topics to be addressed in Great Decisions 2012.

 

by Daniel Widome

 

As the campaign for the Republican presidential nomination heats up, it’s hard to avoid flashbacks to the 2008 campaign. That year, both parties’ nominations were hotly contested affairs. Democrats competed among themselves for the title of “greatest break” from the foreign policy of George Bush, while Republicans sought to reinterpret or even run away from Bush’s legacy abroad. Obama’s victory in both the primary and general election rested in large part on his promise of change. But as has been noted in the space and elsewhere, his foreign policies—in both promise and delivery—were never as much of a clean break as many had either hoped or feared. The past month has offered a unique number of opportunities to glimpse just how far (or not) Obama has strayed from his predecessor’s path. Most notable, perhaps, is not how much Obama’s approach may resemble Bush’s in its strategy, but how much it differs in its execution.

Bush’s foreign policy was marked by two prevailing themes. The first was an aggressive campaign to combat Islamic terrorism—the infamous “war on terror.” He divided the world neatly between those countries that were with the United States in this fight, and those that weren’t, and those in the latter camp risked the wrath of his administration. It was under this rationale that Bush invaded Afghanistan and overthrew the Taliban, and it also justified many of the extra-legal rendition and interrogation procedures used against captured enemy combatants. The second theme was the overt promotion of democracy abroad. The invasion of Iraq was largely inspired by a desire to spread democracy—much as it was justified as a part of the fight against terrorism and as an effort to halt WMD proliferation. Bush’s democracy promotion theme, however, all too often contradicted his desire to fight Islamic terrorism. In many countries, unfettered democracy would have led to the legitimate victory of Islamist parties openly hostile to the United States, and Bush’s efforts to fight terrorism often forced uncomfortably close relationships with decidedly undemocratic (if not outright authoritarian) leaders.

 

The war in Iraq unified these prevailing themes of Bush’s foreign policy, and it also helped to define his presidency. Much of Obama’s electoral success in 2008 came from his opposition to the initial invasion and his pledge to end the war definitively but responsibly. But often overlooked in the waning days of the Bush presidency was the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) that his administration negotiated with the Iraqi government. This agreement laid down the framework under which U.S. forces could remain in Iraq, and it foresaw their removal by the end of 2011. But most political observers—in both parties—expected this deadline to be renegotiated well before it ever came, and many military experts felt strongly that a residual U.S. presence should remain in Iraq for the foreseeable future.

Since taking office, Obama has overseen the drawdown of U.S. forces in Iraq. Throughout this process, however, most experts and observers anticipated that a new SOFA would ultimately be negotiated that would permit U.S. forces to stay in Iraq beyond 2011 But this month, Obama announced just the opposite—the current SOFA would be honored, and aside from personnel to protect the embassy and consulates, all U.S. forces will leave Iraq by the end of the year. To be sure, this was not a foregone conclusion. U.S. officials were trying to negotiate a new SOFA, but the Iraqi government would not agree to give U.S. personnel serving in Iraq legal protections. Nevertheless, the degree to which Obama actually will honor his campaign pledge is surprising to Democrats and Republicans alike. And regardless of whether it is the correct strategic move at this particular time, the withdrawal from Iraq is striking for its consistency with Obama’s stated goals, and for the effectiveness in which it has been carried out thus far.

 

The “Arab spring” revolutions that have spread across North Africa and the Middle East this year in many ways exemplify the kind of democracy promotion that Bush advocated but was unable to achieve through U.S. power and influence alone. A big reason for Bush’s failure in this regard can be attributed to his decision to invade Iraq, and to the perception that the United States sought to impose its will on the Muslim world. And although Obama’s election was in no way responsible for the revolutions sweeping the Arab world, his presidency was in a much better position to offer legitimate support to grassroots Arab democracy movements than Bush’s ever could have been.

Among the Arab states undergoing turmoil this year, Obama has been most directly involved in Libya—an involvement that has been discussed extensively in this space. But this month, that involvement seems to have yielded its ultimate outcome with the death of Muammar Qaddafi. The comparisons with Iraq, while incomplete, nearly draw themselves. In one country, a direct U.S. invasion overthrew a dictator, but resulted in more than one hundred thousand deaths, cost hundreds of billions of dollars, and tarnished America’s reputation around the world. In another, the U.S. intervention was limited but critical, in support of a homegrown movement, and cost no U.S. lives. Qaddafi’s death does not mean that a democratic, peaceful Libya will automatically emerge, and the civil war there has been far from bloodless. But the contrast with Bush’s engagement in Iraq is stark, and not only in its outcome. U.S. relations with Libya warmed considerably during Bush’s administration, as that country gave up its illicit WMD programs. But in many ways, this was irreconcilable with Bush’s stark anti-terror philosophy, as Qaddafi had been one of the greatest state sponsors of anti-U.S. terrorism over the past 30 years. Instead of building relations with a terrorist sponsor, as Bush had done, Obama saw to his demise.

 

Bush’s anti-terror strategy consisted of more than invading states he believed were sponsors of terrorism. During his administration, enemy combatants abroad were killed or captured, with many of the latter finding themselves subject to torture at the hands of governments friendly to the United States or stuck in legal limbo in Guantanamo Bay. In the United States itself, the PATRIOT Act expanded the power of law enforcement to prosecute terrorism cases, and the administration participated in the illegal wire-tapping of the communications of U.S. citizens. Taken together, these policies resulted in a blurring of the line between military action and law enforcement. Although this was perhaps inevitable in a “war on terrorism,” Bush’s policies depended on this line remaining blurry, and he did little to clearly define them. This grew to become one of the Bush administration’s least popular strategies, and Obama pledged to reverse it.

As with so much else, however, the transition from Bush to Obama has been full of unexpected irony. Although Obama has formally ended the use of extreme interrogation practices on enemy combatants, he failed to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, and he has contributed to a further blurring of the line between law enforcement and military action. Earlier this month, a U.S. drone killed Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen. Awlaki was a charismatic al Qaeda recruiter who had mentored and inspired a wave of would-be suicide bombers in recent years. But he was also a U.S. citizen, having been born in this country. It is one thing (and not an indisputably legal thing, at that) to order the targeted killing of terrorists abroad, or even to order their long-term detention. But ordering the killing of a U.S. citizen, without offering that person the due process that is guaranteed under the Constitution, is something else entirely, and it is a legally murky action that would have been far more consistent with the Bush administration’s policies. But it was Obama who ordered Awlaki’s death. Indeed, the manner of his death—by missile, from an unarmed drone, in a foreign country—also marks something of a departure from Bush administration practices. Whereas Bush became more widely known for either invading terrorist-sponsoring states (Iraq) or allowing such states to harbor terrorists unmolested (Pakistan), Obama has ordered a significant increase in targeted drone strikes against al Qaeda leaders wherever they may be, in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia—just as he promised he would do when running for office in 2008.

It really shouldn’t be a surprise that aspects of the Obama administration’s foreign policy closely resemble those of the Bush administration. In foreign policy, there is something of a “reversion to the mean”—regardless of political party, a president will find that the strategic goals of the United States really do not vary much from administration to administration. And besides, Obama promised much less of a shake-up of U.S. foreign policy than many of his more liberal supporters may have acknowledged, or even been aware of. What is remarkable, however, is not only Obama’s remarkable consistency in sticking with the promises he laid out in his 2008 presidential campaign. It is also the degree to which he is carrying out Bush administration objectives—for good or ill—much more effectively than his predecessor ever did. Obama’s use of Special Forces to kill Osama bin Laden earlier this year boldly demonstrated this fact, but subsequent events have served to underscore it, and to highlight its irony. This irony makes the criticism of Obama’s foreign policy that has lately emerged from the Republican presidential field all the more puzzling. Such criticism perhaps says more about the state of the Republican field (or about the sorry predictability of presidential politics in general) than it does about Obama’s policy itself. If they were being honest with themselves and with voters, Obama’s would-be Republican rivals might instead be patting the president on the back.

Daniel Widome is a San Francisco-based writer and foreign policy analyst.