Obama's Foreign Policy Fog

Frederick W. Kagan had an interesting piece titled "The Fog" posted on the web site for the American Enterprise Institute. The article is scheduled for publication in the October 20 edition of The Weekly Standard. Here are some excerpts with commentary.

"Discerning Barack Obama's foreign policy in any detail," Kagan writes, "is far from easy. The great majority of his statements on the subject consist of criticism of the Bush administration." I have noticed this phenomenon myself. Instead of focusing on what he would do as President, Obama almost always goes for the attack on Bush. That's fine. We've got it. You don't like George Bush's foreign policy. But what will you do?

Well, according to Kagan, it is possible to get an idea of what a President Obama's foreign policy would look like. The most prominent feature, of course, would be putting diplomacy first. "Obama's declaration that he would meet with Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad 'without preconditions' defines his approach to the Iranian challenge," Kagan writes. Obama has since backed off of that statement, now moving closer to the McCain position of having lower level talks, something the Bush administration is already doing. "A similar emphasis on diplomacy characterizes Obama's approach to North Korea, Russia, and Lebanon," Kagan says.

The next major feature identified by Kagan is "Economic Sticks and Carrots." As Kagan puts it, "Obama recognizes that diplomacy will not always achieve his objectives and that it cannot be successful on its own. In such cases, his preferred course of action is to adopt or increase punitive economic sanctions on the offending regime." I would add that given the reluctance of many allies to apply economic pressure to any country, military force must remain on the table as an option.

Third, Kagan says, is "Small-Footprint, Limited Military Strikes." Kagan says Obama "...has repeatedly emphasized his willingness, even eagerness, to use military force in certain cases, but he is unwilling to have American soldiers on the ground in numbers anywhere except Afghanistan." Kagan goes on: "Obama has made much of his determination to stop or prevent genocide around the world, even if it means using military power. In practice, however, he does not appear to support deploying American soldiers in any numbers to enforce this determination." One then has to wonder, how would he do what he says he wants to do?

In Afghanistan, Kagan says, Obama "...has offered very little in the way of detailed proposals for winning the war there. In the second debate, he summed up the three points of his approach as being 'to get more troops into Afghanistan, put more pressure on the Afghan government to do what it needs to do, eliminate some of the drug trafficking that's funding terrorism.'" Kagan argues Obama's plan for Afghanistan amounts to stopping an open-ended commitment in Iraq to facilitate an open-ended commitment in Afghanistan.

Obama is equally unclear on Iraq's future, Kagan says, instead choosing to focus on withdrawing American troops. "Obama seems willing to accept a failed and even violent state in Iraq while insisting on an open-ended commitment to establishing a peaceful, democratic Afghanistan...," Kagan writes. In fact, Iraq is of much more strategic importance to the United States than Afghanistan is.

Finally, Kagan says, is a return to the 1990s. By this he means, as he says, "Obama's foreign policy principles are not new. Broadly speaking, they are a return to the principles that guided Bill Clinton's approach to the world, adjusted incompletely to the global changes that have occurred since Clinton left office." This makes sense. Many of Obama's foreign policy advisers are former Clinton foreign policy advisers.