In a series of fascinating interviews with Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic magazine, titled 'The Obama Doctrine', President Barack Obama has sought to defend his view of America's role in the world and in particular in the Syrian civil war. As a number of commentators have noted, he displays a surprising arrogance considering himself, as Niall Ferguson observes, "the smartest person in the world, perhaps ever" whilst traducing former presidents, foreign policy advisors and US allies. In this he seems to have pre-empted Donald Trump who, when asked about the influences on his views on foreign policy on MSNBC, replied: "I'm speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain and I've said a lot of things".
So what is Mr Obama's world view? Mr Goldberg writes "He has a tragic realist's understanding of sin, cowardice, and corruption, and a Hobbesian appreciation of how fear shapes human behavior. And yet he consistently, and with apparent sincerity, professes optimism that the world is bending toward justice. He is, in a way a Hobbesian optimist". In his optimism he is echoing the flawed views of Steven Pinker's The Better Angels of Our Nature, that the wolf has been tamed by the dove in human nature and war may now be defunct. In an earlier column ("The dove and the wolf", September 2013) I had argued that Prof Pinker's view was flawed, as his "long peace" depended upon the British (in the 19th) and the US (after the Second World War) imperial pax, which provided the international Leviathan to tame Hobbesian anarchy and establish global order.
Mr Obama half-realises the US' imperial responsibility for providing this global good. But, says Mr Goldberg, "he is the rare president who seems at times to resent indispensability, rather than embrace it. 'Free riders aggravate me', he told me." Ironically, this again has been echoed by Mr Trump who recently "dropped another bombshell, questioning the US' continued role in NATO because Americans could no longer afford the cost", and "America should retreat from international commitments and focus on its internal needs, stand up to China and let Europe fend for itself". This is very much like Mr Obama's desire to switch the focus of US foreign policy from entanglements in Europe and West Asia and to "pivot to Asia'. It is also like his "mission" as he explained to Mr Goldberg "to spur other countries to take action for themselves, rather than wait for the US to lead". This led, as Mr Obama admits, to the Libyan fiasco.
Ultimately as he admits, and as Mr Goldberg emphasises, it is his Syrian policy by which his presidency will be judged. Mr Goldberg notes that the day when Mr Obama paused to implement his 'red lines' against Bashar al-Assad's use of chemical weapons was either "the day the feckless Barack Obama brought to a premature end America's reign as the world's sole indispensable superpower - or, alternatively, the day the sagacious Barack Obama peered into the West Asian abyss and stepped back from the consuming void". On the first, his critics are right about the loss of US credibility. As Joe Biden said "big nations do not bluff". But, the second view is also correct. Though it should emphasise that given Obama's withdrawal from Iraq, foretelling his desire to rid himself of what he saw as the West Asian albatross, he should have established a "no-fly zone" in Syria as the Turks had wanted which would have grounded Mr Assad's airplanes and the barrel bombs which led to so much civil destruction - but laid down no "red lines" that he was unwilling to enforce.
However, many are rightly questioning Mr Obama's withdrawal from Iraq which along with the Syrian civil war has led to the rise of ISIS. As Tamara Cofman Wittes who was deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern Affairs from 2009-12 states in a post on the Brookings web site: "After Iraq held elections in 2010, the Obama administration took a hands-off approach to Iraqi domestic politics…The president and Vice President Biden chose to do very little to constrain Maliki as he began to unravel the tentative political bargains between Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds within federal Iraq."
Much worse, the decision not to force Nouri al-Maliki to accept another SFO from 2012 - to replace the earlier one signed by President George W Bush - meant that the military beachhead which had been established after General Petraeus' "surge" had becalmed Iraq's sectarian wars and taken out al-Qaeda in Iraq, was no longer available to stop the latter's resurgence as ISIS. Russian President Vladimir Putin by contrast, realising the importance of such a military beachhead has used his military installations in the port of Tartus to shore up his ally Mr Assad, and left enough military presence behind to maintain Russia's military role in a region which Mr Obama has abdicated.
The great irony, however, as Ms Wittes points out, is that avoiding intervention in Syria - which Mr Obama saw as a slippery slope - has now led to the slipperiest slope of all in his fight against ISIS. He has recommitted "American blood and treasure to fighting Islamist extremists on the ground in Iraq, and now in Syria…An American president who, in May 2013, rejected the notion of a 'global war on terror' has now launched one." At the very end of his presidency Mr Obama has recreated "the very situation he inherited, decried, and swore to avoid: an escalating war against a vague terrorist enemy, with no geographic boundaries, no clear military or strategic objectives, and no principles or policies that might stop the slide down this slippery slope".
Meanwhile, Mr Obama's abdication of America's decades-old role as the dominant power in West Asia to maintain order, has led to Russia and Iran filling the vacuum. Mr Putin has been particularly deft in recognising that the Obama doctrine provided an opportunity to pursue his own geopolitical ambitions in the West Asia. By cooperating with Mr Obama's global agenda by facilitating the Iran nuclear deal and getting Mr Assad to give up his chemical weapons, and then through air operations to buttress his Syrian ally, he has become an essential player in any Syrian settlement. He hopes to use the leverage this provides to weaken the sanctions imposed after his Crimean invasion.
By contrast, Mr Obama is counting on "the arc of history" to sort out West Asia. The Obama Doctrine is thus that of a Pontius Pilate washing his hands of his personal responsibility for undermining Pax Americana.
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