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Thursday, March 15, 2007

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Is it the idea or the execution of the idea?

If someone pointed a gun to my head today and demanded that I say who I think will be the president in 2009:

1) I'd be pretty annoyed, because I thought I had moved to a safe neighborhood;

2) I'd say Barack Obama

This hunch -- and that's all it is -- makes me want to know how Obama thinks about foreign policy. Which leads me to Michael Hirsh's cover story in the Washington Monthly about this very question:

There’s no doubt that Obama has the intellectual curiosity and self-confidence—not to mention the ideal public persona—to fundamentally reconsider American foreign policy. But at this point, for all his promise, he’s still, in some sense, a cipher. After eight years in the Illinois Senate and two in Washington, his foreign policy thinking, unsurprisingly, remains largely unformed. That [Obama advisor Samantha] Power and [Anthony] Lake—both hard-bitten political veterans, not starstruck newcomers—each found themselves gravitating toward Obama on the basis of a speech, a dinner, or a phone call suggests the level of despair to which both had sunk. Bush, it appeared, had so destroyed what was left of the existing system of international security that both Power and Lake, through their separate journeys, had reached a point where they sought a leader who might offer not a return to that system—as John Kerry cautiously did in 2004—but a wholesale reimagining of it.

In this impulse, they are far from alone. The last year has seen a slew of efforts by foreign policy thinkers, academics, journalists, policy wonks, and politicians to envision a new international security system, and a new U.S. foreign policy to go along with it. These varied proposals often have little in common except the assumption that, through some combination of the end of the cold war, the new threat of stateless terror, and the failures of the Bush years, the old system is dead, and an entirely new one must now be created. Intellectually, like the Khmer Rouge, we’re back at the year zero.

And yet, by assuming the need to go back to basics, many of these efforts, though not stinting in their condemnation of Bush’s unilateralism, unwittingly accept the underlying premise of his foreign policy. That premise, during the first term, was that the postwar system of international relations—a system that, since 1945, has helped give the world unprecedented peace and prosperity—was no longer an effective tool for dealing with the world of the twenty-first century, in particular the post-9/11 world. But what if that premise was just plain wrong? If so, then perhaps the international system, though already weakened when Bush took office, appears to be beyond salvation now not because of its own fundamental flaws, but because of the serious damage done to it by the unprecedented radicalism of Bush’s foreign policy.

In other words, it may be that what is most broken today is not the international system, but American stewardship of it. And that, at this pivotal moment for the nation and its place in the world, what’s needed is not an entirely new vision but, rather, something simpler: a bit of faith. Faith that with time, committed diplomacy, and—perhaps most important—some basic good judgment about the use of American force, the essential framework of international relations that got us through the cold war—and that almost any president other than Bush would also have applied to the war on terror—can be repaired.

Read the whole thing. As Kevin Drum points out, "He's actually making one of the most difficult kinds of argument of all, an argument that the current system is fine and doesn't really need big changes [except the people running the show]." Of course, this bears more than a passing resemblance to the argument made by many neocons that the ideas underlying Operation Iraqi Freedom were equally sound, but the Bush administration botched the execution.

I agree with Kevin that it's worth checking out -- but I'm less sanguine with Hirsch's argument that because the system worked well in the past, a recommitment to its structures means it will work well in the future. As I pointed out recently, some difficult adjustments are going to be necessary.

[Hey, aren't there parts of Hirsh's essay that bear an awfully strong resemblance to your Washington Post essay from December 2006?--ed. Well, it seems like that to me, but that could just be an incipient sign of overbearing egotism. Besides, Hirsh's underlying thesis is dissimilar from mine, so I'm willing to let it slide.]

UPDATE: I'm fascinated that some of the commenters to this post infer that because I think Obama will win implies that I think Obama should win. Let's just say that I reserve some doubts about Obama as the candidate for me.

posted by Dan on 03.15.07 at 03:26 PM

Comments:

This is interesting but very unfair to Samantha Power and Tony Lake. It's also a wierd argument; it's clear that institutions have to change as Dan himself notes in his new FA essay. Why? Well, 9/11 for one. Rwanda and Kosovo for another (the 1999 war only looks good by comparison with Iraq). The demise of the international financial institutions is a third reason. The reality that the novelty of a new and brilliant president will wear thin after a few years and the world will look for more substance is a fourth. Kagan wasn't all wrong; some of these problems we now have predate Bush. Anyway I think Hirsh does team Obama a favor. Change versus more of the same, reform versus inertia. This is an argument it will have and it is an argument it will win, hands down.

posted by: pt on 03.15.07 at 03:26 PM [permalink]

Dan, it is amazing for someone who holds Republicans to such a tough standard, how easy you are on Senator Obama. Senator Obama has no views on foreign policy that are not already part of liberal orthodoxy. As someone who follows politics, you should or already know this.

He supported intervening in the Sudan (a position which he no longer holds) but paradoxically thought intervening in Iraq was a bad idea. He has never voted for a trade agreement. He believes "talking" with our enemies solves all, without elaborating. He tries and so far is succeeding in being all things to all people. In Iowa, he is stressing the need to recognize the plight of Palestinians while at AIPAC he is talking about his committment to Israel's security.

Dan, you may want to take down your self-characterization on this website as a libertarian Republican. You are not a Republican and haven't been since at least 2004. Which, coincidentally coincided when you were up for tenure.

posted by: Ian on 03.15.07 at 03:26 PM [permalink]

Barack Hussein Obama, aka Barron in prep school, has hired Samantha -look-how-I-hit-all-the-left-liberal-buzz-points Power and Dan is all excited and thinks he has spotted a winner.

Come again??

posted by: Hmmm... on 03.15.07 at 03:26 PM [permalink]

Please, Dan. Anthony Lake?? Why not roll out Sandy Berger as the new standard of competence?

The hard truth is that at this historical moment, American foreign policy has to be more bellicose and threatening than the comfort level of most of our academic elite. We are in a "cold war" with people who are ready to, and do, "go hot" on a moment's notice. The only Democratic foreign policy bigwig who's worth a damn in this situation is Richard Holbrooke.

posted by: srp on 03.15.07 at 03:26 PM [permalink]

Am I the only one who was struck by the following passage of Hirsch's article where he relates Samantha Power's own recollection of her first meeting with Senator Obama??

Their [Obama and Power's] first meeting, several months later at a D.C. steakhouse, did not begin auspiciously. “His body language was not good,” says Power. “He had no desire to be there at all. It was, ‘Who the fuck is this person, this lily-livered Harvard softy, and tell me why I am meeting with her again?’” Still, Obama warmed up—it was supposed to be a forty-five-minute chat, but they ended up talking for three hours. “We sat down, and we started dinner. I was on my best behavior: I didn’t, like, order my trademark Jack Daniels. And then we just started talking. It was vintage Obama: question after question after question, starting with, ‘Who are you? I don’t get it. Bosnia? Whaaa? That’s weird.’ It ended up being a very personal discussion, oddly enough, but everything led to policy. That’s the way he comes to policy: What’s your story, and why do you tick the way you do? ... He’s what everybody says he is.” Before long, Power says, she had “drunk the Kool-Aid” on Obama. “At the end of the dinner, we’re walking out, and I said, ‘I’d love to help you in any way I can.’ He said, ‘That’d be great, maybe we could do some big think on a smart, tough, and humane foreign policy.’ I heard myself saying, ‘Why don’t I take a year off?’”

Two things strike me:

1) Samantha Power probably needs to be more reticient when talking to reporters. Assuming Hirsch didn't misquote her, I think she does Obama no favors by sharing that Obama, sitting down for a 1-on-1 dinner with her, initially and quite visibly seemed neither to know nor care who she was. (Also, she probably shouldn't appear in print using "F#@k" too many more times.)

2) Gosh! Despite the opening line of Dan's long excerpt of Hirsch's article:

There’s no doubt that Obama has the intellectual curiosity [ emphasis mine ]...to fundamentally reconsider American foreign policy.

it really seems to me that there should be doubt. From Power's recollections it would seem that, at least around late 2005, Obama had no particular intrinsic curiosity for foreign affairs. I mean, if Obama were personally curious on foreign affairs, then why on Earth would he have ever said "Who are you? I don't get it. Bosnia, whaaa? That's weird" to Samantha Power as she recounts how she spent the last decade of her life?! And on that note, while I have a tremendous amount of respect for people with spectacular 1-on-1 skills of persuasion (and he must be stunning if Power's so smitten with him despite the first impression "Bosnia, whaaa? That's weird"), I'm not enthused that Power's description of "vintage Obama" questioning centers on him eliciting a person's life story and why they care about an issue rather than factual and conceptual questions about said issue.

I mean, I have no doubt Senator Obama is a much, much more intellectually curious and quick-to-learn than the current occupant of the White House. And I realize that Senators/Presidents/etc. are very, very busy and can't know everything and, as such, should be judged in many ways on what staff they keep around them rather than what they know personally, but again: I was not enthused by Power's recollection of her first meeting with Obama.

posted by: Bill Kaminsky on 03.15.07 at 03:26 PM [permalink]

If someone put a gun to your head, would you stop making predictions for a while?

posted by: John F. on 03.15.07 at 03:26 PM [permalink]

If it were 2012 I'd agree with you, but it's not, and most Americans want their President—no matter how attractive a candidate he is— to have some experience running something, even if it's only a few crappy companies, a crappy baseball team, and the state of Texas.

So really the only question is whether or not Hillary is going to pummel him over his lack of experience during the primaries to the point that she can't turn around and put him on the ticket.

posted by: peter jackson on 03.15.07 at 03:26 PM [permalink]

I'm thinking that having run "a few crappy companies, a crappy baseball team, and the state of Texas" won't be enough in 2008. Sometimes these things go in cycles, and someone with some imagination, charisma, and curiousity might be able to beat someone whose c.v. is boardroom-certified.

Why has conventional wisdom seemed to have settled on the idea that being president is akin to being a CEO? I'm not aware of any evidence that suggests voters think that. Hillary Clinton is scared for a reason: we may be at a moment that charismatic smarts trump calculating smarts. And the candidates who've "run something" may lose out to the candidates with that je ne sais quois that suggests hope for some intellectually coherent policy.

posted by: Andrew Steele on 03.15.07 at 03:26 PM [permalink]

In other words, it may be that what is most broken today is not the international system, but American stewardship of it.

Or that what is most broken is the American system.

That is, I am much more interested in whether Obama (or anyone else) has anything new to say about democratic political reform at home.

I am not, of course, holding my breath.

I am tending to agree with your "if I had to say now" prediction.

posted by: MSS on 03.15.07 at 03:26 PM [permalink]