Obama’s revolution in American strategy

[babylonsister]

http://www.salon.com/2012/01/10/obamas_revolution_in_american_strategy/singleton/

Obama’s revolution in American strategy
So much for “World War III” and “the Long War”
By Michael Lind


President Obama concludes a news briefing on the defense strategic guidance, Jan. 5, 2012, at the Pentagon. (Credit: AP/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)


While the media has focused on the Republican presidential primaries, offstage the greatest revolution in American foreign policy in a generation has occurred, with little discussion or debate surrounding its announcement last week by President Obama.

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In announcing the new orientation of American security strategy last week, the president emphasized that the U.S. will maintain its position as the leading military power in the world; no president, in this generation, could do otherwise. What is striking, however, is the speed with which the Obama administration has not only wound down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan but repudiated the post-1989 consensus.

According to the new vision of American defense, the U.S. will reorient itself from fighting wars of nation-building and counterinsurgency in the Muslim world to focusing on balancing the power of rising states in East Asia (read China). This reflects the classic logic of realpolitik, not neoconservative hegemonism or neoliberal Wilsonianism. The shift in emphasis from quasi-colonial nation-building, which requires many American boots on the ground, to strategies that rely more on local allies, special forces and the (morally and legally problematic, it should be said) use of drones represents another break with the strategy of the Bush/Cheney years.

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American strategy is a work in progress, and the ultimate shape of America’s next national security policy will result from struggles in Congress and the courts as well as this and future presidential administrations. But Barack Obama deserves credit for quietly bringing to a close the misguided bid for quasi-imperial hegemony that led America astray into the sands of Iraq and Afghanistan.

As I have argued elsewhere, Obama is an Eisenhower Democrat, owing more to an older generation of moderate Eisenhower or Rockefeller Republicans than to New Deal Democrats than to New Dealers like Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. In domestic policy, this is a flaw, inasmuch as Obama is drawn to the traditional moderate Republican obsessions with balanced budgets and privatized provision of public goods. But in foreign policy, the Modern Republican legacy of Dwight Eisenhower, who sought a low-cost “New Look” strategy in the Cold War, and Richard Nixon, who sought to cut America’s losses in Indochina and to base American strategy on realpolitik, is of more relevance to today’s world than the kind of overcommitment symbolized by John F. Kennedy’s grandiloquent boast in his first inaugural address that Americans would “pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” Even before the Great Recession, Americans were unwilling to pay any price and bear any burden to ensure a global Pax Americana. That may explain why, outside of the neoconservative circles, criticism of the Obama Doctrine have been so limited. The American people are tired of foreign wars and ready for nation-building at home.

[bemildred]

1. I guess we are not making our own reality any more. nt

[babylonsister]

2. Hello, bemildred! And I guess that's a good thing?! I

do remember Lind as a big critic, so thought this was worth posting.

[bemildred]

3. Indeed.