THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
THE PRESIDENT’S FOREIGN POLICY PARADOX
By
Walter Russell Mead
Mr. Mead is a professor of foreign affairs and humanities at Bard College and editor at large of the American Interest.
March 29, 2014
More than five years into his presidency, Barack Obama still wrestles with the foreign-policy contradiction that has dogged his administration from the beginning: The president has extremely ambitious goals but is unusually parsimonious when it comes to engagement.
Commendably, President Obama is not satisfied with the global status quo and wants a world fundamentally different than the one we live in. He wants a world in which poverty is on the wane, international law is respected, and the U.S., if it must lead, can do so on the cheap, and from behind.
To get to this world, Mr. Obama wants nuclear proliferation stopped, new arms-control agreements ratified, and the eventual abolition of nuclear weapons. He wants a tough global climate treaty that will keep carbon emissions at levels low enough to prevent further global warming. He wants the Arab-Israeli dispute settled and a new relationship with Iran. He wants terrorism to be contained and Afghanistan to be stable when the Americans leave. He wants to reassert U.S. power in the Pacific, and to see China accept the territorial status quo. He wants democracy advanced, human rights protected, poverty reduced, women empowered, and lesbians and gays treated better world-wide.
This is a transformative agenda that would resonate with visionary American presidents like the two Roosevelts and Woodrow Wilson. But while Mr. Obama embraces a powerful and compelling global vision, he also seeks reduced American commitments and engagements overseas. He wants substantial cuts in military spending and wants to reduce America’s profile in Europe and the Middle East.
This is a paradox, but it is understandable. Mr. Obama is channeling the voters. Just as Americans want to eliminate the federal budget deficit without cutting Social Security or Medicare, they want a more peaceful and democratic world with less heavy lifting from the U.S. Who wouldn’t want an easier life in a nicer world?
Unfortunately, it’s hard to transform and democratize the world while saving money and reducing overseas commitments. A world based more on the rule of law and less on the law of the jungle requires an engaged, forward-looking, and, alas, expensive foreign policy. If, for example, you want to put the world on the road to abolishing nuclear weapons, you have to make sure that nonnuclear states like Ukraine don’t have to worry about land-grabs from nuke-wielding neighbors like Russia.
When Ukraine agreed to give up its “legacy” nuclear weapons—missiles and warheads placed on Ukrainian territory when it was part of the Soviet Union—the U.S., U.K. and Russia pledged to protect its territorial integrity. That promise is clearly a dead letter, and it just became much harder to persuade countries that beautifully phrased treaties signed by great powers can replace nuclear weapons as instruments of self-defense.
Even more troubling is the belief that a peaceful world can be painlessly built without political heavy lifting at home or abroad. Two of the five veto-wielding Permanent Members of the U.N. Security Council—China and Russia—are aggressive, undemocratic countries with significant territorial claims against neighbors. They also consider reducing American power and prestige as one of their most important national interests.
The authority and legitimacy that come from U.N. mandates won’t exist where Russian and Chinese interests are engaged, and so the U.S. will have to choose between disengaging on issues like the occupation of Crimea (and future territorial moves by Russia and China) and taking action outside the U.N. system.
Mr. Obama is unintentionally making it harder for himself and future American presidents. His appealing vision of an easy, cheap and beautiful world order helps build expectations that no real world president can achieve. The disillusionment that follows when those expectations aren’t met reinforces the cynicism that makes it hard for all presidents to build public support for national efforts abroad.
Successful American foreign policy not only demands sacrifice and risk, but it also inevitably brings failures and setbacks. The values and interests that Americans care most strongly about can’t be defended without a foreign policy that sometimes taxes our wallets and tests our will. But engagement isn’t guaranteed to make things work out. The world is complicated, foreign policy is hard, and Americans even at our best are neither omniscient nor omnipotent.
The White House is shocked by the Russian campaign against Ukraine and the administration’s inability to predict or counter Vladimir Putin’s moves. Mr. Obama is experiencing what the president in other contexts has called a “teachable moment.” Perhaps it will bring about a more sustainable approach to foreign policy. But President Obama created unrealistic expectations for himself in happier times—democracy in the Middle East, destruction of al Qaeda, victory in Afghanistan, greater American popularity abroad, a reset with Russia, pivoting to Asia—all while making deep cuts to defense budgets. This will weigh on him now.
Mr. Obama came into office telling voters what they badly wanted to hear, which was that on foreign policy, they could have it all. No risks to be run, no adversarial great powers to oppose, and no boots on the ground. Now he must tell them that he, and they, were wrong, and he must choose. Does he give up on some of his dreams for improving the world, or does he begin to urge the country to pay a higher price and run greater risks to make the world better and safer?
The truth is that he—and we—will have to do some of both. As a country we are going to be working harder than we wanted in a world that is more frustrating than we hoped.
Mr. Mead is a professor of foreign affairs and humanities at Bard College and editor at large of the American Interest.
