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| President Obama Addresses Congress (File Photo) |
By Robert E. Kelly
In year 6 of his presidency, does Barack Obama have a foreign policy doctrine?
It is something of a Washington truism that presidents must have a “doctrine” attached to their name. And certainly, as presidents enter their “legacy” years – where Obama is now – pressure grows to find some kind of definitive statement of what the last messy six or seven years were all about. U.S. presidents enjoy enormous autonomy in foreign policy, unlike at home, where they face Congress and long-standing interests groups. So the space for their personal predilections to shape foreign policy are wide.
Nevertheless, it is often hard to figure out what this means – a grand strategy for the whole world and America’s place in it sounds like a Herculean metaphysical task, and changing events often dictate large swings in policy. President Jimmy Carter famously came in determined to focus U.S. foreign policy on human rights, but he morphed into an unexpected hawk due to the Iran hostage crisis and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The doctrine that bears his name today sounds nothing like what he says today. Similarly, George W. Bush entered the White House determined to focus on traditional great power politics, but emerged from the 9/11 catastrophe as a global democratic revolutionary.
Strategy is often defined as connecting ends to means. Bush may have wanted global democracy in his heart, but this was simply impractical for the United States to achieve. To force a level of realism and clarity on presidents’ foreign policy behavior, the U.S. Congress actually mandates a yearly “national security strategy” be published by the White House. But presidents rarely meet that goal, and often the NSS is windy and imprecise. The current one (PDF), the only one from this president so far, dates to 2010.
Read the full story at The Diplomat