Walter Russell Mead: Obama’s War
[Walter Russell Mead is Henry A. Kissinger senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World. He blogs at The-American-Interest.com.]
“Vote for a Republican,” my grandfather used to say, “and you get a depression. Vote for a Democrat and you get a war.” That seemed like a pretty good rule of thumb in the twentieth century: Warren Harding and Herbert Hoover gave us depressions, and Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and Jack Kennedy (with an assist from Lyndon Johnson) all gave us wars.
Then came the twenty first century and all bets were off. George W. Bush gave us two wars and a depression; President Obama has already presided over two slack economic years and now seems bent on giving us his first war.
It’s not that the President suffered from a war shortage, with two inherited conflicts (both of which I supported and continue to believe the US must fight) from his predecessor. He escalated the one in Afghanistan and has followed George W. Bush’s proposed timetable in Iraq. Now he has committed US forces to a third conflict in the Middle East in ways that eerily echo the last administration.
This President is, to be sure, doing what he can to distinguish his policies from a Bush administration he vociferously opposed when running for office. With open support from the Arab League, a vote from the Security Council and the support of France (though not of Germany, which also abstained at the Security Council), President Obama has a broader international mandate for action in Libya than President Bush had for Iraq. And President Obama understands one thing that President Bush never quite did: that American power works best when others perceive us as reluctant rather than over-eager to act. Getting the French and the British to take the lead won’t legitimize the military campaign in the eyes of Islamic militants, but letting others step out in front sometimes in not a bad thing for an American president to do.
Yet when it comes right down to it, this President’s approach is not all that different from the last administration’s on matters of peace and war...
Read entire article at American Interest (blog)
“Vote for a Republican,” my grandfather used to say, “and you get a depression. Vote for a Democrat and you get a war.” That seemed like a pretty good rule of thumb in the twentieth century: Warren Harding and Herbert Hoover gave us depressions, and Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and Jack Kennedy (with an assist from Lyndon Johnson) all gave us wars.
Then came the twenty first century and all bets were off. George W. Bush gave us two wars and a depression; President Obama has already presided over two slack economic years and now seems bent on giving us his first war.
It’s not that the President suffered from a war shortage, with two inherited conflicts (both of which I supported and continue to believe the US must fight) from his predecessor. He escalated the one in Afghanistan and has followed George W. Bush’s proposed timetable in Iraq. Now he has committed US forces to a third conflict in the Middle East in ways that eerily echo the last administration.
This President is, to be sure, doing what he can to distinguish his policies from a Bush administration he vociferously opposed when running for office. With open support from the Arab League, a vote from the Security Council and the support of France (though not of Germany, which also abstained at the Security Council), President Obama has a broader international mandate for action in Libya than President Bush had for Iraq. And President Obama understands one thing that President Bush never quite did: that American power works best when others perceive us as reluctant rather than over-eager to act. Getting the French and the British to take the lead won’t legitimize the military campaign in the eyes of Islamic militants, but letting others step out in front sometimes in not a bad thing for an American president to do.
Yet when it comes right down to it, this President’s approach is not all that different from the last administration’s on matters of peace and war...