Last month President Obama delivered the most important foreign policy speech of his second term. The address he delivered at Fort McNair’s National Defense University in Washington DC was significant because it outlined his broader vision for the major changes he believes must be made in American foreign policy going forward. While it remains to be seen if the president will win the approval of US Congress, he needs to implement these changes, as I believe all of them are essential elements of a truly modern, forward looking American foreign policy.
Last month President Obama delivered the most important foreign policy speech of his second term. The address he delivered at Fort McNair’s National Defense University in Washington DC was significant because it outlined his broader vision for the major changes he believes must be made in American foreign policy going forward. While it remains to be seen if the president will win the approval of US Congress, he needs to implement these changes, as I believe all of them are essential elements of a truly modern, forward looking American foreign policy.
In the very broadest sense, President Obama tried to close the door on the post-9/11 era of militaristic responses to both real and perceived foreign threats. Instead of continuing to flex America’s military muscles, the president wants to pivot towards a greater reliance on the use of America’s soft power, such as more vigorous diplomatic initiatives and increased foreign aid. In other words, President Obama wants to move away from short-term treatments of symptoms and focus instead on longer-term salves of the underlying causes of America’s problems abroad.
But demilitarising American foreign policy will not be easy because the ‘war on terror’ bureaucracy, which has grown exponentially in Washington DC over the past 12 years, has also developed many powerful supporters on both sides of the aisle in Congress. In an age of across-the-board budget cuts like the recent sequestration, which also cut into military expenditures, this bureaucracy can be counted on to fight tooth and nail against any further erosion of its funding.
Furthermore, as my left-leaning friends are quick to point out, President Obama has also played a role in the foreign policy militarisation process by authorising the 2010 troop surge in Afghanistan, as well as the increased use of drone strikes in non-combatant countries like Pakistan and Yemen. While my friends here at home and abroad also fault President Obama for not shutting down the detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay, I would contend that this was not due to any lack of effort on President Obama’s part, but rather Congressional opposition.
But regardless of whatever role he may have played in past reactions to foreign threats, what is important is that President Obama now wants to bring to an end this chapter of America’s post-9/11 history. The president and his advisers have recognised that while the past 12 years of martial responses to foreign terrorist threats may have helped Americans ‘feel’ safer, they have not actually reduced the number or the regions of the world from where these terror threats emanate. While the al-Qaeda network of terrorists was primarily located in Afghanistan immediately after 9/11, on the heels of the Iraq invasion it has metastasised and spread to other nations in the Middle East as well as many countries in Africa.
By declaring a ‘war on terror’ in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, President Bush created a climate of fear that allowed him to have free rein over when, where and how to use America’s vast military resources. That climate of fear, in turn, made it easier for Bush to win re-election as president, as well as public support for the use of heinous ‘extraordinary measures’ like rendition, water boarding and the indefinite detention of suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay.
But the basic problem with the Bush Administration’s use of American military forces as a response to terrorism was the foolhardy assumption that America could also control all of the unpredictable events that occur all around the world. Who could have predicted the Arab Spring? In fact, President Obama’s biggest worry today is the rise in Islamic extremism in North Africa and the Middle East that has occurred in the wake of those uprisings.
To his credit, President Obama recognises the limits of military power and the harm to America’s standing around the world caused by the use of torture and drone strikes. He stopped using phrases like the ‘war on terror’, put an end to the use of rendition and water boarding and tried to shut down Guantanamo Bay immediately after he took office in 2009. He also withdrew American military forces from Iraq and is currently in the process of doing so in Afghanistan. Furthermore, he has refused to allow America to be drawn into the Syrian civil war, despite signs that Islamic extremists tied to al-Qaeda are gaining strength there.
President Obama has instead renewed his focus on diplomatic solutions by charging his Secretary of State, John Kerry, with the tasks of reviving the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks and working with Russia to find a diplomatic solution to the civil war in Syria. During his speech last month, the president also outlined the steps he is taking to transfer authority for drone strikes from the CIA to the Pentagon and to once again try to begin the process of shutting down Guantanamo Bay by either trying or freeing the suspected terrorists imprisoned there.
Since the Pentagon’s rules of engagement don’t allow attacks that endanger civilians, I foresee fewer drone strikes and far fewer civilian casualties. Meanwhile, President Obama will need Congress’s approval to either free or move suspected terrorists from Guantanamo Bay to America for trials and imprisonment. For our nation’s sake, I hope he gets it. As for the emerging news of the secret Prism surveillance programme? That’s a topic for a whole other colimn...
Charles Laffiteau is a US Republican from Dallas, Texas who is pursuing a PhD in Public Policy and Political Economy. He previously lectured on Contemporary US Business & Society at DCU from 2009-2011.
