Bush Administration

While we here at FP don't recommend eating disorders as an effective weight control technique, sometimes it's hard to pass up the canapés at those fancy Washington parties -- like GQ's "50 Most Powerful People in DC" cocktail blast at 701 last night. 

Of course, GQ's party had its own built-in trigger of the gag reflex for most Washingtonians: their names weren't on the list. (I talked with one of GQ's writers as she was working on the list, a conversation I enjoyed right up until the moment it was clear they didn't think I was list-worthy. As for the final product's, um, curiosities see FP's earlier take. But, Leon Panetta ahead of Hillary Clinton? Tom Donilon on the list, but his boss Jim Jones off it? Various worthy but random journalists and bloggers and not Tom Friedman or David Sanger? The Sidwell admissions director ahead of the GDS admissions director? Insiders know the truth ... even as they all hungrily pour over the list looking for their own names and those of their allies, enemies and worst of all, their friends.)

But when a glossy, man-perfume scented equivalent of a long hairy finger down your throat isn't readily available, then knowledgeable Washingtonians know there is always another place they can turn, the Capital's naturally produced form of Serum of Ipecac. Just follow the news until you develop the acute reaction to hypocrisy that is certain to launch away your own indiscretions in one or two turbulent but satisfying moments.

For example, here's a recipe for Capitulimia drawn from just what's going on around town today:

Take just one dose of insurance companies trying to suggest in print and broadcast advertisements that after years of making indefensible profits from literally killing people and destroying families with their policies (the one's they didn't actually deny to those who needed them), it is they who are actually looking out for the interests of Americans in need of health care.

Add one 30 second American Petroleum Institute commercial in which they actually argue that the pending climate bill might hurt consumers by producing more highly priced gasoline? After their record? While they should actually all be hovering in their basements waiting for the class action suit from the planet for selling a product they have known for years was destroying it?

Then sit down and take a listen to say, Rush Limbaugh complaining the media is making spurious, emotional, and uninformed attacks against him ... and that "the media" has too much power. The media? Who is he? Where does his power and obscene wealth come from? Appearances to the contrary, he is not a manatee sunning on a rock. 

If that hasn't done it, listen to one-time supporters of the havoc wreaked by the Great Decider's impulsive and catastrophic policies in Iraq or his ineffective blundering in Afghanistan as they criticize President Obama for actually taking some time to work out a sensible adjustment to tackling the mind-boggling challenges posed in the AfPak region ... challenges that were altered by the recent elections embarrassment in Afghanistan.

Or listen to Republican legislators responsible for the biggest deficits in American history and the collapse of the American economy, attack President Obama for doing what had to be done to clean up their mess.

Not there yet, go to Amazon.com and pre-order not only the Sarah Palin book but the upcoming books from President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, Hank Paulson, and Karl Rove. Then think about the millions that will be generated by these books. (In New York State, I seem to recall once upon a time in the days of "The Son of Sam" they passed a law blocking criminals from writing books allowing them to profit from retelling the tales of their wrong-doing. These aren't criminals, of course ... well, not all of them ... but what are we to make of millionaires who gutted the American economy making millions from telling us all how they did it?)

Still on the verge of relief but not quite cleansed? Well, pick up a paper and read about the fact that roughly $140 billion in compensation will be paid out on Wall Street this year, a record beating out the last peak year of 2007. (And while you're at it, flip back to the FT from a day or two ago and read Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein's call for more industry reform and ask yourself: was placing this oped at the time the bonuses were going to be announced just a little cynical? Do they really think we're going to fall for that kind of grade-school spinning -- even if he did make a number of good points.)

There, that ought to do it. Feeling better now? Lighter on your feet? Angry but empty? No need to thank me. Just another public service from your virtual friends here on the Internet who will always do what we can to ensure our Washington readers are ready for another day of making the rounds from the Four Seasons to the Palm to the usual receptions sponsored by the likes of the American Foot Odor Institute and the National Alliance for Getting Children to Make Their Beds. And for the rest of you outside the beltway, with America's health care system unlikely to be high functioning any time soon, it's probably a good idea to drop a few pounds and get into better shape. 

And here's our hint for turning what could be an eating disorder into a sustainable diet: just keep watching those headlines -- they're the world's most effective non-addictive appetite suppressant. If you follow Washington without losing your appetite, you're not paying attention.

TIM SLOAN/AFP/Getty Images

Foreign policy is a fast-paced business. Despite the fact that at least someone in the Obama Administration is actually celebrating the art of indecision, you can save the world with snap judgments if you know what you're doing.  I know what I'm doing. 

To demonstrate I will now solve some of the biggest foreign policy problems confronting some of the world's most important newsmakers in a matter of just a few seconds each. (I will also solve a few lower-grade domestic problems as well.) If you are an important figure on the international stage, just look for your name below. Next to it will be the advice you need in a couple of quick sentences. If you are not a world leader but know one, please feel free to forward this to them.

To Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan of the Pakistani Muslim League: If you don't like the provisions of the U.S. aid package, keep it to yourself. Your complaints are precisely how we know the deal has been constructed properly. (Hint: Turn back the Americans who are offering aid and you'll end up with those who want to make all future deliveries by drone.)

To President Barack Obama: If you think that George's war (that'd be Iraq) is likely to look better than yours (Afghanistan) in five years -- and that'd be my bet right now -- then you really do need to listen to the people calling for a change in strategy.

To Manuel Zelaya: Fair or not, your five minutes are just about up...unless you choose to start dating Kate Gosselin. (And if that is Plan B, I have to say, I'd stay locked in the basement of the Brazilian Embassy, too.)

To Kim Jong-Il: You tell Wen Jiabao you want one-on-one talks with the United States to establish peaceful ties as a prelude to returning to the nuclear arms negotiating table? No problem. Two steps: First, ask for them. Second, realize Michael Jackson wrote "The Man(iac) in the Mirror" for you. As in the "how many shrinks does it take to change a lightbulb?" joke, the punchline is that it's you who've really got to want to change.

To Jon Corzine: You don't get re-elected governor of New Jersey by attacking fat people. I have a two word clue for you on this front: Tony Soprano.

To Silvio Berlusconi:  Are you the one that's tanned now or is that just a red face? The ruling by the Italian Supreme Court stripping you of immunity from prosecution just because you are Prime Minister certainly seems likely to put a hitch in your mambo Italiano. With three trials going on that involve you or your holdings, you might want to start planning your post government career. (I know your wife has some interesting ideas for what to do with you ... or parts of you.)

To Donald Tusk: As Poland's Prime Minister dealing with a corruption scandal, you have learned some important truths: gambling always produces losers (in your case, the three ministers who have been forced out of your government for corruption) and you can't beat the house (even if you try by suggesting you'll fire the anti-corruption official who blew the whistle on your cabinet) ... especially if the house is run by the two who stole that stole the moon and you don't fit in with their plans. 

To Robert Mugabe: You say you want better ties with the U.S.? Well, you're going to need a long rope... Kim Jong-Il has a better shot at restored relations with the United States ... by a lot. Frankly, so does Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Frankly, so too does Rufus T. Firefly. Dictator, purge thyself.

To David Letterman: Ok, so far there's no rumors of foreign affairs in this story. But my advice to you is: continue doing just what you're doing. The openness is working...on the ratings...and on what's left of your image.  Silvio, you randy slimebag you, pay attention. Old men apparently can screw around with younger women if they are charmingly self-deprecating about it, not political leaders and not you. 

To Mazen Abdul Jawad:  You may have been condemned to 1,000 lashes in Saudi Arabia for discussing your (kinda gross) sex life on a tv talk show.   Here in America (see above), the same thing would actually get you your own talk show.  Time to consider relocating...almost anyplace else.  And speaking of Saudi outrages...

To Mohammed S. Al Sabban: If, as head of the Saudi delegation to the global climate talks, you are actually as reported going around saying if measures are taken to reduce world dependency on oil that the planet should offer aid to Saudi Arabia ... then get used to the idea that you are going to replace the woman who buried her husband in a rented suit as the living embodiment of laughable chutzpah.

To David Axelrod: Stay out of camera shot in photos about major foreign policy decisions. You're the president's right hand guy. He needs you: You have the "mind-meld" thing going, offer invaluable advice and by all reports are actually a good guy. Which is why what neither the president nor you need are the uncharitable whispers that you are out-Roving Rove in terms of day-to-day influence over administration operations. (Oh and to Karl Rove, re: your WSJ article that the GOP is winning the health care debate: There's a reason you guys are out. Wrong again. See the CBO report. The Obama-Baucus bill is getting closer and closer to being a done deal.)

AFP/Getty Images

I've got some real serious advice for my friends in the Obama administration: act quickly or the "dithering thing" is about to become this president's "vision thing."

For those of you who are too young to remember -- and I know this blog skews toward a younger, hipper crowd than the rest of FP's more staid, respectable, and credible offerings -- the "vision thing" became the brutal short-hand describing George H.W. Bush's supposed lack of vision. It was one of those terms that was so memorable that it slipped into those every day water cooler conversations and became an unshakable part of the conventional wisdom that helped make Bush 41 a one-term president.

We've seen the phenomenon many times before. Sometimes, the phrase is self-inflicted as was "vision thing" or "I am not a crook." Sometimes it is an image: John Kerry windsurfing, Michael Dukakis with silly helmet on. And as Gerald Ford and all these others discovered, the truth is not a defense. You can be, as Ford was, the best athlete ever to be president of the United States, a football All-American, and stumble down a flight of stairs or two and you are a clumsy doofus for the rest of your life.

Sticky phrases tied to potent concepts can undo a president or public figure as much as any action they take. Whether it's a reputation for micro-management or skirt-chasing, once one of these nutshell descriptions sticks, it never goes away.

The alarms started going off in my head regarding this when I saw Tom Ricks's post on the FP site earlier this week which was headlined "The Ditherer in Chief." In it, Ricks laid out with typical economy and insight, why Obama's "dithering" on settling on a strategy in Afghanistan or really moving forward in Iraq is a kind of unsettling counterpoint to George Bush's "panic" in the wake of 9/11. Ricks, who I believe readers should take very seriously on matters such as this, said that as a result of the president's seeming lack of decisiveness on these critical issues, he (Ricks) had become, for the first time, worried about Obama's foreign policy.

Ricks concluded by saying that if he were forced to choose, he'd take dithering over panic. But it was clear, he has become a member of an ever growing group, many of whom are extremely pro-Obama Democrats, that have grown impatient with the president's handling of those aspects of his presidency that have life and death implications for U.S. troops.

I should note, I am not personally of the same view. Provided the administration reaches a decision on its going forward strategy in Afghanistan in the next several weeks as Secretary Gates indicated this weekend that it would, I welcome the systematic assessment and reassessment of our situation, the reaching out for multiple views including those of our allies (as reflected in the comments of NATO Secretary General Rasmussen yesterday), and the recognition that it is worth the delay to come to the best possible solution. We've seen where impulse and dogma-driven reflex will get us. We should welcome the impulse to interject thought into the process as we should the apparent willingness to puncture groupthink by seeking divergent perspectives.

To me the issue is whether the decision is the right one or not. Which, as readers of this blog know, in my view is a much narrower mission in Afghanistan, a focus on getting a tolerable, semi-effective government in place in Kabul, and then moving more toward a counter-terror strategy that involves fewer locally-based forces and more over-the-horizon interventions be they drones or ship-based special forces operations as recently took place in Somalia.

But as mentioned above, the facts won't matter to opponents of the president or to the average voter who has bandwidth for little more than a twitter-length description of the president, a string of bits of conventional wisdom that constitute what passes for the total persona of the commander-in-chief.

Professor Obama and community-organizer-in-chief Obama are both compelling identities to many Democrats (and in many ways welcome ones). But they simply don't cut it on pressing national security issues.  The expectations of the public and the defense community which people like Tom Ricks knows so well may be conventional but they are unshakable. Leaders must lead. Decisions must be crisp. The human stakes are in fact undeniably high. Days and weeks do matter...and commanders need to show they "get it." And over all, you need to convey a sense that you have that "vision thing", a sense of where you want to go and that it doesn't take a seminar to reach every decision.

Part of the problem for Obama is that he started out headed in the wrong direction in Afghanistan and he needs to change course. There is no easy way to do it. And it may sting politically. But ultimately, courage carries a lot of weight and is one of the antidotes to the dithering argument.  Another potential antidote is offering up different, better stories and images. I am not sure why the Somalia operation did not get more play. It seems to have been a great example of good leadership and the U.S. military effectively doing their very tough job. Identifying the president more closely with the successes of the military will help (assuming they are real and he is truly behind them ... "Mission Accomplished" moments are precisely the kind this president ... and all presidents ... need to avoid.) And of course, the best potential antidote is more decisiveness whenever it is responsible.

It is not too late to keep this label from sticking. But it's getting there. 

JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images

The revelations of out of control behavior among the guards assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Kabul no doubt brought to mind the images of out of control behavior by guards at Abu Ghraib. But there is an important distinction. The guards at Abu Ghraib were U.S. military personnel. The embassy guards were hired guns, part of the outsourcing explosion that is transforming the way the United States conducts its foreign policy.

The embassy guards were not employees of the U.S. government, did not report up a chain of command to senior U.S. military officers who could make career-ending decisions for them, were not subject to the same rules as U.S. military personnel and, perhaps most importantly, blurred important lines about the nature and role of government.

As most people now know, they also allegedly engaged in "lewd and deviant behavior" featuring nudity, drunkenness, hookers, and other behavior more suited for the cast of a Joe Francis video than U.S. embassy security forces, particularly those in a dangerous environment or a country in which strict Islamic values played such a central role. Why it took a report from the Project on Government Oversight to call out these Guards-Gone-Wild and their employers at ArmorGroup, a subsidiary of Miami-based Wackenhut Services, Inc. is a question worth asking.

But the bigger question in the wake of this behavior and other examples of out of control contractors, most notably the cowboys from Blackwater, who allegedly killed as many as 17 Iraqi civilians while providing an escort for State Department personnel in Baghdad's Nissour Square, is about the centrality of outsourcing in the conduct of sensitive U.S. operations worldwide. 

The Congressional Research Service reported that well over half of America's manpower in Afghanistan, for example, is comprised of contractors -- almost 70,000 of them. They cited it as the "highest recorded percentage of DoD contractors in any conflict in the history of the United States." 

How did we get here? Well, some of it was clearly expediency ... beneath which investigation will reveal another level of expediency. The first level is the one cited by government officials hiring the contractors: they provide skill sets needed by the government and the ability to deploy human resources quickly in difficult circumstances. The second level is that by using contractors, the Bush Administration was able to field twice as many people in Afghanistan with half the political exposure. Headlines report troop deployments. They ignore the ArmorGroups and Blackwaters until they screw up, misbehave or start making obscene amounts of money ... all of which are part of the story of the Bush War on Terror.

But at another level, not only do they put America's goals at risk, they also raise important questions about fairly fundamental questions like "who has the right to legitimately use force?" Traditionally that's a prerogative reserved for states, notes Allison Stanger, professor of international politics and economics and director of the Rohatyn Center for International Affairs, and author of  the much anticipated One Nation Under Contract: The Outsourcing of American Power and the Future of Foreign Policy, to be published by Yale University Press next month. But by handing over a license to kill to big American companies, that line is blurred observes Stanger, which plays directly into the hands of America's enemies.

Stanger is not, it should be noted, an adversary of using outsourcing to leverage American government resources. Indeed, her much-needed upcoming book considers how broadly outsourcing has transformed the way government works in a wide range of issues including areas such as development where NGOs and other private sector players add a great deal of value. But she is a sharp critic of what she sees as outsourcing approaches that undercut America's foreign policy interests either by compromising values or raising risks. (See her recent U.S. News column "How the CIA Became Dangerously Dependent on Foreign Contractors" which addresses similar problems associated with the agency's use of contractors in covert programs to hunt down and kill al Qaeda members.)

Her point is simply that while it makes sense to leverage government resources with private sector capabilities in many instances, we need clearer rules and guidelines about how and when to do it. Her book could not be coming at a more auspicious time and one hopes that her work will get a close reading at State, the Pentagon, and from the leaders of the Intelligence Community.

AHMAD AL-RUBAYE/AFP/Getty Images

What's a guy to do when the right is right? Especially when it's right about what it's been wrong about for so long. Especially if it's right for the wrong reasons? Especially if it's right about something that the sensible center and a president you otherwise admire is so wrong about?  

The simple answer, of course, is to swallow hard, agree and change the subject. The other approach is to blog.

Blogging allows room for (a little) nuance. So here's where that begins: When I refer to the "right" above, I actually only mean one guy, although he himself is a pillar of the conservative establishments, George Will.

Specifically, I am referring to his op-ed today entitled "It's Time to Leave Afghanistan." In this instance, not only is he correct, he is ahead of the curve, a place that must be as shockingly unfamiliar to most of his followers as a visit to Afghanistan's Helmand province, a place Will correctly cites as a great case study in the futility of U.S. efforts in that tragically embattled land.

Yet, every so often Will hits the nail on the head and this is one of those times. And there is no greater proof to that than moments after the newspaper containing his column landed on my doorstep, I heard Joe Scarborough saying that the right was up in arms about it. This is where we get to the part about Will being right about what the right has been wrong about for so long. Because while Afghanistan is increasingly Obama's war (and will be only more so if he accedes to the recommendations of his battlefield commander Stanley McChrystal to up our troop commitments and other investments there), it didn't start out that way.

We entered the country in an understandable national spasm of anger toward al Qaeda and the Taliban after 9/11. Any president would have done that, I think. But rather than keeping the mission narrowly focused on exacting punishment and reducing the capabilities of the terrorists and their protectors in a swift and limited action, we accepted the idea, almost without debate, that America should wage a war on terror. The alternative approach, argued the right, would be to treat it as purely a criminal matter which would underplay the risks and produce inadequate responses. This is true, of course. Which is why they said it. But, it was a false choice. There is a middle ground. One can imagine targeted, tactical responses to specific threats that would likely be just as effective in reducing the risks to America and Americans ... or more so when you consider that myriad escalating and amplifying effects of pursuing the war strategy as we have.

As for Will being right for the wrong reasons, I can only speculate about his motivations, of course. They may be very narrowly founded on a desire to do what's in the national interest. I hope that's all there is to it and not a desire to further politicize the sensitive decision Obama faces on this issue (see today's lead story in the Times by Peter Baker and Dexter Filkins). It is in the interest of no Americans to see this war spiral downward into an even worse, more futile entanglement than it is. As Will correctly says, now is the time to reverse course, define goals even more narrowly and undertake the exit.  Keep resources nearby. Strike fiercely against imminent threats using the distance weapons and, where essential, special forces. But stop trying to win the unwinnable. Recognize that shutting one terrorist enclave only creates another somewhere else. Stop lying to ourselves about Hamid Karzai who is rapidly becoming as crappy a former American puppet as any in the long list of supremely crappy former American puppets we have ever propped up. Disconnect ourselves from the futile charade of saying we are trying to contain the poppy business when in fact what we are often doing is protecting its key players ... men who are certainly responsible for more deaths worldwide than all the terrorist enemies in the region.

And in so doing, move to a new footing in Pakistan, reduce the risk of our getting involved in or exacerbating that country's deep civil tensions. Focus on securing their nuclear weapons and reducing any threat they may pose to India, our most "natural" important ally in the region.

In short, President Obama should recognize that of all the mistakes made early in his administration, trading "the wrong war" in Iraq for "the right war" in AfPak was probably the biggest and that he has a chance to stop and reverse course now, based on what he has learned (and Admiral Mullen seems to know and imply through his public statements) and not just get out of the country, not just avoid an even longer-term involvement in this expanding war, but also to once and for all reject the Bush administration's to the "war on terror" not just in name but in deed.

Where there's a Will, there's a way.

MANAN VATSYAYANA/AFP/Getty Images

And Dick Cheney thinks he knows something about terror. Republican terror threats are for sissies. Even Tom Ridge is willing to admit ... some of the time ... that they kinda-sorta-maybe were overblown. (Ridge's now-you-see-em-now-you-don't revelations have permanently damaged him. Either he screwed up back in the day by caving to pressure to elevate the threat level or he has screwed up by misrepresenting the situation in his memoirs or he screwed up most recently by caving to pressure to back off the "explosive" admissions that he thought would sell enough books to pay for his retirement.) 

But Democrats have all the luck. They didn't want a national terror threat. They don't even like talking about the "war on terror" (most of the time). But they've got a doozy brewing that makes the country's post-9/11 post traumatic stress disorder induced inclination to look for a terrorist behind every potted palm look mild by comparison.

Yesterday, I walked across the campus of Columbia University in New York and amid the light blue and white balloons and banners fluttering in welcome of new students, amid the registration tables and the orientation sign-up booths, every so often there were large Purell dispensers. No explanatory signs. No instructions, just big honking containers of disinfectant crying out to every passerby to stop and make that next handshake a safer one. The absence of signs made it all the more ominous. Signs weren't necessary as they once were along highways when people were asked to call in and report "suspicious activity."

While this threat was as hard to see as was the one that had the Bushies in a swivet, you didn't need Karl Rove's classified Ouija board to magnify this one, a microscope would do. 

The other day a dean at a major DC-area academic institution indicated that he and others on his team had spent much of the summer developing the distance learning protocols they would employ if H1N1 virus required them to shut down their campus and send everyone home. At around the same time, I received an email from the college one of my daughters attends explaining just how they would tackle swine flu. Today, the city of New York, a city now reporting that perhaps 800,000 of its citizens caught the disease in the first phase of its appearance, announced a new set of guidelines for how they would handle the disease as it appeared again this flu season.

Estimates suggest that perhaps as many as 90,000 Americans could die of the disease this next time around. That may be high. Estimates of the severity of this pandemic have been inconsistent and fortunately, thus far the illness has not taken an extreme toll. But the nervousness is palpable. For example, take this CBS story of a school district in Long Island that has banned touching for the foreseeable future (of course, just after my daughters leave high school is when they decide to ban touching!)

Chest bumps. High fives. Hugs and handshakes. Glen Cove Middle School students Ali Slaughter and Hannah Seltzer say that's what friends do on the first day of school. But when students in the Nassau community return to school next week, the superintendent will be urging abstinence. Everyone from the tiniest tots to the biggest high school football players will be asked to limit skin-on-skin contact in an attempt to prevent the spread of swine flu when it re-emerges this fall.

Thus far, it seems authorities worldwide have responded swiftly to the pandemic and, even if it seems like they are over-reacting, their caution is not misplaced. Flu annually kills 250,000-500,000 people worldwide each year, 36,000 in the United States. And that's not when a particularly virulent strain comes along, such as the 1918 pandemic that killed perhaps 50-100 million people and infected perhaps 500 million.

The 9/11 attacks claimed fewer people than would die worldwide of flu on the average weekend. So, it is quite clear that the current invisible threat is a lot worse than the old invisible threat. But there is another way to look at all this. First, it casts the current health care debate in a different light. Having 50 million people who don't have health insurance (thus more reluctant to see a doctor and more inclined to seek free emergency room treatment) puts everyone else at greater risk. Having hospitals teetering near insolvency and cutting back services does likewise. When you think about the real threats to our homeland security a broken health system (especially in the context of the threats of not just epidemics but biological or WMD attacks) may be at the top of the list.

Next, if this epidemic gets as severe as some people worry, it'll very quickly overshadow Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, and the financial crisis. It'll become Obama's war and, absent a crisp, orderly, sustained response, his Katrina. There's no sign that's happening yet. It may not rise to that level. The response may be excellent and it could be one of the decisive factors in the 2010 elections in either case. But for the first time in years, a nation that has come to view threat level Orange as normal has started to get edgy over something bigger. Tell me Mr. Ridge, what color should we use to indicate to everyone that the threat could be real?

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

I think Paul Wolfowitz performs a useful service by thoughtfully and systematically examining the underlying flaws in the current conception of "realism" -- the hype surrounding it and the "policies" associated with it. If only someone had more effectively done the same with neoconservatism -- which, of course, was neither new nor, as it was practiced by the Bush administration, remotely conservative. (How could anything so politically and militarily risky, fiscally wasteful, and seemingly allergic to any principle, be called "conservative"?)

Reading Wolfowitz's piece, I kept thanking Providence for giving me a concentration in English in college rather than say, political science. I actually was taught what words mean. (In fact, being an English major taught me that "political science" may be the humdinger of all oxymorons ... even if calling "realists" realists and "neoconservatives" neoconservatives comes pretty darn close.) Economists have their "lies, damned lies, and statistics" and clearly, political scientists have their "lies, damned lies, and labels."

It's not just "neocons" and "realists" of course who are mislabeled or falsely advertising themselves. There is nothing "conservative" about the reckless fiscal policies of "conservative" champions like Reagan or Bush, nothing "progressive" about the New Deal nostalgia of many on the left, nothing "pro-life" about abortion opponents who also use a misreading of the Second Amendment to allow them stock up on assault weapons, nothing "liberal" about folks who think the answer to everything is greater government control of people's lives. Say what you may about the underlying beliefs, the labels are meaningless.

That said, if we can stipulate the labels are primarily forms of branding and positioning that are as related to the underlying realities as Madison Avenue claims of the health-benefits of smoking in the middle of the last century, then we can move on to the more relevant policy questions raised by Wolfowitz. These turn not on whether "realists" are more realistic than other policymakers but rather on whether the "realism" peddled to the public actually holds water as an approach.

(Continue reading...) 

Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images

Despite a growing desire on my part to avoid the cage-match side of blogging, it is hard not to respond to Christian Brose's post "What is David Rothkopf smoking?" Brose seems to have, in President Obama's words, become all "wee-wee'd up" over my article in Sunday's Washington Post. I respond, of course, as a public service because so much of what he said provides a useful insight into how far we have come since the days of the Bush administration and how desperate Bush apologists are to find a way to suggest that their man and the policies they promoted were not actually the nadir of American foreign policy.

I should note however, that I also do this reluctantly because I think Brose is a pretty good writer and a fairly thoughtful guy. Still, when someone suggests that I have been a member of "the foreign policy hoi-polloi that went into intellectual hibernation in 2004 and only awoke this January" I figure, it's probably OK to offer a few words on behalf of my views. (Although it does explain the acorn residue I found in my cheeks.) 

I will ignore for a moment the fact that Brose clearly is willing to spot the world the first term of the Bush administration as indefensible and focus on his core notion that somehow the years Condi was at State were almost indistinguishable in intent, concept and execution from what we have seen to date from the Obama team. It should be noted that coincidentally Brose was a speech-writer at State during the Bush administration.

Let's take his points one at a time:

• Brose opens with a snarky summary of my article. The thrust is: Obama foreign policy is not revolutionary and I am kissing the asses of the Obama administration. I refer folks back to the past eight months of daily blogging as evidence that I have no inclination to butter up the new team and regularly do not. He does not note that he spends the entire article kissing the wholly discredited asses of his former employers.

• He then goes on to wonder aloud how anyone who "thinks and writes about foreign policy for a living" could think Clinton or Obama are transforming U.S. foreign policy. I have to admit, whatever the flaws in their individual policies, I find it hard to see how anyone could think they are not. Does he really think these folks just picked up where George W. Bush and Condoleezza Rice and Dick Cheney left off? In Iraq? In Afghanistan and Pakistan? With their approach to engagement? With their commitment to multilateralism? With their approach to Guantanamo or torture? With their outreach to the Muslim world? With their commitment to reverse nuclear weapons proliferation? I could go on ... but will just take his main points in succession to continue in this vein.

• Brose lists Bush administration development "advancements" to suggest that they effectively covered the waterfront when it comes to reforming the development process. While Bush actually did some good here (and I didn't argue he didn't), that doesn't mean the work is done or that what the Clinton team is doing at State is not promising. The Obama team inherited an aid apparatus that was still deeply dysfunctional, underfunded and focused on missions that were not core. The QDDR process I mention in the article represents a commitment to strategic reevaluation that recognizes the fluid nature of international affairs today and seeks to institutionalize change in much the same way that the QDR does at DoD. Further, there is a massive amount of work that needs to be done if development policy is to be rendered effective in the current environment ... creating the ability, for example, to effectively do post-conflict reconstruction that so flummoxed the Bush administration for so long comes to mind, as does a civilian-side Goldwater-Nichols and other ideas that are currently being reviewed within State and the NSC process.

• His next paragraph argues that since the Bush administration participated in many multilateral forums that is the same thing as the Obama administration's commitment to the centrality of new partnerships. Can he actually believe that the Bush administration was a champion of multilateralism? By this same theory all people who go to church are virtuous and I, who talk a very good diet game, am actually 20 pounds lighter than reported this morning by the scale. Admittedly, there was a line in my article that was cut due to space considerations that I wish had been left in which said that while many of the current policies have roots in the past, what is happening now is very different because of the way it is being approached, the centrality it is being given, the degree of involvement of top officials, etc. Nothing illustrates this as much for me as the role emerging powers are being given. First, this is not a "Bush-era" inheritance. I know. Because I actually helped develop and run the first inter-agency process focused on U.S.-Emerging Markets relations during the Clinton years. Second, he cites a four-year-old Condi speech in which she mouths words he may have written about partners in the emerging world but seriously, wasn't he paying attention? At the time she did it, the perception that the U.S. was arrogantly acting apart from the rest of the world was near its apotheosis. The core concepts of Bush era foreign policy were of "us and them" and of our ability and willingness to effectively act alone or within sham coalitions to advance our interests. The core concept of the Obama administration is that just won't work anymore and that effective partnerships with a core group that includes new allies are the sine qua non of international progress.

• He then goes on to say that the administration has too little to show for its efforts. He minimizes restoring American relations with the world as if that weren't central to foreign policy. He then argues that this is not so meaningful because "cooperation has not always followed." Seriously? Will the Obama-Clinton restoration of America's relations with the world only be complete if everyone in the world cooperates with us always? This reveals his core misunderstanding of the nature of the kind of partnerships on which the Obama-Clinton team is seeking to build U.S. foreign policy. Also, in terms of not having much to show for their efforts, that's just ridiculous. Only seven months into their efforts U.S. policy has changed dramatically in Iraq and in AfPak, the administration has become deeply involved in the Arab-Israeli issue (which took the Bush administration about 7 years to discover), it has helped engineer an international response to the financial crisis, it has restored America's damaged reputation worldwide, the president's Prague and Cairo speeches represented dramatic breaks with the Bush past and set U.S. policies with the Muslim world and re: elimination of nuclear weapons in a new direction, and so on. It's just the beginning ... but it is a beginning very unlike the past eight years.

• Further his one-sided assessments of issues worldwide is full of inaccuracies. He says others won't help with Guantanamo but fails to note the benefits accruing to us from shutting it down. He says India and China don't share enthusiasm for a climate deal while failing to acknowledge that we are in a global negotiation, that the United States is now deeply involved as an advocate for progress for the first time or to note the differences in position between India and China (China is much more forward leaning and inclined to a deal). He inaccurately suggests that the only thing we can agree with the Russians is to reduce the number of nukes (as if that were a small thing). He says Pakistan is dysfunctional but fails to note how much more we are currently doing to address that. He says Iran and North Korea are a still difficult while failing to acknowledge the recent progress made with the North Koreans or that engagement with Iran is a real departure (on which the jury is admittedly still out).

• He concludes with the notion that we "are still a world of nations" (simplistic and wrong ... we are a world of many actors some of the most important of which on key issues are non-state actors) and that the Obama administration has been getting "mugged" by our differences since coming into office. This suggests again a misunderstanding of the nature of international relations. Good foreign policy does not produce a problem-free world. It just minimizes threats while advancing our interests. But, it also fails to note the central point that no doubt will resonate in the mind of the rest of the planet...which is that during the Bush years, it was the United States that was mugging the world and the system of international law we had fought for a century to advance.

That's the key point about these early days of this new foreign policy team. All administrations talk about partnerships and new relationships. To my mind, this one seems to believe what it is saying and is doing something about ... and at the very least is not as transparently hypocritical about such matters as was its predecessor. That in and of itself is perhaps the transformation most of the world was most hoping for. 

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