Week of September 17, 2012
Obama: Renewing American
Leadership
 Note significance of title:
 Renewal
 Leadership
 Foundations for rethinking renewal and leadership:
 Go beyond merely chasing security and using the military to deal
with events: require a vision that includes spreading freedom,
prosperity, modernization. These are good for pragmatic reasons as
well as expressive of US identity and values.
 Understanding that contemporary threats to US and to world order
are more complex than in the past. Come not only from states.
 But recognizing the complexity of and difficulties presented by
these threats doesn’t mean retreating into isolationism; thus the
need for an activist vision.
Specifics of Vision
 Go back to what was common in previous
administrations regarding an activist role for the US in
the world based on US interdependence on and
embeddedness in the world (not just a leader standing
above the world)
 Part of embeddedness is that US security is caught up
in the overall peace and prosperity of the world outside
the US. US cannot be secure unless world is, and the
US must help attain that larger security– it won’t
happen spontaneously nor be accomplished by other
countries without US leadership.
Specific Policies
 Get out of Iraq and focus on the larger Middle East
 Support Israel but also work towards creation of a 2-
state solution.
 Use diplomacy to deal with Syria and Iran
 Use force unilaterally if necessary to protect the US,
but do so in concert with other powers when possible.
 Enforce non-proliferation measures, get support for a
comprehensive test ban treaty, cancel new generation
of nuclear weapons, prevent Iran from acquiring
nuclear weapons and eliminate North Korea’s nuclear
program.
More policies
 Go after terrorists wherever they are
 Foster modernizationin the Islamic world, including
democracy and economic development
 Rebuild alliances, partnerships, international
institutions
 Cooperate and compete with the PRC as needed
 Increase support for democracy, economic
development and health around the world
Drezner: Does Obama Have a
Strategy?
 Poses the question of whether a grand strategy is necessary
and what amount of harm would be incurred by not having
one.
 Posits that one advantage of having one is that, if
announced, it reinforces the effects of actions. Therefore, if
one is to have a grand strategy, it is best that it be
articulated.
 For Obama:
 Initially had a well-articulated strategy that did not work well
 Has pivoted to a different strategy that is working well, but it
is not well articulated.
Grand Strategies in General
 Are the attempts to articulate national interests and to
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join that discussion with a discussion of how
operational plans will further those interests.
Are generally difficult to change
Good grand strategies are not necessary for powerful
countries because it is their power, not their strategies,
that count most. An adequate strategy is good enough.
Are usually most helpful during times of uncertainty.
Now is a time of uncertainty
Obama’s Strategies
 Initial strategy was one of Multilateral Retrenchment:
 Depend more on multilateral channels, including more cooperation
with Russia and China
 Pull back from commitments in Iraq, Afghanistan, forward
deployment in War on Terror.
 Assessment:
 Increased US standing in the world but did not increase policy
leverage. This result was due to
 Fact that soft power not as effective when there appears to be a lack
of willingness to use hard power
 Neither China nor Russia saw themselves as partners of the US
 Other countries did not see Obama’s attempt at using multi-lateral
means as anything less than self-serving: saw it as US attempts to
get those other countries to help it provide for public goods,
whereas US had been supplying those good by itself previously.
Strategies
 Second strategy was one of forceful response, or
“Counterpunching”:
 Entails a more assertive policy in which the
administration responds energetically to challenges by
competitors and allies
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More assertive balancing against threats (pivot to Asia)
Reassurance to allies that the US will not revert to
isolationism
Reassertion of American exceptionalism
Emphasis on rebuilding domestic strength to provide the
means for meeting international challenges.
Problems with Reset Strategy
While more successful than the first strategy, the
Counterpunching strategy does have difficulties:
 In cases such as the Middle East, it makes the US look
like a revisionist power challenging the status quo (for
example, support for the Arab Spring)
 Focusing on domestic strength runs the risk of
legitimizing the introduction of partisan politics into
what is otherwise been understood as the bipartisan
realm of foreign policy.