Small Wars Journal

Bob Gates Unpacks Obama's Foreign Policy, and Offers Advice to the Next President

Fri, 04/15/2016 - 10:00am

Bob Gates Unpacks Obama's Foreign Policy, and Offers Advice to the Next President by David Ignatius, Washington Post

Bob Gates has unusual standing in the debate about the Obama administration’s foreign policy: He was defense secretary for both a hawkish President George W. Bush and a wary President Obama. He understood Bush’s desire to project power and Obama’s skepticism.

Gates characteristically finds a middle ground in the argument that has been swirling since Jeffrey Goldberg’s Atlantic magazine article examining Obama’s reluctance to use military force in Syria and the broader Middle East. Borrowing the famous quip about Richard Wagner’s music, Gates said Obama’s foreign policy “is not as bad as it sounds. It’s the way it comes out that diminishes its effectiveness.”

“The way things get done communicates reluctance to assert American power,” Gates explained in an interview Wednesday. “They often end up in the right place, but a day late and a dollar short. The decisions are made seriatim. It presents an image that he’s being dragged kicking and screaming to each new stage, and it dilutes the implementation of what he’s done.”

Gates criticized the current National Security Council’s implementation of policy, arguing that “micromanagement” by a very large NSC staff undercut Obama’s efforts to use power against the Islamic State and contain China in the South China Sea. “It becomes so incremental that the message is lost. It makes them look reluctant,” he said…

Read on.

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The interview with Gates followed a speech he gave the previous night in which he parsed the long-standing dispute over whether “realism” or “idealism” should govern U.S. foreign policy. A wise strategy has a measure of both, Gates told the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“It is neither hypocrisy nor cynicism to believe fervently in freedom while adopting different approaches to advancing freedom at different times along the way — including temporarily making common cause with despots to defeat greater or more urgent threats,” he said in his speech."

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First, to note the former SecDef's understanding -- and indeed clear announcement -- that "advancing freedom" (achieving the transformation of outlying states and societies more along modern western political, economic and social lines) is our grand, overarching political objective in the post-Cold War era; this such grand political objective having replaced the grand political objective of "containing communism" in the Old Cold War period.

Next, note the former SecDef's thought above, which seems to say that:

a. If such things as "universal (Western) values" have not yet obtained sufficient purchase with the populations throughout the non-western world (the "idealists" wrongfully believing that they had) --

b. This allowing that "transformation" of outlying states and societies more along modern western political, economic and social lines (i.e., "freedom") might be accomplished more via the population rather than more via the regime (see the failed Arab Spring) --

c. Then the U.S./the West should not be afraid to work with the oppressive regimes/the "despots" (to wit: those rulers who are -- presently -- denying their populations America's/the Wests' "freedoms"); this,

d. So as to adequately deal with the greater threat to our such grand "freedom"/"transformation" agenda. This such greater threat -- to our such "freedom" agenda -- being thought to:

e. Emanate from such entities as ISIS, AQ, etc.

Bottom Line:

Our "soft power" having failed to adequately influence the populations of outlying states and societies to achieve "freedom"/"transformation" more on their own (the "idealists' wrongfully "pulling the trigger" thinking that our "soft power" had, in fact, obtained/found such purchase), then the regimes/the despots are, in many cases today, seen as being the only game in town.

Herein, these "despots"/these regimes being considered to be more-malleable, over time, re: our grand "transformation"/"advancing freedom" agenda -- and, re; this agenda -- being considered to be more susceptible, over time, to our hard and soft power influences/capabilities.

(After all, it is the despotic regimes, for example, of pre-capitalist China and the former USSR -- and NOT their populations as it were -- who, over time, [a] succumb to Western hard and soft power efforts and [b] ultimately determine if, when, where, how and why "transformation," more along modern western political, economic and/or social lines, will take place within their realms.)

ISIS, AQ, etc. being as malleable or as susceptible (if at all)? We don't think so.

Thus, the populations having proven to be less reliable/incapable of dealing with the above threats (and, indeed, of transforming their states and societies as we desire?), a determination to, once again, work with the "despots" to achieve our interim (take out the Islamists) and indeed our grand (transform outlying states and societies more along modern western lines) political objectives?