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