Natl Security Strategy: Realism vs. Idealism

Obama’s Bush Doctrine, (Washington Post)…E. J. Dionne Jr.

In electing Barack Obama, the country traded the foreign policy of the second President Bush for the foreign policy of the first President Bush.

What’s most striking about Obama’s approach to foreign policy is that he is less an idealist than a realist who would advance American interests by diplomacy, by working to improve the country’s image abroad, and by using military force prudently and cautiously.

This sounds a lot like the foreign policy of George H.W. Bush, and it makes perfect sense that Obama has had conversations with the senior Bush’s closest foreign policy adviser, Brent Scowcroft. Obama has drawn counsel from many in Scowcroft’s circle, and Gates himself was deputy national security adviser under Scowcroft.

Obama did indeed denounce the impending war as “dumb,” “rash” and “based not on reason but on passion.” But in retrospect, the speech may be most notable for other things Obama said that separated him from some in his antiwar audience.

Not once but five times did Obama declare, “I don’t oppose all wars.” The first several paragraphs of the speech were devoted to the wars that Obama thought were justified: the Civil War, World War II — in which, he said, “that arsenal of democracy . . . triumphed over evil” — and the battle against terrorism after the attacks of Sept. 11. “I would willingly take up arms myself to prevent such tragedy from happening again,” he said.

In fact, Obama sounded a great deal like — Brent Scowcroft. In a widely noted 2002 op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal, published six weeks before Obama gave his speech, Scowcroft warned that an invasion of Iraq “very likely would have to be followed by a large-scale, long-term military occupation.” Going to Iraq, Scowcroft said, would “divert us for some indefinite period from our war on terrorism,” and it could “destabilize Arab regimes in the region,” “stifle any cooperation on terrorism” and “even swell the ranks of the terrorists.” Clinton, who once said that “we have to be both internationalists and realists,” is a natural fit with the new Obama-Scowcroft-Gates establishment. In explaining the appeal of Clinton, a senior Obama adviser recently spoke several times of the president-elect’s respect for her “toughness” and described the practical reasons for choosing a figure who would have instant credibility around the world.