National Security in the Obama Administration

Reassessing the Bush Doctrine

Stanley A. Renshon

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2009
• eBook ISBN: 9781135221492
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

The Bush Doctrine is dead! At least that's what critics hope. But while new U.S. national security challenges emerge, many post-9/11 threats still persist and the policies of George W. Bush offer one set of strategic answers for how President Obama can confront those dangers. Neither a polemic nor a whitewash, this book provides a careful analysis of the Bush Doctrine—its development, application, and rationale—and assesses its legacy: How will Obama respond to the many foreign policy challenges that await him?

Through an examination of psychology as much as policy, Renshon gives us the first comparative analysis of the Bush Doctrine and the developing Obama Doctrine. The book analyzes the range of national security issues Obama will face and the political divisions that permeate U.S. national security debates. It is essential reading for anyone looking to understand how presidents assess security risks generally and how Obama specifically is likely to adapt the Bush Doctrine to his own worldview.

1 The Obama Presidency and the World he Inherits

President Barack Obama takes office facing a large array of complex national security issues.¹ He will have to address a resurgent Russia intent on demonstrating its great power status and carving out a sphere of influence in areas of the former Soviet Union. It is ready to bully and invade its neighbors to do so, but is still willing to be helpful to the United States in some matters like supplying the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) troops in Afghanistan. He will have to address a potential East Asian colossus in China that is testing out its newly developing power and influence in Africa, Asia and on the world stage more generally. This has included its increasing military assertiveness in some areas including a testing of limits and wills by “harassing” a United States Navy vessel in what the Pentagon claims are international waters.² This must be done at the same time that the United States and China are sorting out a deeply entwined but not always harmonious economic relationship, And he will have to address a host of world difficulties ranging from the continuing crisis in Darfur, to the growing threats of nuclear proliferation, failed states like Somalia, severely troubled states like Pakistan,³ increasingly troubled states like Mexico, the emergence of a nuclear armed Iran and even a modern-day resurgence of piracy.⁴

He will have to deal with older allies such as Great Britain, Germany and France whose basic support can generally be counted on, but whose specific policy support cannot be taken for granted. He will also have to deal with countries such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia whose friendship is complicated and equivocal. For Barack Obama, as it was for George W. Bush, the post-9/11 world will be a complex and difficult one.

The new president will also have to deal with the widely held perception that the United States’ power and influence have declined. America’s economic troubles including a recession, an emphasis on spending at the expense of saving, and a failure of regulation and oversight seem to some more evidence of the erosion of American leadership, power, and influence.

The State of American World Leadership

President Obama will also have to deal with the view that the Bush Administration’s policies and rhetoric damaged American leadership and legitimacy. It is a view that the president and his closest advisors appear to hold very strongly. In his invited campaign article for the establishment journal Foreign Affairs entitled “Renewing American Leadership,” Obama wrote: “To renew American leadership in the world, I intend to rebuild the alliances, partnerships, and institutions necessary to confront common threats and enhance common security. Needed reform of these alliances and institutions will not come by bullying other countries to ratify changes we hatch in isolation. It will come when we convince other governments and peoples that they, too, have a stake in effective partnerships.”⁵ The not so oblique reference to Mr. Bush’s supposed “you’re either with us or against us” psychology and to his supposed unilateralism are hard to miss. President Obama’s emphasis, both as a candidate and president, on consultation and outreach to all those willing to “unclench their fists,” seems to give rhetorical weight to what he promises will be a new American leadership style.

Mr. Obama and his chief foreign policy advisors say they are determined to erase the damage to American leadership and reputation. In that effort they will doubtless be helped by the global enthusiasm that has greeted his presidency. Worldwide, the election of this new president has unleashed a euphoric surge of high expectations.

One editorial noted that, “At least three-quarters of people surveyed by the Financial Times in Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain (including 93 percent in France) believe that the new president will have ‘a positive impact on international relations’.”⁶ Some anticipate a new American stance toward the world because the president, as candidate, repeatedly promised one. Some take this to mean that the new administration will abandon what they consider the various crusades of Mr. Bush, among them his focus on expanding democracy’s reach, the war against terror, and his skeptical stance toward international organizations and agreements.

Yet, that same editorial noted that, “in Europe and elsewhere, there is a disconnect between Mr. Obama’s popularity and receptiveness to his likely policies.” One illustration of this fact is found in the repeated American requests to some of its NATO allies to increase their troop commitments to the war in Afghanistan and change their rules of engagement to allow more robust offensive actions. A two-day meeting of NATO defense ministers produced no further commitments for President Obama than previous entreaties had produced for President Bush.⁷

Countries, whether allies or opponents, that have had to deal with the consistent determination of the Bush Administration to avoid another, worse, 9/11 are now hopeful that the new president will be more receptive to their views and wishes. Indeed given what they see as America’s diminished circumstances they are not shy about expressing their expectations. France’s president Nicholas Sarkozy, who took office in 2007 with clear public pro-American sentiments, still insisted that he needed to, “let us make things clear: in the 21st century, there is no longer one nation that can tell what must be done or what one must think.”⁸ Foreign Minister Sergei V. Lavrov, bluntly asserted that “America has to recognize the reality of a ‘post-American’ world.”⁹

He is joined in this view by Fareed Zakaria, Newsweek’s foreign policy pundit.¹⁰ Zakaria’s point is not only that there are many ways to have power and influence and that the United States no longer has a monopoly on them, but that there are a number of countries that have gained on the United States and even suppressed it in some of those spheres. Other academics are blunter. Robert Pape writes: “Simply put, the United States is now a declining power. This new reality has tremendous implications for the future of American grand strategy.”¹¹ One of them, as we shall see, is the new emphasis on “realism.”

President Obama's Response: The More Things Change ...?

President Obama responded to, perhaps confirming, these expectations in his first days in office. In his first interview with a foreign news organization (Al Arabiya) Obama said that he recognizes that, “all too often the United States starts by dictating – in the past on some of these issues – and we don’t always know all the factors that are involved,”¹² a sentiment reminiscent of what he said in his Foreign Affairs article. At almost the same time, he also signed executive orders setting out a time frame for the closing of the prisoner facility at Guantánamo Bay Naval Base,¹³ requiring all interrogations to be conducted according to the procedures laid out in the U.S. Army Field Manual,¹⁴ and to review detainee policy.¹⁵ These three presidential initiatives led one Washington Post correspondent to declare on page one, “Bush’s War on Terror Comes to a Sudden End.”¹⁶

Perhaps. But each of those directives contained caveats whose importance is yet to be determined.¹⁷ On interrogations, his directive created a task force to study whether harsher methods might be needed in some cases. His directives also keep in place the controversial policy of “extraordinary renditions,” the secret abductions and transfers of prisoners to countries that cooperate with the United States, so long as it is done on a “short-term” basis.¹⁸ President Obama’s Justice Department appears to be continuing the Bush Administration’s practice of urging domestic courts to throw out civilian cases involving rendition and torture allegations on the grounds of “state secrets.”¹⁹ It also applied for an emergency stay motion at the 9th Circuit, asking it to freeze a district judge’s order in a lawsuit challenging the legality of President Bush’s warrantless surveillance program.²⁰ Elena Kagan, President Obama’s choice to represent his administration before the Supreme Court, told a key Republican Senator during hearings that she believed the government could hold suspected terrorists without trial as war prisoners.²¹ And in arguments before the Supreme Court on the issue of whether the president has the power to order the indefinite military detention of a legal resident, the Obama Administration took the position that, “Any future detention – were that hypothetical possibility ever to occur – would require new consideration under then-existing circumstances and procedure.”²² In other words, circumstances might arise where that might be necessary and if so, the Obama Administration would feel legally justified in doing so. Consistent with this position, the administration has gone to court to overturn a decision granting habeas corpus rights to prisoners kept at Bagram Air Base outside of Kabul, Afghanistan.²³ Along similar lines the administration announced that it was dropping the term “enemy combatant” that the Bush Administration had used as part of its rationale for detaining captured terrorists, but also argued that it had wide authority to detain such persons without filing criminal charges—thus keeping the Bush policy but dropping a term.²⁴ It has also reinstituted the system of military tribunals that the Bush Administration had spent years developing and defending.²⁵

The new administration has also continued the Bush Administration policy of using remotely piloted aircraft to attack militants within Pakistan’s borders,²⁶ and has expanded the target list.²⁷ And finally, the administration has committed 17,000 new American troops to the War in Afghanistan,²⁸ although the top U.S. Commander, General David McKiernan, had asked for 55,000 troops,²⁹ and the president has cautioned that the final number of troops will be decided after a review of American and NATO strategy.³⁰ Given all these apparent parallels, it is not surprising that a New York Times article reviewing these developments was titled, “Obama’s War on Terror May Resemble Bush’s in Some Areas.”³¹

It is clear that the Obama Administration does not believe that the war on terror is over or relatively unimportant. It is also clear that the Obama Administration is not dismantling the national security architecture developed by the Bush Administration. What is not clear is how the new administration will respond to the key strategic challenges that it faces, what its strategic worldview and premises are, and how risk acceptant the administration will be when confronted with assessing any differences between its operational premises and the hard circumstances that it will face. Sighs of relief³² or self-reassurance against worries³³ that the new administration is not so different from its predecessor are premature.

Bush and Obama: A Hybrid National Security Doctrine?

Herein lies a paradox in the relationship between the Bush Doctrine and the Obama Administration. A president’s national security doctrine is both a set of policies and a set of premises on which they are built. The Bush Doctrine is no exception. One central question about the Obama Administration’s approach to American national security is whether it is adapting the premises of the Bush Doctrine or just some of its policies. It is possible that the Obama Administration considers the tough-minded premises and policies of the Bush Doctrine as a foundation on which to try out a more conciliatory worldview and set of strategies. During the campaign one supporter said that “Obama is offering the most sweeping liberal foreign-policy critique we’ve heard from a serious presidential contender in decades.”³⁴

On the other hand, the fact that the new administration has not immediately discarded, as critics had feared and some supporters had hoped, some key national security policies of the Bush Administration, suggests that they are viewed by the Obama Administration as having some standing as a legitimate and effective response to our national security dilemmas. One reason this comes as a surprise to some is that the array of policies that define the Bush Doctrine are not widely known or understood.³⁵ Most commentary has focused on its most controversial elements, such as “extraordinary rendition,” the development of the concept of “enemy combatant,” and the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques.” It is also this set of specific policies that have garnered the most attention as the new Obama Administration’s national security policies take shape.

However, the national security policies of the Bush Doctrine are not limited to detainee detentions and interrogations. They cover a broad array of national security areas. The Bush Doctrine strategy is not a “call for a policy of unilateral action and preventive war.”³⁶ These are possible options, not doctrinal requirements. The reporter whose story resulted in the end of the war on terror story committed the common mistake of equating a few highly contentious Bush Doctrine policies with the Doctrine itself.

A narrow focus on the most controversial policies does not help us to appreciate the reasoning behind them and in some ways the premises of the Doctrine are as important as the policies that developed from them. These premises grew out of the administration’s understanding of the essential issues and features that define the post-9/11 security environment. And the administration’s view of the best way to address these issues ultimately rests on the president’s worldview and strategic premises and those of his key advisors. The same is and will be true of the Obama Administration.

So, there are really two levels at which the Obama Administration’s response to the Bush Doctrine and America’s national security issues can be assessed. The first is at the level of specific policies. The second is at the level of specific premises. Ordinarily, we can expect on some level a fit between a presidential doctrine’s premises and policies. Yet, it is unclear whether the premises of the Obama Administration’s security policies, in their larger philosophical and worldview sense, are ultimately compatible with the premises that underlie the Bush Doctrine and the specific policies growing out of it that President Obama has appeared to adopt.

It is far too early to speak authoritatively of an Obama Doctrine as some have tried to do,³⁷ but some elements of it can be seen. In the second Democratic Party presidential debate the following Q & A took place:³⁸

QUESTION: American diplomatic history books recount the Monroe Doctrine, the Truman Doctrine and will likely discuss the Bush Doctrine. When future historians w...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1 The Obama Presidency and the World he Inherits
• PART I The Bush Doctrine Reconsidered
• PART II The Strategic World after 9/11
• PART III The Politics of Post-9/11 National Security
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index