Since ancient Greece doctors have sworn to first do no harm. It is also a great principle for a superpower. Why attempt by war what you can achieve with diplomacy? Alas, President Barack Obama’s version of the Hippocratic Oath — “don’t do stupid stuff” — is ridiculed even within his own party. Every advance by Islamists in Iraq, and every missile fired by Russian separatists in Ukraine, is taken as an indictment of his caution. A window may well be closing on the brief era of US restraint. Obama has two years to prise it back open.
The tragedy is that Obama is no longer capable of convincing even friends of the wisdom of his doctrine. It is worth recalling that he won the nomination in 2008 because he opposed the “dumb war” in Iraq. (Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, of course, had voted for it.) US voters were tired of ambitious militarism.
Obama gave them a chance to feel better about themselves. Now, if polls and punditry are to be believed, he makes them feel worse. Barely a third of US voters approve of his handling of foreign policy. The danger is that Obama’s doctrine will go down with him. For that, he must take some of the blame.
Avoiding stupid decisions is a great starting point. But the opposite of a mistake — in this case former president George W Bush’s 2003 Iraq invasion — is not always a correct action. Obama’s bedrock principle has been to avoid putting US boots on the ground. But it makes little sense to telegraph such deep reluctance to America’s foes. Nor is it always the right thing to do. Had Obama fought harder to maintain residual US forces in Iraq in 2011, for example, today’s calamity might not be unfolding.
In recent months it would also have been smart to beef up the US presence in the Baltic states and other Nato members bordering Russia. Instead, he has kept them to a minimum. That may only have emboldened Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president. As Hillary said recently: “When you are hunkering down and pulling back, you’re not going to make any better decisions than when you were aggressively, belligerently putting yourself forward.”
The opposite of a dumb war is smart diplomacy. That means empowering experienced officials. Yet Obama has habitually overlooked the services of seasoned diplomats in favour of junior insiders. The most celebrated example is the late Richard Holbrooke, whom Obama grudgingly appointed as his special adviser on Pakistan and Afghanistan, but thereafter ruthlessly cut out. There are other potential envoys, such as Thomas Pickering and Frank Wisner, both battle-hardened diplomats, whom Obama has barely tapped. Knowing how scant their leeway will be, others have turned him down. The White House priority is message control. Diplomacy often takes second place to media strategy.
Unwieldy administration
Foreign diplomats carp at how hard it is to hold the attention of Obama’s national security council, which is in perpetual firefighting mode. The NSC’s role is to co-ordinate strategy across an unwieldy administration. No one would describe Obama’s NSC in those terms.
Meanwhile John Kerry, the secretary of state, zips around the world as though each day were his last. In the past 10 days Kerry has visited Afghanistan, India, Myanmar, Australia and the Solomon Islands while also handling the crises in Iraq, Ukraine and Gaza. He is also leading talks with Iran. En route home, he gave a speech in Hawaii on US foreign policy in Asia. Not even Henry Kissinger could keep that many balls in the air.
Could Hillary lead any better? She embodies all of Obama’s weaknesses, bar one. When he took office Obama had no governing experience. She would have had plenty. Other than that, they are surprisingly alike.
Hillary also prefers loyalists to outside talent — sticking to her inner circle is what brought down her 2008 campaign.
She also has a record of putting expediency first. That is why she voted in favour of the 2003 Iraq war. It is also why she is now sounding more gung-ho than Obama on Iraq and Syria. Conventional wisdom tells her to run to the right of Obama in the 2016 general election. Like Obama, she is averse to big gambles. Her stint as secretary of state was notable for its caution.
She also shares some of Obama’s strengths. Six years after Obama promised to make Americans feel better, they feel increasingly adrift. Hillary has the skills to offer them a fresh start. As she told The Atlantic Monthly, “Don’t do stupid stuff” is not an organising principle for a great power. Instead, she suggested, America should regain the habit of telling its story to the world. That involves leadership, defeating fascism, rolling back communism, and forging a united front against the rise of Islamists in the Middle East and beyond.
It is a coherent narrative, which won Hillary an ovation from The Weekly Standard, the neoconservative magazine. It is also a troubling one. This is the camp that cheered the US into Iraq in 2003, which helped unleash the forces they now say demand a stronger US military response.
Obama has yet to give full rein to what he promised. That would mean hiring the best people to pursue America’s strategic interests and giving them all the support they need. The clock may be against him. But he still has scope to show that doing no harm is only the beginning of effective medicine.
—Financial Times
