The Roots of the Obama Doctrine

BY ARI SPITZER

Surrounding the civil war in Syria has been a dramatic display of political and diplomatic theatre between the United States and Russia, the highlight of which was President Obama’s improvisational maneuvering and the Russian response in reaction. When observed in isolation, the episode reveals a fundamental irony in American foreign policy: whereas the United States was the behind the formation of the League of Nations, the United Nations, and numerous other security pacts founded upon peaceful objectives, it has been the United States who has been a party to every major war in the past two decades.

Taken in a broader historical context, however, the policy Mr. Obama followed – i.e. making a credible military threat – fit comfortably into the American scheme of foreign policy. This addresses Mr. Obama’s oscillating between hawk and dove, but what of the irony?

On April 2, 1989 the New York Times reported that “the cold war of poisonous Soviet-American feelings, of domestic political hysteria, of events enlarged and distorted by East-West confrontation” had concluded. The Times was right about the poisonous feelings, hysteria, and distortion. As William Saffire pointed out in 1991, the “conflict originated in Stalinist subjugation of Eastern Europe,” and liberation of the final satellite holdings meant a Western victory in “that war.”

The Times had been mistaken had one element of its reports of conquest: confrontation. Certainly the nuclear arms race had concluded, and the question for conventional warfare was resolutely tabled. As Saffire pointed out, “Cold War II ha[d] begun.”

Saffire recognized a trend in geopolitical relations, one that had been fomenting since, and arguably prior to the Revolution of 1917: that the new balance of power in geopolitics was between the United States and Russia, and although conventional warfare was off the table, unofficial enmity would persist.

Cold War II is difficult to see: there are no missile crises, no troops amassing on borders, no tenuous security pacts, no bomb shelters. In Syria, however, the conflict has reared its head for all to see. In defense of international humanitarian norms, Mr. Obama threatened air strikes against the Assad regime. Public reactions to Mr. Obama’s threats were cold, both at home and abroad. British Prime Minister David Cameron could not galvanize his legislature for the effort, and neither could Mr. Obama.

Looking to capitalize on the discontent, and the potential public relations one-upmanship that could come from casting the United States as hawkish and stuck anachronistically in the Bush-era, neoconservative policy (“strike first, talk later” as Jonathan Powers of The Jordan Times puts it), Putin leapt from stage east into the spotlight. Days later, Putin appealed directly to the American people in an op-ed published by the New York Times, warning against American aggression “throw[ing] the entire system of international law and order out of balance.”

As altruistic, pacific, and liberalistic as Putin made his intention out to be, the episode begs the question: why does Russia have such interest in Syria? Superficially, the answer is to prevent violence and to avoid new waves terrorism. Dig deeper, and you’ll find the root cause to be that Russia’s relationship with Syria is one of rich and complex historical depth. Since the late 1950s, as iddle Eastern states vied for superpower benefactors, Russia and Syria befriended one another, forming a cultural connection, with Syria sending students to Russian schools and Russia sending tourists. The two nations share an economic connection as well: according to CNBC, Russia wrote off roughly 70 percent of Syria’s $13.4 billion debt as recently as 2005. Not to mention the naval base and countless other shipping assets Russia holds in Syria, as well the billions it stands to lose in arms sales if Assad falls.

It is this nuanced Cold War II reality that Mr. Obama struggled to face in his “zigzagging” policies of hawkish threats, and dovish cooperation. Mr. Obama, and indeed the entire American foreign policy apparatus is a product of the Truman and Eisenhower Administrations’ Roll-Back thesis: that containment of Communism was not sufficient, but rather a proactive pursuit (i.e. rolling back of communism) would quell the threat of communist revolution. In the Middle East, the policy bore fruit and Communism never made significant inroads in the countries to which the doctrine was applied, until the thesis was abandoned during the Nixon years. The results were disastrous. In the absence of American influence in the Middle East, spawned by Henry Kissinger’s “Grand Strategy,” a repressive, Baathist Iraq was born under Sadam Hussein. Iran was lost to the West, enveloped in the embrace of radical Islamism under the rule of Ayatollah Khomeini. Since that time, the United States has fought two wars in the area, relations with Iran are delicate and largely hostile, save its leader’s “charm offensive,” and the threat of radical Islam is pervasive. Such is the reality that persists to today.

Mr. Obama’s oscillation was certainly not the shrewdest course of action. However, as he said to the United Nations on (date), “Without a credible military threat, the Security Council had demonstrated no inclination to act at all,” negating the purpose of the very institution formed to keep the cold war conflict just that: a cold war.  This irony was no blunder; it was a calculated effort to lend credence to various institutions (American foreign policy, the United Nations, etc.) that have been forced in recent history to act adversely to their stated goals in order to achieve their fundamental objectives. As the Syrian people, and many others in the Middle East trudge haphazardly toward democratic goals, the dynamics that characterized the Cold War, will continue to define regional progress. We must not let not the material, strategic, nor political interests of superpowers dictate outcomes in the Middle East that are deleterious to the democratic aspirations of the Middle Eastern peoples.