Obama’s Foreign Policy
Honest Partisan recommended this speech: Foreign Policy Remarks at CCGA by Barack Obama to me and asked for my comments on it. Overall, it strikes me like a lot of Obama’s speeches as being very heavy with ideas and sentiments that I agree with, or at least support, but light on any actual concrete proposals. Where there are proposals, there is typically little that explains how they will come to pass.
This is of course not a trait that is unique to Obama amoung politicians. For some reason though it seems more prevelant to me in his speeches then in others. Perhaps it is simply because the rhetoric is so good, or perhaps it is because due to his reletively small amount of political experience I scruntinize what he says closer then I do with others, but in any event Obama seldom seems to put out anything that is very ’solid’ in my opinion.
There are however a few solid propossals in this speech, I will try to pick them out and address them individually.
The first is a phased withdrawal of most combat forces from Iraq by March 18, 2008. I don’t think that anyone is surprised that I disagree with this idea. Obama’s reasoning for it seems to be that this will increase the speed of political resolution between Iraq’s feuding factions, make Hamas,Hezbollah and Iran feel less secure, and enable us to do more in Afghanistan. Of those reasons I think that the first is plausible, although not assured and certainly it seems likely that while a resolution may be ‘faster’ it may not be ‘better’ then what would occur if we stayed longer. The second reason seems plainly stupid to me, while it could be argued that by exposing the limits of our power in Iraq we have emboldened those groups (and I would say we exposed the limits of our will more then our power) it hardly follows that retreat now would make these entities less bold. Indeed the opposite seems true to me. As for Afghanistan, while more could possibly be done their, I would imagine that if jihadist elements succeed in driving our forces from Iraq, the efforts of that sort of group in Afghanistan would increase, rather then decrease. If we can’t defeat an ‘insurgency’ in Iraq, how can we do it in Afghanistan?
Obama’s next concrete proposal is adding 65,000 soldiers to the Army and 27,000 Marines. I don’t have any particular problem with this, and am inclined to believe that we need to increase the manpower of our armed forces, although as I have said in the past I think that what we really need is another branch dedicated specifically to ‘nation building.’
Obama next addresses proliferation and securing lose nukes and WMD components. The one serious, concrete idea he put forth here is support for an international nuclear fuel bank. This seems to me like a good idea, and I have no issues with it. The rest of this section is fairly generic ‘do more’ and ‘cooperate with other nations’ stuff. Fine and dandy, but nothing serious. He also mentioned that part of the problem is America’s nuclear arsenal, the state of readiness that it is in and that we shouldn’t develop a new generation of nuclear weapons. While I think that there are a number of reasons one could put forth against all of these things, nuclear proliferation is not one of them. The utility of a nuclear weapon is partially determined by how scarce they are. If I have the only bomb in the world, I am much more powerful then if I have one bomb out of thousands. Us having less weapons, or choosing not to develop new ones, will not make nuclear weapons less desirable for tyrants and terrorists.
Next Obama goes into international institutions. Most of this section is simply devoid of any substance. Reform is good, work with others, everyone gets a pony sort of thing. He does use this to transition to global warming, and advocates a carbon cap and trade system. While I don’t want to get into details here, I think a cap and trade is a particularly bad solution to this problem. In any event, while global warming has some relevant to foreign policy, for the most part I think it is a seperate debate.
Lastly, Obama proposes an increase in foreign aid, to combat terrorist ideology. I have two issues with this. First, I don’t think we can very clearly point to foreign aid being an effective tool to combat poverty, and secondly I don’t think we can easily connect poverty to terrorism. I am not opposed to foreign aid if it actually does good, and that alone is reason to do it in my opinion, whether terrorism is related to poverty or not. Sadly though, I think or foreign aid has done more to prop up dictators and thereby increase poverty then it has done to alleviate it.
Thank you for taking the time to read a lengthy piece I had recommended. The line in your last post that prompted me to recommend it reflected your skepticism that Democrats have some broad principles and policies when it comes to foreign policy in general and dealing with terror issues in particular. While Obama’s speech does have a lot of generalities, I recommended it specifically for that point: that he articulates the principles that would guide his foreign policy.
As for the specifics, the only thing I’ll deal with at this point is your position on foreign aid. Can foreign aid be wasteful or counterproductive? Of course. It’s not clear to me that indicts all foreign aid and, as Jeffrey Sachs points out in his book The End of Poverty, it’s certainly possible to have foreign aid that works.
The relationship between poverty and terrorism is a tricky one. Most of the leaders of Al Qaeda and other terror organizations come from affluent backgrounds. But a lot of the support they get comes from the poor. The Gaza Strip is an economic basket case, and underemployed young men (and sometimes women) from there willingly provide most of the cannon fodder for terror attacks (indeed, economic security is often assured for suicide bombers’ families, an incentive I would assume wouldn’t be necessary for richer people). Pakistani families finding it hard to feed their children are happy for the free room and board that Saudi-funded madrasses provide, which also incidentally indoctrinate the kids in extremist Muslim teachings. So while addressing poverty certainly won’t eliminate terrorism, it can be part of a broader anti-terror strategy.