Obama And Kerry Fail To Mask Foreign Policy Strains
The two politicians appear to have different views over how Washington should exercise its influence across the globe, writes Geoff Dyer
Financial Times, June 22, 2013, Pg. 4
When Barack Obama asked John Kerry to be his second-term secretary of state, the president appeared to have chosen someone whose instincts matched his own natural caution on foreign affairs.
A Vietnam veteran who spent nearly three decades in the Senate, Mr Kerry mocked Republican “neocons” at last year’s Democratic convention and at his confirmation hearing he cited a Henry Kissinger quote about a new era of emerging powers replacing superpower dominance.
Yet after five months in office, it is becoming clearer that the principal dividing line in the Obama administration's foreign policy, from Syria to the Israel-Palestinian peace process, is between the president and Mr Kerry.
While administration officials have acknowledged for some time that the state department was urging greater US involvement in the Syrian conflict, the extent of disagreement became sharper this week when Bloomberg columnist Jeffrey Goldberg reported Mr Kerry had argued “vociferously” for US air strikes against Syrian airfields at a White House meeting.
For all the talk about ideological divisions between humanitarian intervention and realism, or about the promotion of supposed liberal hawks Susan Rice and Samantha Power, the recent arguments within the administration often boil down to more personal perceptions of Mr Obama and Mr Kerry about how and when America should exercise its influence.
Mr Obama’s view of the Middle East reflects a Hippocratic instinct to first do no harm and his desire that after Afghanistan and Iraq, the US not rush into “one more war in the Middle East”, as he put it this week. For him, second term political capital is to be dispersed carefully – whether on becoming involved in the Syrian conflict or backing a new round of the Israel-Palestinian peace process.
Critics add that when faced with a problem that offers no good answers, the professorial president tends to split the difference – ordering a surge of troops in Afghanistan and announcing their departure date at the same time, and authorising the arming of Syria rebels, but not the weapons they say they need.
Mr Kerry, who ran for president in 2004, is doing the other job he has long coveted and realises that this is probably his last chance to hold high office. He has spent a large part of his time over the past five months travelling around the Middle East dealing with both the Syrian war and the peace process. “For John, it is now or never,” says one former close associate. “He wants to get things done.”
On Syria, the debate pits the state department against the Pentagon, whose reluctance to become involved is largely shared by Mr Obama. State department officials argue peace talks have little chance with the rebels losing ground to government forces. And after the president publicly warned that use of chemical weapons was a “red line”, they suggest it damages US credibility if the administration does not follow through.
“It is not just adversaries like the Iranians,” says one former state department official. “What will allies like the Japanese make of our rhetoric in the Middle East?”
At the same time, the Pentagon has made no secret of its distaste for any military options in Syria. General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, has questioned whether it is possible to give arms to only the “moderate” rebels. “I have been cautious about the application of the military instrument of power,” he said last month. “It is not clear to me that it would produce the outcome [that most of us desire]”
Weary after more than a decade of wars and facing a new round of budget cuts, the military fears any modest involvement now will pull it more deeply into the conflict. David Barno, a retired lieutenant general who commanded 20,000 troops in Afghanistan, says that when Kabul fell in late 2001, there were only 400 Americans in the country.
“No one in their wildest imaginations would have imagined that more than a decade later there would still be 68,000 US soldiers there,” says Lt Gen Barno, now at the Center for a New American Security think tank. “Both Iraq and Afghanistan sobered a lot of people in the military about our ability to extricate ourselves from a conflict, especially when there are so many other regional actors involved.”
Mr Kerry has been equally energetic in trying to revive the Israel-Palestinian peace process and will be in the region next week to try to prepare the ground for a new round of talks.
While analysts are sceptical about his prospects in the current environment, they also say Mr Kerry’s efforts will come to naught without strong public backing from the president.
“The White House has been passive while State wants to get engaged,” says Vali Nasr, a former state department official who is dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. “It is still not clear if the White House will support a plan that would require a substantial US commitment, including the direct engagement of the president.”
Phi Beta Iota: John Kerry is not too old to run for President in 2016. This story sounds very much like a line of crap fed to a friendly but naive UK reporter by the Deputy National Security Advisor. All indicators point to the White House micro-managing everything and being overly aggressive about everything. Kerry is now in the same position as Colin Powell was — at some point, he is going to have to decide to call the President and his White House weasels, out….or go down in history as the boffo haircut with no spine. He inherited a real mess from Hillary Clinton, is getting no intelligence with integrity from the secret world, and understands better than most that the Democratic Party has self-destructed since 2000.
