Obama Men & Bush Measures?

Ross Douthat and Andrew Sullivan have been debating the extent, if any, to which Barack Obama’s foreign policy has broken with his predecessor’s. Ross’s point in his column this week is that Obama’s approach is more consistent with Bush’s than is generally supposed. I think that’s true, though some of Andrew’s criticisms of that view are plausible too. Ross responds here and Andrew has another go here during which post he writes:

As for the impact of Obama on the Iranian revolution and the Arab Spring, I agree it’s too facile to draw a direct linkage. History and perspective will again help. But the Cairo speech – defending democracy in the heart of the Arab world – was a breakthrough. Bush could never have done it.

The closest he could get was London. But the Obama campaign’s leverage of social media and the call for change was echoed in Tehran and then in Cairo. The fact that a man with Hussein as a middle name killed bin Laden is also pivotal for shifting the propaganda war in our favor.

Yes, the potential for Obama in re-branding the US was partly foiled by the pro-Israel lobby. And that remains the acid test for many Arabs and Muslims. But his election and possible re-election will undoubtedly affect the promise of reform in the region in part because America has finally had the good sense to get out of the way and to speak more quietly and subtly.

I think this is too kind to Obama and too unfair to Bush. True, Bush’s went to London and Obama to Cairo. But Obama’s cairo speech was hardly original. Indeed, Condi Rice got there first. She gave a speech in Cairo in 2005 in which she said:

For 60 years, the United States pursued stability at the expense of democracy in the Middle East — and we achieved neither.

Now, we are taking a different course. We are supporting the democratic aspirations of all people.

As President Bush said in his Second Inaugural Address: “America will not impose our style of government on the unwilling. Our goal instead is to help others find their own voice, attain their own freedom, and make their own way.”

We know these advances will not come easily, or all at once.

We know that different societies will find forms of democracy that work for them.

Our goals are idealistic. But our policies must be practical. And progress must be evident.

When we talk about democracy, we are referring to governments that protect certain basic rights for all their citizens — among these, the right to speak freely. The right to associate. The right to worship as you wish. The freedom to educate your children — boys and girls. And freedom from the midnight knock of the secret police.

Securing these rights is the hope of every citizen, and the duty of every government.

Sure, a President making this argument carries more weight than a Secretary of State. Nevertheless, the point stands. The Bush administration did push for reform in Egypt (and did so more energetically than the Obama administration would until the point came that Mubarak could no longer survive) only to back off from that approach once it looked as though the Muslim Brotherhood would be the main beneficiaries of a more open Egyptian polity.

Even so, one should not exagerrate an American president’s influence, tempting though it always is to do so. In this instance at least, count me a member of the Annales school here, not a devotee of the Great Men theory of history. Obama was no more responsible for the Green Movement in Tehran than Bush was for the “Cedar Revolution” in Beirut. The idea that a speech or the symbolic power of a President’s middle name can shift the Arab world’s centre of gravity is mildly preposterous. It may have an effect on the margin, nudging things along, but that’s about it.

Andrew admits it’s “facile” to suppose there’s any linkage between the President’s actions and the reformist movements springing up across the Arab and Persian worlds before suggesting that perhaps there is a link and look! this President just by virtue of who he is and the colour of his skin can make worlds move simply by standing still and pronouncing it so. Not being George W Bush has obvious advantages, not the least of them being avoiding responsibility for the Mesopotamian Misadventure. But any successor would have enjoyed that advantage to one degree or another. Perhaps Obama has been able to capitalise on that bonanza more than, say, President Hillary Clinton would have been able to but that’s evidently a matter of conjecture.

The thirst for reform – evident across the Arab and Persian world – is the product of long festering internal failure. It did not spring from the election of Barack Hussein Obama. Andrew praises Obama’s recognition that the United States should “speak more quietly and subtly” while also hinting that re-electing Obama will help speed the process of reform in the middle east, north africa and Persia. Again, this honours the White House with more power than it either has or merits while also freighting the President with a greater weight of  expectation than he should reasonably or sensibly be expected to bear.

Indeed, to the extent that Obama has repudiated Bush Junior’s approach to foreign policy it has been by placing himself, quite publicly, in the traditions best exemplified by Bush Senior. That rejected the younger Bush’s gauche, impossibly heroic vision of a liberated middle east (the zenith of which approach was his second inauguration address) in favour of a quieter, more “realistic”, treading-cautiously approach.

Now there’s lots to be said in favour of that but it’s also the case, I think, that Bush the Younger really meant what he said but by virtue of his image and policy miscalculations had made it impossible for his administration to make much progress towards its states goals. By contrast and perhaps paradoxically, it could be that by not placing as much emphasis on reform the Obama administration has helped, at the margin, create more space for the reforms Bush dreamt of but that the Obamans considered less compelling. Obama men for Bush measures, if you will.

Even so and again, the reform movements in Iran is the consequence of the Islamic Revolution’s failure. Similarly, the protests in Tunisia and Egypt and Syria and Bahrain and Libya are the result of those regimes’ decrepitude and the consequence of a reforming spirit that arises in one country and is then emulated by optimists and dreamers and democrats and youngsters in others. But all this is the product of 30 years of slowly-building political, economic and social issues, bubbling along until it eventually comes to the boil. It’s la long dureé and great men, even American presidents, are just the supporting cast.