Obama’s smart power diplomacy lacks wisdom
The discussion on whether President Barack Obama has ever had a doctrine on foreign policy has been ongoing since 2007. The so- called “Obama Doctrine” behind his foreign policy might be defined in a variety of ways by different people. Whatever the content of the doctrine is, it consists of a set of basic judgments and ideas about the international context the US is placed in and its relations with the whole world, and provided the president with a conceptual architecture for pursuing his policy toward the outside world in the past eight years.
The international context in 2008 – the shock of the financial crisis and emerging transnational issues like global warming – has required the Obama administration to embrace the multilateralism which reflects the core idea of liberalism, thus distinguishing him thoroughly and clearly from his predecessor who instead strongly endorsed unilateralism.
Early in July 2008, the speech delivered by Obama at the Wilson Center raised five foreign policy goals, depicting the contours of the Obama Doctrine. After entering office, Obama generally adhered to his previous ideas but made constant and minor revisions. In May 2014, his speech at the US Military Academy, also known as West Point, further exhibited his doctrine.
The Obama Doctrine has led to a specific diplomatic legacy and consequences. The key assumption of his doctrine on foreign policy is the “US should not do stupid things.” The most obvious result of that was the Obama administration’s care and prudence on resorting to force.
Obama has spared no efforts to end the two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, although the plan of drawing down troops from Afghanistan has changed several times. Obama has also raised the threshold for the use of military force. During the Syrian crisis in 2013, Obama desperately grasped at the diplomatic opportunity offered by Russia, turning his “red line” into a “white line.”
Obama has also attached great importance to international norms and rules, pushing the US back on the track of internationalism or multilateralism. He called for a nuclear- free world in Prague in 2009 and initiated the first Nuclear Security Summit in Washington DC in 2010. On climate change, the cooperation between China and the US became the most important step in
political momentum toward greater efforts to resolve the problem.
Due to the financial crisis in 2008, Obama had to reallocate the limited resources at hands. One of the greatest foreign policy changes in his administration was to leave the Middle East and then pivot to Asia, including shifting more political, economic and military assets to the region. Therefore, the Asia- Pacific region has witnessed a strengthened US alliance system and the Trans- Pacific Partnership ( TPP), which was described by Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter as “another aircraft carrier.” Among Obama’s diplomatic legacy, it seems that shaking hands with once hostile countries has become the highlight.
The normalization of relations between the US and Cuba ended more than 50 years of antagonism and improved the US relationship with other Latin American countries. The Iran nuclear deal not only eased tensions between the US and Iran, but also made great contributions to nonproliferation efforts. Moreover, the US has improved its relations with Vietnam, lifting a decadeslong ban on the sale of military equipment to the country, and Myanmar, lifting economic sanctions on it recently. Obama deftly adopted a sort of “smart power” to carry out his foreign policy agenda. But it is smart without wisdom, when putting his foreign policy toward major countries under scrutiny. For example, the rosy expectation of resetting relations with Russia at the beginning of the Obama administration has long failed and Obama clearly had no idea of how to deal with the country and President Vladimir Putin. On China, after a transitory concept of “strategic reassurance” raised by James Steinberg, the Obama administration failed to offer any grand framework which might be conducive to stabilizing the bilateral relationship. Without any official guideline, the topic of whether the US should change its grand strategy toward China has been heatedly debated among strategic circles since 2015. The voice that urged the US to take more assertive measures will inevitably exert a negative impact on the next administration’s China policy.