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For the last several months, Jeffery Goldberg of the Atlantic has been putting together the definitive article of President Obama's foreign policy throughout his two terms. He can describe what he sought to achieve better than I can.quote:My goal in our recent conversations was to see the world through Obama’s eyes, and to understand what he believes America’s role in the world should be. This article is informed by our recent series of conversations, which took place in the Oval Office; over lunch in his dining room; aboard Air Force One; and in Kuala Lumpur during his most recent visit to Asia, in November. It is also informed by my previous interviews with him and by his speeches and prolific public ruminations, as well as by conversations with his top foreign-policy and national-security advisers, foreign leaders and their ambassadors in Washington, friends of the president and others who have spoken with him about his policies and decisions, and his adversaries and critics. The result is an endlessly fascinating article that digs deeply into foreign policy as a concept, and Obama's vision of how it should be conducted by the US. Before I crack into why I made this thread, I'll post a few excerpts that show generally what kind of information the article presents. quote:The current U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, who is the most dispositionally interventionist among Obama’s senior advisers, had argued early for arming Syria’s rebels. Power, who during this period served on the National Security Council staff, is the author of a celebrated book excoriating a succession of U.S. presidents for their failures to prevent genocide. The book, A Problem From Hell, published in 2002, drew Obama to Power while he was in the U.S. Senate, though the two were not an obvious ideological match. Power is a partisan of the doctrine known as “responsibility to protect,” which holds that sovereignty should not be considered inviolate when a country is slaughtering its own citizens. She lobbied him to endorse this doctrine in the speech he delivered when he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, but he declined. Obama generally does not believe a president should place American soldiers at great risk in order to prevent humanitarian disasters, unless those disasters pose a direct security threat to the United States. quote:Obama’s reticence frustrated Power and others on his national-security team who had a preference for action. Hillary Clinton, when she was Obama’s secretary of state, argued for an early and assertive response to Assad’s violence. In 2014, after she left office, Clinton told me that “the failure to help build up a credible fighting force of the people who were the originators of the protests against Assad … left a big vacuum, which the jihadists have now filled.” When The Atlantic published this statement, and also published Clinton’s assessment that “great nations need organizing principles, and ‘Don’t do stupid stuff’ is not an organizing principle,” Obama became “rip-poo poo angry,” according to one of his senior advisers. The president did not understand how “Don’t do stupid poo poo” could be considered a controversial slogan. Ben Rhodes recalls that “the questions we were asking in the White House were ‘Who exactly is in the stupid-poo poo caucus? Who is pro–stupid poo poo?’ ” The Iraq invasion, Obama believed, should have taught Democratic interventionists like Clinton, who had voted for its authorization, the dangers of doing stupid poo poo. (Clinton quickly apologized to Obama for her comments, and a Clinton spokesman announced that the two would “hug it out” on Martha’s Vineyard when they crossed paths there later.) quote:One day, over lunch in the Oval Office dining room, I asked the president how he thought his foreign policy might be understood by historians. He started by describing for me a four-box grid representing the main schools of American foreign-policy thought. One box he called isolationism, which he dismissed out of hand. “The world is ever-shrinking,” he said. “Withdrawal is untenable.” The other boxes he labeled realism, liberal interventionism, and internationalism. “I suppose you could call me a realist in believing we can’t, at any given moment, relieve all the world’s misery,” he said. “We have to choose where we can make a real impact.” He also noted that he was quite obviously an internationalist, devoted as he is to strengthening multilateral organizations and international norms. quote:Obama understands that the decision he made to step back from air strikes, and to allow the violation of a red line he himself had drawn to go unpunished, will be interrogated mercilessly by historians. But today that decision is a source of deep satisfaction for him. There is a lot more at the link, including some funny stories, like Obama punking King Abdullah of Jordan. It's the article of the year up until this point in my opinion. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/04/the-obama-doctrine/471525/ With that being said, this article is the perfect primer to move into an important discussion as the Obama administration prepares to pack up their things and retire to Florida. As he leaves office, his take on foreign policy will leave with him, and the US will move on to the next iteration of thought when it comes to the policy platform that should guide the US through its interactions with other nations. But we've learned a lot throughout Obama's administration, and in a theater like foreign policy where the US to this day routinely makes an rear end out of itself, every bit you learn helps. Obama refers to the foreign policy establishment, and its "playbook." This is sort of the conventional wisdom the foreign policy community has rallied around based on the "lessons" we've learned from all the different case studies of foreign policy in action. As we're all well aware, the playbook is still a bit of a work in progress. I want to talk about this playbook, and Obama's role in crafting it for the future. What plays worked? What plays didn't? How should the overall playbook reflect what we've learned since 2008 by seeing what Obama's philosophy looks like, and the long term effects this philosophy had when put into practice for 8 years? Obviously, this discussion is going to include some case studies. People are going to be talking about, just as an example, whether the detente with Cuba was the proper course of action, and things like that. That's fine, and discussing Obama's track record is certainly part of this thread. But in my opinion, I think the goal here should be less sorting out whether Obama was good or bad on foreign policy, and more shaping our own personal philosophies on foreign policy by what we can learn from what Obama has done, especially with such an outstanding article right up there that provides a wealth of information to help do that. So lets also talk about some hypotheticals, and where we can and where we cannot apply methods that were fundamental parts of Obama's foreign policy platform, as well as what we've learned from other leaders and other case studies, to see what kind of playbook we want to see from presidents in the future. Volkerball fucked around with this message at 15:06 on Mar 10, 2016 |
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Mar 10, 2016 15:04
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Griffen posted:That's kind of my point though. If you know something is a lost cause, you cut it off and don't get involved at all. If Syria was to note a shift in US policy to the Middle East as part of a greater "I regret that I have but no shits to give" and we wash our hands of the affair, great, and that is something I agree with. Being in Syria solves nothing. However, Obama didn't want to walk away entirely, as he still wanted the option to soap box and posture on the world stage about it. The problem was, everyone knew he didn't have any skin in the game, so his "red line" was a bluff that he got called on. Then we start doing this poorly thought out garbage like arming the "moderate rebels" which nets us 6 fighters for $500 million. We fund the SDF, which is really just an umbrella group of the YPG so we have plausible deniability about arming the Kurds, all the while using Turkish airspace and acting like Turkey is in any way a positive influence in the whole mess - effectively we're in a proxy war with a NATO member. All this makes us look weak and indecisive to other countries in the region (like KSA, Jordan, etc) who are now going it alone. When Iran ultimately restarts their nuclear program (if they haven't already) we have next to zero credibility to keep the Saudis from starting their own, if they aren't already. This is the thing that bothered me the most about Obama's breed of isolationism. When it comes to Syria, in hindsight everyone wants to talk about ISIS, and how complicated the situation was, and then look at Obama's decision not to intervene in the broadest way possible to describe it as the best course of action. I disagree with that assessment, but I can accept it, because Syria was and is complicated, and there was no magic button to save everyone and rebuild Syria into an oasis in the desert. But the issue is that US acted inconsistently with that doctrine on multiple occasions. They tried to play both sides, and playing both sides has been a fundamental pillar of how Obama does business throughout the world. In the early going of the protests, of course Obama came out and said Assad needed to go. I don't think anyone for or against intervention would say that was wrong. Assad is a monster, and he's the gasoline in the engine of hatred that drives Syria's war. He's not a legitimate leader and he shouldn't be in charge of Syria, and regardless of what the strategy became when it came to Syria, coming out and saying that was the right thing to do. But that was far from the limits of US involvement in Syria. The US obviously had calculated that they weren't willing to get militarily involved in Syria, but they kept this a secret in an attempt to open diplomatic channels with activists and militias inside Syria. They were very effective in doing this. In the beginning, the most successful rebel leader in all of Syria was Salim Idriss, a Syrian who advocated doing right by the international community, and doing whatever they had to do to appeal for military aid from the West, who they saw as their allies. The US played into this as best they could by presenting themselves as a real ally to the revolution. There was always some stalling tactic on the table that kept the opposition engaged. We're working on sending weapons. We're debating on a no fly zone. We're looking at setting up training camps. Just hang with us, we're in your corner and we're doing everything we can. In return for this good faith, the US was able to demand concessions from the opposition, such as getting field operatives into every major rebel meeting to make the US' voice heard, try and tell them who they could fight and who they couldn't, and things of that nature. And the FSA under Idriss made a lot of these concessions. At the end of the day, this was a deliberate campaign of deception at a really malicious level. The US was pretending to be on the side of the people protesting in the streets of Homs, but they would follow up a statement like that by making an implication that Assad could be a part of the solution in Syria, to throw a bone to Russia and Assad. And they didn't challenge Iranian or Russian support for Assad at all. So it was impossible to pin down what exactly the US was willing to do in Syria since they were constantly presenting themselves as holding contradictory positions. A few Syrian activists got wise to this, and tried to make it clear to others that they couldn't rely on the US, but these voices were not amplified. You talk to Syrians today, and the vast majority will tell you that they thought the US had their back. Things like the red lines statement and the CIA program to arm rebels in the south were seen as the real position that you could hold the US to. It was the Ghouta attack that finally blew the lid off the whole web of lies. That presented a decisive moment where the US finally had to either stand behind the rhetoric it had aimed at the opposition in attempts to remain engaged with the opposition, or back down and expose that they had never actually meant anything they'd said to the people in Syria who were suffering. Of course, we all know where Obama stood on that. When the truth came out, it destroyed the FSA. Salim Idriss left the country in shame, and the FSA crumbled. A new Saudi project called the Islamic Front took in most of the defectors as the successor to the FSA, and the handlers of US provided aid in the country voluntarily turned everything over to the IF. Pro-Western sentiment among the opposition was decimated, and the ideological successor to "let's just do the right thing and eventually, the world will turn out for us" was "ALL you mother fuckers are with Assad." The effect wasn't just military. Activists who were building civil infrastructure within Syria were also devastated. Razan Zaitouneh, who's a heroic figure within Syria, felt particularly backstabbed. She cut off all ties with the State Department because she was so hurt over it. The US fostered trust among these people to benefit themselves, and when push came to shove, they abused the gently caress out of it. That entire strategy, despite being transparently morally bankrupt, was also counter-productive. We bred anti-American sentiment in August 2013 that went on to decimate the FSA, and their connection to the political opposition based out of Turkey, the SNC. Until recently, there was no replacement for that rebel to political opposition infrastructure, so for years, there was just chaos. And now, the replacement that has emerged is Saudi-aligned, and Islamist. In the vacuum presented by the destruction of such a huge subsect of the opposition, ISIS began their march early the next year. Believe it or not, ISIS propaganda actually pointed towards US inaction after Ghouta as well. ISIS' spokesman routinely discusses how the US doesn't give a gently caress about chemical weapons attacks or barrel bombings on civilians, and points to Obama's policies as examples of how the US doesn't care about the suffering of Muslims. He'll go on to chain this to Western crusades and all that type of bullshit, but the fundamental pillars of that propaganda are 100% true, which makes it that much more effective. If you ask any anti-Assad Syrian today if the US supports Assad, I'd bet 9/10 would give you some version of yes. It's ubiquitous among them, because they witnessed firsthand how little regard the Obama playbook held for morality. That undermined US goals, and the goals of people seeking human rights and a future for Syria, substantially. So to me, the biggest lesson we've learned here is that intervening or not intervening is not the core question that needs to be addressed in foreign policy, despite what has been said in the aftermath of Iraq. It's that whatever the US chooses to do when it comes to these sorts of uprisings and social dynamics in the Middle East and elsewhere, it needs to do it openly, honestly, and in good faith. If the US had stuck by these principles in Iraq, incompetence aside, Maliki wouldn't have been selected to lead the country based on his relationship with Bush. The Iraqi government would've been more oriented around sustainability and human rights rather than functionality as a US proxy, and the country would look a whole lot better. It's quite likely ISIS would've never been able to emerge from its ashes in Iraq like a phoenix, years after the US left. If Obama had stuck by them in Syria, he would've been better off trying to make friends among the opposition in the long run (provided the non-lethal aid was at a scale to have a noticeable impact on the quality of life for people suffering in Syria), since he would've never been caught in a lie with them. The rumors of US/Assad collusion would be a lot less prevalent since Obama would've never outed himself and the US as a very shady entity that can't be trusted, which would've undermined jihadist propaganda. And the pro-democratic opposition would've never tied themselves to the US in a strategy that was doomed to fail if it had been made clear to them exactly where the US stood, which would've bolstered their ability to gain public sentiment over rival jihadist groups moving forward. With that in mind, it's pretty clear to me where the problem with US foreign policy lies.
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Mar 11, 2016 04:30
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Anosmoman posted:And when the SAA collapses and an exciting hodge podge of various Sunni rebel groups roll into Alawite areas what will happen? Depends on how quickly it could've been done. The more massacres that were perpetrated by Alawite militias and by the regime, the more the tensions rose and the threat of reprisal killings grew. If your goal was the prevention of genocide, there's no question whatsoever that a quick and speedy resolution would've done the most to stop that. Turning our back on it was not the proper response to that because A. Your strategy empowered acts of genocide in the name of preventing genocide, such as the Bayda and Baniyas massacres that didn't happen until 2013, and B. Extremism on both sides is infinitely more entrenched now than it was in early 2012 when it was prime time to act, which has made genocidal massacres that much more of an inevitability. I know people tend to look at this position as the "realist" one, but it was never not dumb.
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Mar 11, 2016 04:49
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Xandu posted:There's absolutely no question that Obama walking back that red line was a bad mistake, and Kerry even admits as much in the article, but it's not clear to me that the world would be better off if presidents felt pressured into going to war so they don't look inconsistent. I would absolutely agree that being pressured into going to war over some trivial concept like "credibility" isn't a good standard, but I think that's aside from the point. As the article discusses, yes, it did very much appear that the US was going to strike Syria after Ghouta. But it also makes clear that Obama was very skeptical about it, and once he found his route to avoid it, he chose that and was completely at peace with it. All along, Obama has avoided conflict as a guiding principle, but the interactions with the Syrian opposition didn't reflect that. As an example, here's an article referring to diplomatic engagements between the US and opposition figures after Obama first called for Assad's ouster in 2011. quote:The “magic words” finally had been uttered, after five months of violence and a death toll of 1,800. http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/world/article31016274.html#storylink=cpy I suppose you could twist and contort that into just a good faith misunderstanding, but it's such a horrible result that could've been avoided. As for Kerry and Ford, their statements have been a bit more hawkish at times, but I don't think that was reflected in policy. Ford resigned in protest over how little his word counted for, and Kerry, as he said, got hosed over. I just see the disgust over how this saga played out as something that was completely avoidable. quote:I also think the US completely misunderstood the situation in Syria (and Libya and Iraq, but that's a broader topic). I think people imagined the regime (or at least Assad) would fall as Mubarak or Bin Ali or others did. They did not anticipate Assad being nearly as stable as he turned out to be, and once it became clear he wasn't going anywhere without a real invasion, the administration kind of washed its hands of the whole thing. I would agree with that as well, but I would consider that a pretty horrible mistake in policy. How many months and years are allowed to pass before letting things continue on unabated is indefensible? How many deaths must there be before a response is necessitated? By the Obama administrations calculations, the answer is 5+ years and 500,000+ deaths. quote:Finally, on the broader topic of what the US strategy in the Middle East should be, I keep coming back to this point. Sure, but there's also a lot of activists doing incredible work, and ordinary people who've suffered in ways none of us can even begin to comprehend, who still have the personal strength and courage to push for what they believe in. And in all that, there's a lot to be inspired by. That sort of cynical "nothing works" outlook leads into viewing the Middle East as a security situation. It views the Middle East as a sort of incurable disease, where there is no treatment. Just different methods that can be used so that you can "live with it." Those types of band-aids involve things like supporting authoritarians in the name of stability, avoiding the rise of human rights and democracy, and things of that nature. As horrible as all the poo poo I've seen in the Middle East is, I refuse to believe that we can't accomplish anything better than that.
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Mar 11, 2016 06:33
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Pox posted:I'm more pessimistic about the whole "red line" plot line than I was before reading this, but I think Obama was still in the right. For one thing, getting rid of the chemical weapons is a legitimate success. It was also fair to ask congress to weigh in, and they were unable to come up with a coherent idea. The thing about the chemical weapons deal is that it only removed Assad's "declared" stockpile. Even the OPCW, who were responsible for destroying the weapons, won't say the stockpile is eliminated. Sarin was used on the one year anniversary of the Ghouta attack for funsies, and chlorine and other chemical weapons are used fairly frequently in Syria to this day. In fact, the OPCW is doing another fact-finding mission this month to investigate 7 incidents from September of last year to February that were flagged for further investigation in an initial report. http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=53291#.VuJbEfkrLIU It really accomplished nothing for the people of Syria or the region.
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Mar 11, 2016 06:50
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Majorian posted:Where are you getting this from? I'm not seeing any reports of sarin use by the Syrian Army since 2013, and it hasn't been determined that the chlorine gas attacks came from government forces at all. It's been determined dozens of chlorine attacks have come from the regime. They are responsible for several attacks both before and after Ghouta, mainly through chlorine barrel bombs. The UN even said so (page 19), so I have no idea what kind of truther bullshit outlet is still trying to play the "who knows what really happened, the truth is probably in the middle" line. As for sarin, it was a small attack that Brown Moses dug up on the day of. http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3390388&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=1581#post433796223 Symptoms are the same as the Ghouta attack. Edit: as far as there being fewer chemical weapons in Syria, Assad has VX, which is far and away the nastiest of all nerve agents. Traces of it were found at an undeclared military research site, and it's suspected to have been part of the chemical cocktail used in Ghouta. Just 1 ton of VX could kill thousands and thousands of people. There was no oversight whatsoever when it came to making sure Assad declared all of his stockpile. He said "here's 1,300 tons of chemical weapons," the OPCW said "ok, we'll take that," and that was it. I wouldn't bet money that Assad gave up enough of his reserves to the point it affected his capability of killing a metric fuckton of people, because it was entirely his choice to decide what he did and did not want to give up. If the regime wants to commit a chemical massacre a la Ghouta tomorrow, that deal isn't going to have done anything to stop him. Volkerball fucked around with this message at 08:00 on Mar 11, 2016 |
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Mar 11, 2016 07:46
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Majorian posted:Agreed. I think the best outcome we can hope for in Syria is for Assad to remain in power, but with only enough power to keep the country relatively stable, while at the same time having his ability to commit atrocities against his own citizens minimized. Obviously that's an insanely difficult balance to achieve, and realistically we'll probably never bullseye it, but we can at least try to aim for something close to where Saddam was between 1992 and 2003. (when, of course, we totally upended that balance and hosed everything up, because yaaaay neoconservatism) I too think that a period in which 500,000 children starved to death is the best case scenario in Syria, because the Iraq War was the worst atrocity that has ever been seen on the face of the earth, and we must learn those lessons and use them wherever possible. Especially where they don't apply.
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Mar 11, 2016 20:29
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Majorian posted:You know that's not what I'm talking about, Volkerball. I didn't say anything about crippling sanctions. From the day he took office until August 2nd, 1990, Saddam spent basically every day of his Presidency wrapped up fighting an offensive war he started. From August 6th 1990, the day sanctions started, to the beginning of the Iraq invasion, he didn't start one. Totally unrelated, I'm sure.
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Mar 11, 2016 20:37
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Majorian posted:I would say the far greater impact was made by the absolute destruction of the Iraqi military in the first Gulf War. The crushing losses they took during the Iran-Iraq war didn't stop them from invading Kuwait like a year after the war ended. It was clearly the sanctions after the Persian Gulf war that forced Saddam to press the pause button for a decade.
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Mar 11, 2016 20:52
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Main Paineframe posted:What makes you think "taking out" Assad would somehow prevent this? All those countless disorganized anti-government rebels with radically different philosophies, values, and aims aren't just going to shake hands and make up as soon as Assad is out of the picture. Destabilizing a country is a big deal, and once order has broken down like this it's not easy to stabilize things. They were infinitely more united then than they are now. The one obstacle to the peace process was Assad. That was all the political opposition was demanding, and at the time, they still had connections to command assets in the revolution. It's hard to explain how on the edge Assad was in early 2012. People were defecting en masse, and the rebels were growing and making major gains. I think US airstrikes and a no fly zone at the time might've been the difference maker that would've pushed along a solution. Yes the opposition was fractured, but it was essentially fractured into two pieces. The FSA, and JaN, and the two groups were together for the most part. The situation is a lot worse now, but again, this result of destabilization is what you advocated for.
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Mar 11, 2016 21:02
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JFairfax posted:How do you know that Syria wouldn't descend into civil war + be more vulnerable to ISIS? ISIS didn't begin to thrive again until late 2013. Nobody was paying attention to them in Iraq, and JaN was the al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria. It was the re-alignment after the US refused to intervene after Ghouta that really shattered everything, and opened the window for ISIS to exploit the vacuum. Syria was already in civil war. But with Assad out of the picture, you actually had a chance of reaching a political solution. They may have agreed upon partition or some sort of federalization to create enclaves that could defend themselves while the security situation was an issue, but the door would've been open for that. With Assad, the negotiation starting point was "Assad or we burn the country," and that has never changed. I don't have to prove that Syria wouldn't have descended into civil war or been more vulnerable to ISIS. I just have to prove that it would've been more likely we could've avoided that outcome. I argued that then, and it's even easier now with the benefit of hindsight showing us exactly how "hands off Syria" turned out in practice.
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Mar 11, 2016 21:12
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JFairfax posted:So he has WMDs just like Saddam did... We're CERTAIN Saddam didn't turn over all of his... You know we found chemical weapons, right? ISIS looted his old stockpiles and are currently using them on the Kurds. I don't think anyone would argue Syria has nukes hidden somewhere. Majorian posted:Really? Because I'm pretty sure that our intervention in Iraq was a major direct cause of this civil war in Syria, particularly its worst aspects like ISIS. Well, you're pretty wrong. Syria's revolution was entirely domestic, and ISIS was nothing in Iraq in 2012 after the US left. Something changed and it wasn't "the US invaded a place."
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Mar 11, 2016 21:17
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JFairfax posted:so you wanted the US to negotiate with ISIS? what
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Mar 11, 2016 21:17
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JFairfax posted:show me the proof that ISIS found Saddam's chemical weapons in Iraq. They didn't "find" them. We already knew the weapons were there, and there were ongoing international efforts to destroy them. But yes, they overran the storage facility. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/10913275/Isis-storms-Saddam-era-chemical-weapons-complex-in-Iraq.html
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Mar 11, 2016 21:28
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JFairfax posted:from that article: you: oh yeah, i'm sure assad has chemical weapons just like saddam did me: saddam did have chemical weapons. we found them. we know that. you: prove it. me: ok, here you: well they're expired now. 
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Mar 11, 2016 21:40
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JFairfax posted:not expired, destroyed. that was one of the premier facilities but had clearly fallen into disrepair and did not have stocks of usable chemical weapons. Digging into it, the UN locked it all up during their destruction of CW in the mid-90's, and due to how unsafe the place was, they decided not to gently caress with it any more after that. quote:Stockpiles of chemical munitions are still stored there. The most dangerous ones have been declared to the UN and are sealed in bunkers. Although declared, the bunkers contents have yet to be confirmed. These areas of the compound pose a hazard to civilians and potential blackmarketers. https://www.cia.gov/library/reports/general-reports-1/iraq_wmd_2004/chap5_annxB.html Whether from here or undeclared Syrian stockpiles, ISIS got mustard gas from somewhere.
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Mar 11, 2016 21:58
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Squalid posted:America is uniquely powerful, but we can't expect to miracles even from well designed policy if it is premised on a false understanding of the present. We all remember Iraq how badly American intelligence failed on Iraq, but it Obama's policies in Syria have also suffered from intelligence failures. For example, the Atlantic article makes two important points, in 2011 Analysts were telling Obama Assad would soon fall just like Mubarak. And in 2014 General Lloyd Austin believed IS was “a flash in the pan.” These mistakes are indicative a fundamental flaw in the premise that America could have prevented these disasters, that is you can't stop something you didn't know was going to happen. People like Volkerball can truthfully say they saw these events coming and hence could have prevented them. But realistically American policy is necessarily limited by uncertainty, and in that foreign policy is no different than say economic policy. Hindsight is 20/20, but policy must be written in a confused an uncertain present. I wouldn't disagree with that assessment in that there's an aura of uncertainty around every decision in foreign policy. That's why I try to avoid saying that an intervention in Syria would've ended with an ideal resolution. It would've provided a greater potential for a better resolution, but there's certainly no sure things when it comes to a situation as volatile as the Syrian civil war. The thing is, you can't shut out whatever doesn't jive with your perception and expect to make rational decisions, and that's exactly what Obama did. Sure, a lot of analysts were saying the end was nigh, and I'd say it was the most common perception in regards to Syria well into 2012, as every development was in favor of the opposition. But that wasn't so universal that dissenting voices weren't visible. Joshua Landis is one of the most prominent academics when it comes to Syria, and he gave many lectures and wrote many articles during that time period explaining why anyone who thought Syria was Egypt was kidding themselves. And the death toll cracked 1,000 and 2,000 really, really quickly, and at that point, there were a lot of voices saying "something is going to need to be done about this, or it's going to degrade quickly." The thing that really frustrates me is that a lot of this was coming from the think tank community. It was analysts with Brookings and the Atlantic Council that were the ones explaining that protracted war would lead to a vacuum that would present a dire security situation. That Syria would not stay self-contained, and would destabilize the entire region. The Obama administration denied this, and were intent on making Maliki address "Iraqi problems," and focused on half-assed efforts to be seen as trying to find a solution in Syria, because they didn't recognize Syria as a situation that necessitated a US response. Turkey, Iraq, Lebanon, and Jordan all have a massively worse security situation than they did prior to the war, and nations like Iran and KSA have gotten tremendously involved in the fighting. So essentially, the entire Middle East is involved in this conflict one way or the other. The chaos in Syria has even spread to Europe, where the refugee crisis is now a major political issue that can't be ignored. And of course, lo and loving behold, ISIS suddenly emerged from its ashes and blew up out of nowhere, and it turned out that Syria was never a place the US could turn its back on after all. These predictions were absolutely true, and they were ignored. The think tanks that were predicting this were largely the same people advocating for an increased US role in bringing about an end to the conflict, as that perception of the conflict and that policy prescription go hand in hand. But here's what Obama thinks about them, even after this saga played out. quote:I have come to believe that, in Obama’s mind, August 30, 2013, was his liberation day, the day he defied not only the foreign-policy establishment and its cruise-missile playbook, but also the demands of America’s frustrating, high-maintenance allies in the Middle East—countries, he complains privately to friends and advisers, that seek to exploit American “muscle” for their own narrow and sectarian ends. By 2013, Obama’s resentments were well developed. He resented military leaders who believed they could fix any problem if the commander in chief would simply give them what they wanted, and he resented the foreign-policy think-tank complex. A widely held sentiment inside the White House is that many of the most prominent foreign-policy think tanks in Washington are doing the bidding of their Arab and pro-Israel funders. I’ve heard one administration official refer to Massachusetts Avenue, the home of many of these think tanks, as “Arab-occupied territory.” It's certainly true that a lot of these think tanks get substantial funding from Arab nations, but that doesn't change the fact that among the fellows at these think tanks are some of the most knowledgeable men and women we have on the region. They write for multiple outlets and advocate for positions based in reality that they genuinely believe. Obama lobbies for money himself, so what room does he have to thumb his nose at that establishment? What makes him inherently more wise and less biased? Since he turned out to be completely wrong, and they were right, I would posit not a goddamn thing does. It gives the vibe of a dnd poster leading the nation. Arab nations, leading scholars on the region, and humanitarian activists, Syrian and international, all come in and say "Mr. President, we feel Syria is on a self-destructive path that will have unimaginable consequence in the long term, not just for Syria, but for the region, and the world. The US cannot sit this one out, because the long term consequences of inaction outweigh the risks of the US getting actively involved in some capacity in order to bring about an end to the regime" And Obama goes "Oh yeah, lets just invade Syria and occupy it for 10 years. This time will be different." And all you can do is throw your hands up in the air in frustration because he's going to sit there and bash away at that strawman no matter what you say because he's already written you off. You're in the stupid poo poo caucus. You advocate for doing stupid poo poo. And that dynamic never changes, as the years pass, and the death toll mounts. I'm reminded of a recent article by Shadi Hamid, where he laments how inelastic and ideologically-driven Obama's foreign policy has been, by pointing out that both Clinton and Bush changed failing strategies by conceding that the current one was not getting the job done. quote:Of course, it is difficult to fundamentally re-orient policy on a particular http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Re...earch.pdf?la=en That Obama has refused to budge on this issue feels much more like arrogance and ignorance in situations like this one, where he was wrong, rather than him being some sort of levy holding back the endless flow of stupid poo poo that he seems to think of himself as. And which he is in many situations when it comes to domestic politics. There's one last point I'd like to make in this post, and that is the significance of the Arab Spring. This was a completely unprecedented event that had an opportunity to drastically reshape the Middle East away from tyranny, away from terrorism, and towards sustainable, long term solutions that benefited the world, and most importantly, the people living in those nations, hardest hit by those institutions. Obama talked about his disdain for the US being traditionally viewed by its allies as the gun to be used to back up their words. He wanted to fight against that, and the way he did it was by "leading from behind." He wanted to pull the US back and force those nations to stand up on their own two feet. Now I totally agree with that perspective, but, and I cannot emphasize this enough, this was not the time to focus on sending a message to our allies out of resentment for the US' role in those relationships. The 1st, 2nd, and 3rd priority here should've been doing whatever we could've done to bring about reform in the Middle East, as there had never been a better opportunity to do so. Instead, Obama turned to KSA, to Maliki, to Qatar, and said you deal with this. This is the equivalent of France falling to Germany, England saying "Hey, we could really use some help," and the US saying "We are not the worlds police." The US had an absolutely massive role to play in the Arab Spring, and it completely shirked it. And the results are absolutely tragic. I don't know enough about presidential history to say conclusively, but I'd imagine if you lined up every President and sorted them in order of most capable of addressing something like the Arab Spring, Obama would be near the bottom of the list.  Well, nobody ever said the Middle East was lucky.
Volkerball fucked around with this message at 21:41 on Mar 13, 2016 |
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Mar 13, 2016 21:31
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JFairfax posted:lol the arab spring was absolutely pants shittingly scary to America, you think the US govt really wanted a new government in Egypt? They supported Mubarak for pretty much his whole time in office until it was completely obvious he was on the way out. The Obama administration did a lot of that playing both sides thing I was talking about before. They supported Mubarak while he was in power, but that doesn't mean they disavowed Morsi. They never cut military aid to Egypt after Mubarak fell, and Obama personally called Morsi and congratulated him for winning the election. In fact, in the rise of dissent against Morsi, a major talking point the military, and now current ruling regime, used was that Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood were supported by the US. So Sisi actually fostered anti-American sentiment in his rise, by claiming the US supported terrorists (which is what Sisi was calling the MB). The situation was far more tense when Morsi fell, because US military aid was tied to language about a "coup," which put the US on the spot to take a stand. The US did suspend military aid for less than a year, but they re-instated it, and they never really came out hard against the coup. Just platitudes about maintaining democratic institutions and reholding elections and all that bullshit. Today, they maintain relations with Sisi. The US was mostly rudderless, and its goal was simply to be on good terms with whoever ended up on top once the cards fell. KSA was far more militant against Morsi than the US was. Anything else was just a security concern, and as far as security concerns go, I don't know if you've heard, but the US is not the worlds police. The result is that terrorism in Egypt is more prominent now than it has ever been in its history, and the strip from Tunisia to Egypt is a very fragile and scary place at the moment. Volkerball fucked around with this message at 22:18 on Mar 13, 2016 |
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Mar 13, 2016 22:15
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Looking at the foreign policy of "America" as one solid, pre-determined path, is a simplistic outlook that refuses to observe the evolution of foreign policy, or the differences between each presidential administration, in favor of a more conspiratorial view that's easier to digest. I've got no time or tolerance for it tbh.
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Mar 13, 2016 22:25
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JFairfax posted:The thing is Volkerball you seem to assume it is the manifest right of any American president to overthrow another country's leader when the need or mood suits, and Obama not wanting to overthrow another regime is somehow taken as a massive failing in foreign policy. My view has nothing to do with the US in particular. I just believe in the responsibility to protect. Sovereignty is conditional, and the condition is that a nation must protect its citizens. If it isn't doing that, then the burden of protecting its citizens falls upon the international community. And I advocate based along those lines as a citizen of a democratic nation with the strongest military on earth. Now whether or not a country is adequately protecting its citizens is subjective of course, but I do think at a certain extreme, there's not much debate to be had. I doubt anyone would say that it would have been violating Nazi Germany's sovereignty to attack it if the primary reason for the attack was based around the operation of concentration camps, because that position would be accurately described as pro-holocaust. So there's a line that everybody draws at a certain point. In my opinion, the Syrian government is on the wrong side of that line. That's the fundamental aspect that dictates that Assad's claim to rule Syria is no more legitimate than my own. That's not even close to saying the US should be allowed to act with impunity wherever it wants. Volkerball fucked around with this message at 00:47 on Mar 14, 2016 |
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Mar 14, 2016 00:40
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JFairfax posted:Nazi Germany invaded and occupied other countries, there is quite a striking difference there. Ghadaffi had not done that, and as far as I know Assad and Libya had not violated the sovereignty of other states. I tried to specify so you wouldn't make that first argument, but here we are. Assuming the Nazi's hadn't espoused aggressive expansion as an ideology, what then? Do you respect their sovereignty and let them do as they please with the Jewish people who were living within Germany? What about Rwanda? Should we have recognized their government as legitimate while it was a figurehead for the ruling militias that were out massacring people in the streets? They were in fact the leaders of Rwanda, after all. Not at this exact moment no, because one of the biggest lessons learned from Iraq is that nation-building from scratch is a difficult endeavor. There's rules, and limits, and none of those nations currently meets the criteria. As Bernard Henri-Levy talks about, there needs to be a point of "critical mass." Where the country has been thrown into chaos, and you have emerging political opposition. Then you can act, and do so in support of an existing movement, rather than attempting to create one on the fly. If mass protests kicked out in KSA tomorrow over domestic oppression, corruption, and lack of accountability in government, and the regime responded with mass violence, and tensions increased and the situation degraded, I would of course say that the government has lost all legitimacy and that the proper thing to do would be to aid the revolution and do what we could to empower the political opposition to establish control over the country, and create a political framework that allowed the freedom and reforms people were demanding. Whether or not that would include military intervention would depend on the specifics of each individual case, but I certainly wouldn't hesitate to call for it if I thought it would provide a better solution for the Saudi people, and Saudi's were out in the streets calling for it like Syrians were. Ardennes posted:Shouldn't there be a debate when the "policing country" has no idea or ability to adequately fix the state they just destroyed? I have to give you props. Hannity would be jealous of how dishonest these questions are. No one said anything about stifling debate, and a plan of action should obviously include discussion about what can realistically be accomplished, as well as the potential to provide a better situation relative to the status quo of non-intervention. That's what debate is for. This is counter-productive to the goal of humanitarian intervention, and certainly not inherent to it. If you get involved in a country in some fashion while trying to establish a stable, representative government, killing innocent people is going to breed resistance, and you're shooting yourself in the foot. It's in the interest of the intervening nation to hold themselves accountable, and even so, they should be held accountable by their people, as well as the international community. What happens when upwards of a million people die in preventable violence due to the lack of any attempt to prevent it...multiple times? We have samples like Rwanda, where non-intervention was clearly the worst option, and we have situations like Bosnia and the NFZ in Iraq where intervention demonstrably provided a better situation, so whatever perspective you're coming from with this question is not based in fact. Volkerball fucked around with this message at 02:07 on Mar 14, 2016 |
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Mar 14, 2016 02:04
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McDowell posted:I think you know this would never happen - the Beltway would address it the same way they addressed Bahrain. Not to mention such a movement in KSA these days would likely become Daesh. Yeah, I imagine liberals who spend a lot of their time preaching about the Saudi regime being a blight on humanity would begin to disparage the opposition as ~no angels themselves~ really drat quickly once things fell to poo poo, no matter what they were out protesting for.
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Mar 14, 2016 02:11
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Panzeh posted:Your friends in Project for a New American Century would probably say that exact thing. And if they don't or it stalemates, it's because they lack the proper proletarian spirit, if I remember your argument correctly. If they lack the ability to accomplish such a basic task as overthrowing an entrenched government and military that has spent decades building itself up while putting its people down to maintain control, they deserve to die.
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Mar 14, 2016 02:16
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Ardennes posted:I think all of those questions are perfectly fair considering what I was responding to. You didn't say stifling debate but rather "not much debate should be had" and then gave a presented a godwin. No, I said there was not much debate that could be had in that one particular extreme, in the furtherance of the argument that almost everyone would support one extreme scenario of intervention. The point being it's not the concept of intervention that is the issue. It's where you draw the line. Which evidently, you agree with. How you contorted that into "if you don't support intervention in every case, you're wrong and dumb and nobody should talk about it, and answer me this smart guy, what happens when the intervening coalition nukes the country it's intervening in?" is something I'm trying really hard to wrap my head around and it's not working out for me. Also you should correct this typo quote:rape sheet because I don't think we have one of those.  fakeedit: you already did, but i'm not changing my post because rape sheet made me laugh.
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Mar 14, 2016 02:48
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