The National Interest

Article 4. The National Interest Foreign-Policy Failure Dimitri K. Simes August 24, 2011 -- PRESIDENT BARACK Obama is in many respects the opposite of Richard Nixon and George H. W. Bush, both foreign-policy presidents who subordinated their domestic ambitions to America’s national-security requirements. Moreover, where Obama has succeeded internationally, his successes have been largely tactical rather than strategic, reflecting the fact that he 1s fundamentally a domestic leader with a European-style socialist agenda but little or no foreign-policy vision. This lack of an international agenda is why the president may be called a pragmatist, but not a realist. One result of all this is that his administration’s foreign-policy choices often appear substantially driven by political expediency— and particularly a desire to avoid domestic criticism, something apparent in both the president’s surge in Afghanistan and his later plan for withdrawal. Another is that, lacking a vision, the administration rarely appears to engage in long-term thinking about the international environment, historical processes or the potential unintended consequences of its choices. In fact, its sense of history seems highly politicized and simplistic. Short-term political thinking about foreign policy cannot sustain America’s international leadership, which requires clear distinctions between immediate tactical problems and longer-term strategic threats. Today, most analysts agree that the greatest danger to the United States is not from Iran, which does not yet have nuclear weapons, or even al-Qaeda, which has been seriously damaged, but rather from Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. Maintaining the Pakistani HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_024609