Improving the U. While Obama is probably no Nixon or Kissinger when conducting closed-door diplomacy, he is one of the best public diplomats the U. This is so even considering the inevitable decline in his international mass appeal once the varied impossible expectations around the world were revealed as such. Obama is a foreign policy Liberal, in the best, sophisticated sense of the term.
Key to understanding that is understanding that foreign policy thinkers in the Liberal tradition have always recognized the logic of Realist international relations theory. But Liberal theory has a conditional approach to when such realpolitik thinking is necessary or useful. Foreign policy judgement must be exercised first and foremost with an understanding of the conditions under which raw power must be the driving consideration, and those under which cooperation generated by interdependence can lead to greater benefits, or avoid serious costs.
Obama has delivered a balanced foreign policy that protects U. All within the means of our huge but finite economic, political, and military resources. Obama has decidedly not over-reacted to the disastrous foreign policies of George W. For example, he is often criticised from within his own party for tough policies on issues such as intelligence, guarding government secrets, and frequently being willing to use force including drone strikes including to kill U.
Where Nixon adjusted U. Each heavily emphasized the importance of burden sharing by key allies with mutual interests. Democracy, economic interdependence, and trust are valuable currencies for him, on par with and much preferred to military power and the credible threat of its use.
Like Nixon, Obama is clear-eyed about the types of compromises that might be necessary in this strategy. But I think most Americans would trust Obama much more than they would Nixon or Kissinger to strike the right balance between values and realpolitik in such compromises. Nixon and Kissinger let the country down in this respect, but I do not believe Obama has done or will do this. Making decisions that often occupy the grey zone of rationally balanced probabilities, and which are hard to explain in twenty-second sound bites, takes courage and demonstrates leadership.
The list of substantial achievements heavily weighs the scale on the positive side, when balanced against missteps or reasonably avoidable negative foreign policy outcomes. But more than this, and unlike Nixon or other Realists, his Liberal foreign policy has the potential, indeed the strong likelihood, to positively shape the global context in which the U.
Because Liberal theory recognizes variance in the potential for cooperation or conflict, it recognizes the central role of changing goals and preferences of states in the international system Moravcsik In case this sounds like airy abstraction, consider the utility of shaping key relationships along these lines for what is most likely the major military challenge the U. A world of market democracies will be much less amenable to PRC influence assuming the Communist Party maintains power, which seems likely.
The Liberal approach that values allies and makes sure that security cooperation is based on mutual interests and trust, will substantially increase the odds that allies will pay the costs of resisting and confronting China, which will certainly be high.
Key allies in this will most likely be Japan, but also Europe, which could feel huge economic pull from China and less immediacy to the security threat, and India, which might be tempted to collaborate with China in dividing up spheres of influence in Asia, rather than resisting expansion. Obama is laying the foundation for maintaining stability in Asia by credibly presenting China with both carrots and sticks that are consistent with U. A broad Asia-Pacific strategy based on Realist principles alone would foreshadow a future much less palatable for the U.
My claim is about the logic actually expressed. Deutsch, Karl W. Political Community and the North Atlantic Area; International organization in the light of historical experience. New York: Greenwood Press. Douthat, Ross. Gartzke, Erik. Glaser, Charles. Goldberg, Jeffrey. Goldsmith, Benjamin E. Horowitz, Jason. Keohane, Robert O. Power and Interdependence: World Politics in Transition. Boston, Little, Brown and Company, Levy, Jack S.
Rotberg andTheodore K. Rabb, eds. The Origin and Prevention of Major Wars. New York: Cambridge University Press. Milner, Helen. In Helen V. Moravcsik, Andrew. Mousseau, Michael. Nye, Joseph. New York: Public Affairs. Obama, Barack. May Remnick, David. Russett, Bruce and John Oneal. Triangulating Peace: Democracy, interdependence, and international organizations.
New York: WW Norton. Benjamin E. Bush was more conservative than his father although similar to Ronald Reagan ; Reagan and both Bushes were more conservative than Richard M.
Nixon and Gerald R. Ford; and Nixon and Ford were more conservative than Dwight D. Eisenhower, according to those scores. By contrast, there has been no consistent pattern among Democratic presidents. Kennedy, but slightly more liberal than Lyndon B. Johnson, Franklin D.
Roosevelt and Harry S. Another finding is that the Democratic presidents, including Mr. Obama, have often adopted a different strategy than Republicans. Whereas Democratic presidents usually have scores fairly close but just slightly to the left of the median Democratic member of Congress, Republican presidents — with the very clear exception of Eisenhower — articulate legislative positions that are equivalent to those held by one of the most conservative members of their party.
We need to be careful in interpreting these results. The positions that presidents advocate on Congressional roll calls can be subject to a number of tactical considerations, and may not be entirely representative of their ideology. Nevertheless, there is some support for the notion that Democratic presidents take positions that — while still quite liberal — are at least somewhat more amenable to compromise. By contrast, Republican presidents push as hard as they can to the right and let the chips fall where they may.
A lot of liberals advocate that Mr. Obama should take a page out of the Republican playbook, and instead take more emphatically liberal positions like those held by the Congressional Progressive Caucus. It is not self-evident, however, that this would lead to more liberal policy outcomes. Instead, the presidents who have had the most domestic policy success — like Roosevelt, Eisenhower and Johnson — have generally held DW-Nominate scores closer to the median than to the extremes.
To take one salient example, Mr. Clinton and Mr. Rather than engaging with the economic woes of minority groups head-on, he does it indirectly. Since African-Americans are disproportionately represented in the ranks of the unemployed, and in low-income and low-to-middle-income groups, they are benefitting disproportionately from things like the extension of unemployment benefits, the higher income threshold for Medicaid, and the expansion of the earned-income tax credit.
In this area, as in others, Obama is a thoroughly modern Washington liberal. He wraps himself in the flag and refers to himself as a moderate. Today, the role model for any crafty liberal pol is Bill Clinton, who is now a progressive icon, though liberals were not so thrilled with him when he was actually in office. As a young Southern governor, it is sometimes forgotten, he was a prominent member of the Democratic Leadership Council, a corporate-funded vehicle set up to distance the Democratic Party from its image as a redoubt of McGovern-Carter-Mondale liberalism.
In opposition to the sixties- and seventies-era language of rights and entitlements, Clinton talked extensively about responsibilities and obligations. During his eight years as President, he raised taxes on the rich and expanded tax credits for low earners, but also abolished large parts of the welfare system and declared that the era of big government was over.
Obama, during his even more meteoric rise, relied largely on his personal narrative, and his personal talents, rather than any particular group or standpoint. They do not make us a nation of takers; they free us to take the risks that make this country great.
On the left and the right, the consensus appears to be that Obama is now backing away from any serious effort to reform entitlements—that he is content to lock in some modest deficit reduction in other areas, and let his successors deal with the Medicare time bomb. Can that be right? Other reports suggest that he would like to go down in history as the President who solved the entitlements crisis, putting the finances of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid on a more sustainable course, and preserving them for future generations.
Coupled with the successful implementation of Obamacare, surely that would be a liberal achievement to set alongside those of F. But is it politically feasible? John Cassidy has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since He also writes a column about politics, economics, and more for newyorker.
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