Saturday Special: Is Barack Obama Another JFK?

Our colleague Bevan Sewell of the University of Nottingham and Libertas is a leading young scholar on US foreign policy in the 1950s and 1960s. Taking some of the lessons from that research, he looks at the foreign policy prospects of the new American President:

The rapid rise of Barack Obama to the White House has been accompanied by desire among leading commentators to find an appropriate historical analogy. The number one comparison so far has been between Obama and John F. Kennedy, President from 1961 until his assassination in 1963, who also rose to prominence at a comparatively young age. As early as 2007, Ted Sorenson, Kennedy’s leading speechwriter and one of his closest advisors, anointed Obama as a successor. In February 2008, William Rees-Mogg of The Times wrote:

[Obama] has built up an excitement such as no candidate has created since President Kennedy in 1960. He is, in my view, a better speaker than Kennedy. Like Kennedy, he combines personal magnetism with a strong appeal to American idealism.

Yet, beyond the immediate imagery of youthful leaders, accomplished speakers, and forceful men regenerating America politically, what do these analogies actually mean? Can any worthwhile comparison be drawn, or is this just the search by contemporary commentators for populist appeal?

At least with respect to US foreign policy, any analogy has to avoid the temptation of predictions about how Obama’s policy might work. Labeling him as the "new" Kennedy is not as hopeful as many commentators have suggested. In fact, the potential (if tentative) lessons of the Kennedy era are that, in a time of international flux, presidents are likely to make mistakes. Those errors may undermine the US national interest even if, ultimately, this does not result in disaster.

One of the most powerful moments of Obama’s Inaugural Address came when he spoke of those nations that wished America ill:

To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society's ills on the West - know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy. To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.

In the summer of 1961, President Kennedy adopted a similar tone in the midst of an ongoing crisis over Berlin which had seen the Soviet Union and the US come to diplomatic blows over the future of the city. In an address to the American people, Kennedy sought to reassure them of the US commitment to waging the Cold War and of his willingness to use force if required. But he also included a message of conciliation and an offer to communicate with the Soviets if they acted appropriately:

So long as the Communists insist that they are preparing to end by themselves unilaterally our rights in West Berlin and our commitments to its people, we must be prepared to defend those rights and those commitments. We will at all times be ready to talk, if talk will help. But we must also be ready to resist with force, if force is used upon us. Either alone would fail. Together, they can serve the cause of freedom and peace.

In both speeches, there was a clear link between the American will to use force if required and the US willingness to negotiate given a suitable opportunity. Of course, the contexts were very different, but these examples suggest there are certain themes that repeat themselves during different eras. While it is going too far to take these as the basis for predictions about Obama’s foreign policies and possible outcomes, they can be useful in terms of moderating grandiose expectations.

Indeed, Kennedy’s foreign policy travails in his first year in office show the wisdom not expecting too much from leaders that have been heralded enthusiastically. They are, after all, human: mistakes will be made, readjustments will be necessary, and it takes time for a President to get a grip on the internal dynamics of the US foreign policy bureaucracy.

Upon entering the White House in 1961, the Kennedy administration wanted to jettison an over-reliance upon the threatened use of nuclear weapons and a fiscal conservatism that had limited the policies of President Dwight Eisenhower. Instead, Kennedy and his advisors would pursue a strategy marked out by the military concept of flexible response and by economic and social development based on modernization theory.

Clear intentions did not, however, make for clear policy. In its first year, the Kennedy administration faced crises in Cuba, Berlin, Laos, and Vietnam. Kennedy was verbally humiliated by Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev in Vienna and had to confront internal problems with his national security team.

The decision to give the go-ahead to a CIA-backed invasion Cuba, just three months into his term, was disastrous for Kennedy; the Bay of Pigs fiasco brought widespread criticism for the new president and undermined the credibility of the so-called “best and the brightest” that made up his coterie of advisors. Further problems were encountered in Berlin, where a lack of presidential leadership, an absence of a clear foreign policy structure, and too many competing voices crippled US policy. So chaotic was the situation in these early days that, in a candid and forceful memo, National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy felt compelled to lay out a strident critique of the new president’s management of the foreign policy sphere:

The National Security Council, for example, really cannot work for you unless you authorize work schedules that do not get upset from day to day. Calling three meetings in five days is foolish-and putting them off for six weeks at a time is just as bad….Truman and Eisenhower did their daily dozen in foreign affairs the first thing in the morning, and a couple of weeks ago you asked me to begin to meet you on this basis. I have succeeded in catching you on three mornings, for a total of about 8 minutes, and I conclude that this is not really how you like to begin the day. Moreover, 6 of the 8 minutes were given not to what I had for you but what you had for me.

Bundy’s depiction of an incoherent national security structure suggested obvious difficulties for an incoming administration. Adversaries abroad and the situation inherited from Eisenhower were the catalyst for many of the problems that the administration faced, but there were also internal difficulties that had to be addressed if the administration’s foreign policy was going to function effectively.

For President Obama, similar problems are all too obvious. The renewed US support for the war in Afghanistan, a deteriorating situation in Pakistan, ongoing crises in the Middle East, the debate over diplomatic openings to Iran, Cuba, and Venezuela, and a state of flux in US-European affairs all provide ample evidence of an administration yet to establish a clear foreign policy identity. Reports of turf battles between Obama and his military advisors, echo the Kennedy era where factionalism and a lack of coherent command within the administration could strain the implementation of policy. And while Obama has been handed the poisoned chalice of the legacy of eight years of Bushian foreign policy, the struggle to learn how to ‘do’ foreign policy in his first months inevitably complicates matters for US officials.

Though Obama has a set of foreign policy priorities that he wants to pursue, his attempts to achieve these will be accompanied by ongoing difficulties. Shaking hands with Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez is an obvious example. The depth of enmity that existed between Bush and Chavez means that a rapprochement is welcome, but the wider connotations also need to be factored in. Chavez divides opinion in Latin America as much as among other nations of the world; therefore, the US relationship with him needs to be managed carefully lest it have an adverse impact on the already strained inter-American relationship.

Likewise, attempting to broker a diplomatic opening with Iran has multi-faceted elements that must be considered. For while Obama scores highly for trying to open constructive diplomatic links with Tehran, it is a gambit that can backfire if Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad continues to make inflammatory international statements like his recent pronouncement to the UN World Conference on Racism.

Yet it is the internal schisms in the Administration that are potentially most damaging. During the Kennedy era the debates that arose between new advisors like Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and older hands like former Secretary of State Dean Acheson pointed not just to a lack of internal harmony but also to an absence of presidential leadership. The Berlin crisis was a clear examples with Kennedy prevaricating between policy alternatives while canny advisors like Acheson and General Lucius Clay used a bureaucratic vacuum to advance their own agendas. Obama’s disagreements with General David Petraeus and more broadly the Pentagon, vident in discussions over Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan, are reminiscent of this.

Of course, the history of the Kennedy era does not suggest that there will be an episode as damaging as the Bay of Pigs or as climatic as the Berlin crisis during the Obama Presidency. But they do suggest that, however talented and however capable, Obama may struggle to develop a fully effective foreign policy until he can eradicate some of the difficulties that blighted the early hope of his Democratic predecessor almost fifty years ago.

Scott Lucas in The Guardian: Obama Administration's Battle over Iran and Israel

Since I wrote this for The Guardian, there have been further developments, notably Israel's stepped-up campaign to bump Washington into a hard-line Iran-first policy. The efforts have been more political than military, notably Tel Aviv's threat that it will not enter meaningful negotiations over Palestine unless the US commits to further pressure upon Tehran.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton struck back yesterday, telling Israel to back off on the threat. That indicates that the Obama line of engagement is still prevailing within the Administration, as does the silence of Petraeus and Mullen over the last two weeks.

Forgive the somewhat dramatic headline, which led to a lot of irrelevant comments. The issue is not whether the US backs an Israeli airstrike but whether it suspends the gradual but clear move towards discussions with Iran.

To bomb, or not to bomb, Iran

Just over a month ago, President Barack Obama broke a 30-year embargo on US relations with Iran: he offered goodwill not only to "Iranians" but to the country's government. Speaking on the occasion of Nowruz, the Iranian New Year, he said:

"I want you, the people and leaders of Iran, to understand the future that we seek. It's a future with renewed exchanges among our people, and greater opportunities for partnership and commerce. It's a future where the old divisions are overcome, where you and all of your neighbours and the wider world can live in greater security and greater peace."

It's no surprise that this message, given a generation of tension between Washington and Tehran, has been challenged in the US. What's more interesting is that the greatest threat to Obama's engagement comes not from media sceptics from Fox News to the Wall Street Journal or the foundations now packed with refugees from the Bush administration or even the Middle Eastern institutes putting a priority on Israeli security. No, Obama's most daunting opponents are within his own administration.

Less than two weeks after the Nowruz address, General David Petraeus, the head of the US military command overseeing Iran and the Persian Gulf, offered a far different portrayal of Iran to a Senate committee:

Iranian activities and policies constitute the major state-based threat to regional stability. … Iran is assessed by many to be continuing its pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability, which would destabilise the region and likely spur a regional arms race.

The next day Petraeus's boss, Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, visited the offices of the Wall Street Journal, which has taken a consistent editorial line against dialogue with the Iranian government. Far from supporting his president, Mullen told the newspaper: "I think we've got a problem now. ... I think the Iranians are on a path to building nuclear weapons." Not even past enemies were as menacing: "Even in the darkest days of the cold war we talked to the Soviets. … [But now] we don't have a lot of time."

What's going on here? There are clear political goals behind Obama's approach of dialogue rather than confrontation. The hope is that Iran will not challenge the US approach to Middle Easten issues, in particular Israel-Palestine and Israel-Syria talks, through its connections with Hamas and Hezbollah. An easing of political tensions in turn may remove the motive for Tehran to reverse its suspension of research and development for a nuclear weapons – as opposed to civilian nuclear energy – programme.

Yet there are also military benefits from a US-Iran rapprochement. As Obama's envoy Richard Holbrooke has made clear, a partnership with Tehran could ease the American burden in Afghanistan, especially as the troop surge is being implemented. Better relations could assist with the political transition in Iraq as the US draws down its overt military presence. Eventually, an Iranian renunciation of nuclear weapons would finally remove a significant strategic question mark in the region.

In part, the calculation of Petraeus and Mullen is that Iran cannot be trusted in these areas. For years, US commanders in Iraq have alleged that Iran has been backing the insurgency, and Petraeus has also claimed that Tehran has supported the Taliban in Afghanistan. In his testimony to the Senate committee, the general expanded this into a grand nefarious Iranian scheme:

Iran employs surrogates and violent proxies to weaken competitor states, perpetuate conflict with Israel, gain regional influence and obstruct the Middle East peace process. Iran also uses some of these groups to train and equip militants in direct conflict with US forces. Syria, Iran's key ally, facilitates the Iranian regime's reach into the Levant and the Arab world by serving as the key link in an Iran-Syria-Hezbollah-Hamas alliance and allows extremists (albeit in smaller numbers than in the past) to operate in Damascus and to facilitate travel into Iraq.

Still, in their public opposition to Obama's Iran policy, the military commanders are playing one card before all others: Israel.

Petraeus's threat to the congressmen was far from subtle: "The Israeli government may ultimately see itself so threatened by the prospect of an Iranian nuclear weapon that it would take pre-emptive military action to derail or delay it." Mullen told the Wall Street Journal: "There is a leadership in Israel that is not going to tolerate" a nuclear Iran. This was a "life or death" matter in which "the operative word is 'existential'".

Are they bluffing? If so, it's a bluff that has been coordinated with Tel Aviv. Last summer, Israel asked for but did not get George Bush's support for an airstrike on Iran. It took only six weeks for the Israelis to revive the topic with the new Obama administration: the commander of the Israeli armed forces, General Gabi Ashkenazi, visited Washington with the message "that an Israeli military strike was a 'serious' option".

While Ashkenazi was told by Obama's political advisers to put his fighter planes away, the story of Israeli military plans continues to be circulated. Only last weekend, Sheera Frenkel of The Times was fed the story: "The Israeli military is preparing itself to launch a massive aerial assault on Iran's nuclear facilities within days of being given the go-ahead by its new government."

High-level Obama officials are fighting back. Aware that a frontal assault on the popular Petraeus would be politically dangerous, they have tried to curb the "Israel will strike" campaign. Vice-president Joe Biden told CNN that new Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "would be ill-advised to do that". Perhaps more importantly, secretary of defence Robert Gates said last week that an Israeli attack would have "dangerous consequences". Reading that signal, Israeli President Shimon Peres backed away from earlier tough talk and assured: "All the talk about a possible attack by Israel on Iran is not true. The solution in Iran is not military."

So, for this moment, Petraeus and Mullen appear to have been checked. However, they and their military allies, such as General Raymond Odierno in Iraq, have been persistent in challenging Obama over strategy from Kabul to Baghdad to Jerusalem. It is their manoeuvring, rather than Tehran's jailing of an Iranian-American journalist like Roxana Saberi or even Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's speeches at UN conferences, that is Barack Obama's greatest foe.

UPDATE: General Odierno Backs Down on Obama's Iraq Plans?

Related Post: Video and Transcript: General Odierno on CNN’s State of the Union
Related Post: Obama v. The Military (Part 441) - Odierno Launches an Offensive from Iraq

As we thought earlier today, the appearance of General Raymond Odierno, the commander of US forces in Iraq, on CNN's flagship State of the Union programme was quite interesting. Indeed, it appears the General --- after his apparent challenge to the White House withdrawal plan earlier this week --- has beat a retreat.

John King's interview started with the same topic that opened Odierno's chat with The Times of London, "an uptick in violence in recent days" in Iraq. And the General initially maintained the flexibility of "stay or go" despite deadlines for withdrawal:

We will continue to conduct assessments along with the government of Iraq as we move forwards the June 30th deadline. If we believe that we’ll need troops to maintain a presence in some of the cities, we’ll recommend that.

But then Odierno added an unexpected twist: "Ultimately, it will the decision of [Iraqi] Prime Minister Maliki."

Nouri al-Maliki never appeared in Odierno's interview with The Times. Not once. Indeed, the General showed no recognition of Iraqi politics even as he went through a checklist of the challenges that might keep US forces in the country.

Noticing the Iraqi Prime Minister, and his "ultimate decision" on US forces, was not the only shift in Odierno's position. Asked by King about his earlier statement that he would "like to see a force probably around 30,000 or so, 35,000" through 2014 or 2015, Odierno once more put the rationale for a continuing American presence:

It really has always been about Iraqi — Iraqis securing their own country. So the issue becomes, do we think they will be able to do that?

Yet the General then gave way: "As they continue to improve in the operations they’ve been able to conduct, I believe that they will be able to do that by the end of 2011."

King pressed, "On a scale of 1 to 10, sir, how confident are you, 10 being fully confident, that you will meet that deadline, that all U.S. troops will be gone at the end of 2011?" And Odierno gave a near-definitive answer that he never offered The Times:

As you ask me today, I believe it’s a 10 that we will be gone by 2011.

There are scenarios in which Odierno's shift is not a concession to his President. For example, The Times never put the blunt 1-to-10 question that King asked.

As I read and view this, however, I see this scenario. In the 72 hours between the publication of The Times interview and the CNN appearance, someone in Washington got a hold of Odierno and told him to cut out his "wiggle room". More than that, in fact. The general was instructed to recognise that the Iraqi Government, not Raymond Odierno, would make the call on whether US troops would leave by the deadines set out in the December 2008 Status of Forces Agreement.

If that is so, Barack Hussein Obama may have finally gotten the upper hand on one of his military adversaries. Which only leaves the matter of a General David Petraeus.

Obama v. The Military (Part 441): Odierno Launches an Offensive from Iraq

Related Post: UPDATED - General Odierno Backs Down?
Related Post: Video and Transcript - General Odierno on CNN’s State of the Union

Even as I was writing about the challenge of General David Petraeus, the head of US Central Command, to the Obama strategy on Afghanistan, another military commander was re-launching an offensive against the President.

General Raymond Odierno's battlefield is Iraq, where he supervises US troops. For months, he has been unhappy over the Obama plan to reduce American forces. So, only weeks after the compromise of a 19-month withdrawal was announced, Odierno has returned to the attack.

His initial campaign was in The Times of London, which gave him a couple of pages on Thursday. As we predicted, the recent "uptick in violence" in Iraq will be used by Odierno to resist the July deadline to take US troops out of Iraqi cities:

[The violence] is not going to be solved quickly and it’s about having constant security across Baghdad and you have to be that way a while longer....The agreement says that combat forces out of the cities by June 30 so all of our support forces will remain. But we will be prepared to assist them if they need it.

Of course, the general has to maintain the Looking Glass View that, while violence is getting worse, the situation is getting better: "What is different now from 2004 is that we do have Iraqi security forces that people still have faith in, we do have a government in place that will come out and make comments."

What is most striking in Odierno's public-relations campaign is that his definition of the fight in Washington is much clearer than the fight in Iraq. He rattles off a check-list of challenges --- integrating the "Sons of Iraq", the Sunni militias that the US built up from 2007, into the Iraqi military; Arab-Kurd tensions; "Iranian influence"; Al Qa'eda; "a common vision by all political leaders for Iraq" --- without any apparent distinction between those issues or a strategy on how to approach them.

For all the puffery on how the Odierno of 2009 is different from the Odierno of 2003/4, who led his division in the breaking down of Iraqi doors and alienating of local sympathies, the general still holds up "Iraq" as this abstract political space in which bad guys lurk: "In a region such as the Middle East you are going to continue to have people who want to use violence, whether it be al-Qaeda, whether it be Iranian surrogates."

That, however, is an advantage if your primary concern is not Iraqi political stability but the defense of your military operations, which never really come to an end.

Odierno's next campaign appearance? Today on CNN's flagship political programme with John King.

Scott Lucas in The Guardian: Petraeus v. Obama

Our coverage of the battle within the Obama Administration over Iraq and Afghanistan strategy reached The Guardian last night with Scott Lucas' analysis of the President's plans and General David Petraeus's manoeuvres:

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HOW MANY TROOPS IS ENOUGH?
General David Petraeus is subtly challenging President Obama's views on the number of US troops needed in Afghanistan

In the weeks after Barack Obama's inauguration, there was a running battle within his administration over the president's foreign policy. General David Petraeus, the former commander of US forces in Iraq, now the head of the military's Central Command, was pressing – often publicly – for a slower drawdown of troops in Iraq and a larger surge of US soldiers in Afghanistan.

With the compromise over an Iraq timetable and Obama's recent announcement of the Pakistan-Afghanistan strategy consensus seemed to have emerged. In fact, Petraeus had won quiet victories. A loose definition of "non-combat forces" meant tens of thousands of American troops could remain in Iraq after September 2010. While headlines said Obama had approved an extra 17,000 troops in Afghanistan, the boost was actually 30,000, the amount that military commanders had been seeking. No wonder Petraeus appeared alongside Obama envoy Richard Holbrooke on political talkshows to promote the plan.

Everything all right then?

No.

Last week, Petraeus was back on the attack. He told congressmen on Capitol Hill that "American commanders have requested the deployment of an additional 10,000 US troops to Afghanistan next year, [although] the request awaits a final decision by President Obama this fall."

The general couldn't have been clearer: if you want his solution in Afghanistan, then the president's recent announcement was only an interim step. As Ann Scott Tyson put it in the Washington Post: "The ratio of coalition and Afghan security forces to the population is projected through 2011 to be significantly lower than the 20 troops per 1,000 people prescribed by the army counterinsurgency manual [Petraeus] helped write."

How brazen, even defiant, is this? Consider that, only three days earlier, the president had tried to hold the line against precisely this "bit more, bit more, OK, a bit more" demand. He said he had "resourced properly" the Pakistan-Afghanistan strategy and had pre-emptively warned his generals: "What I will not do is to simply assume that more troops always result in an improved situation … There may be a point of diminishing returns."

In the congressional hearings, Michele Flournoy, the undersecretary of defence, insisted that the US plan was to concentrate forces in "the insurgency belt in the south and east", rather than throughout Afghanistan, as Petraeus preferred, and tried to signal that there would be upward shifts in deployments: "Troops would arrive, as planned, in 2010."

Still, even as Obama was travelling to Europe to get Nato's support for his approach, Petraeus was subtly challenging his president. Both are invoking an al-Qaieda threat against the US and the world as the call for action. Both are setting the disruption of the Pakistani safe havens as an immediate US objective.

The president sees "a comprehensive strategy that doesn't just rely on bullets or bombs, but also relies on agricultural specialists, on doctors, on engineers", an inter-agency approach with increased economic aid, including a trebling to $1.5bn per year for Pakistan, and a boost in civilian workers.

For Petraeus "comprehensive", even if it must have non-military as well as military dimensions, means an effort led by the Pentagon in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. Military commanders have steadily taken over non-military programmes, including information operations and economic development, from other agencies. (In last week's hearings, the general announced a Pakistani Counterinsurgency Capability Fund of $3bn, taking responsibility for security assistance from the US state department.)

Even more importantly, Obama has left open the possibility that if the military approach runs into trouble, then it will be reconsidered: "[This is] not going to be an open-ended commitment of infinite resources." He even broke the taboo of the v-word last Sunday: "I'm enough of a student of history to know that the United States, in Vietnam and other countries, other epochs of history have overextended to the point where they were severely weakened."

In contrast, the prospect of an increase of violence only reinforces Petraeus's rationale to put more soldiers into the conflict. The general's acolytes in counterinsurgency are already writing of up to 100,000 US troops in Afghanistan. An expansion of aerial and covert operations in northwest Pakistan is underway.

Obama's announced strategy may be muddled. It lacks any approach to, and even understanding of, the politics in Islamabad and Kabul, and its default position of airstrikes in northwest Pakistan is likely to bolster rather than vanquish the safe havens for the Afghan insurgency. Petraeus's campaign, however, only escalates the dangers.

In mid-February, the president called the US commander in Afghanistan, General David McKiernan, and asked how the general planned to use an extra 30,000 troops. According to a White House official, Obama "got no coherent answer to the question".

What we are witnessing goes beyond the egos and aspirations of two intelligent, confident American leaders. And it is beyond the dreaded v-word of the 1960s or the contrasting myth of Petraeus' successful Iraq surge.

This is the tension of what the historian Marilyn Young labels the "limited unlimited war". Even as President Obama sets aside the phrase "global war on terror", he frames this particular intervention in the terms of the ongoing battle against Osama bin Laden and his extremist allies. Doing so, he leaves himself open to the vision of Petraeus, for whom the counterinsurgency operation never quite reaches an end.