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.

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.