Renewing American Leadership

By Barack Obama

 

Source: Foreign Affairs, August 2007.

 

Summary: After Iraq, we may be tempted to turn inward. That would be a mistake. The American moment is not over, but it must be seized anew. We must bring the war to a responsible end and then renew our leadership — military, diplomatic, moral — to confront new threats and capitalize on new opportunities. America cannot meet this century’s challenges alone; the world cannot meet them without America.

 

Common Security For Our Common Humanity

At moments of great peril in the last century, American leaders such as Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and John F. Kennedy managed both to protect the American people and to expand opportunity for the next generation. What is more, they ensured that America, by deed and example, led and lifted the world — that we stood for and fought for the freedoms sought by billions of people beyond our borders.

As Roosevelt built the most formidable military the world had ever seen, his Four Freedoms gave purpose to our struggle against fascism. Truman championed a bold new architecture to respond to the Soviet threat — one that paired military strength with the Marshall Plan and helped secure the peace and well-being of nations around the world. As colonialism crumbled and the Soviet Union achieved effective nuclear parity, Kennedy modernized our military doctrine, strengthened our conventional forces, and created the Peace Corps and the Alliance for Progress. They used our strengths to show people everywhere America at its best.

Today, we are again called to provide visionary leadership. This century’s threats are at least as dangerous as and in some ways more complex than those we have confronted in the past. They come from weapons that can kill on a mass scale and from global terrorists who respond to alienation or perceived injustice with murderous nihilism. They come from rogue states allied to terrorists and from rising powers that could challenge both America and the international foundation of liberal democracy. They come from weak states that cannot control their territory or provide for their people. And they come from a warming planet that will spur new diseases, spawn more devastating natural disasters, and catalyze deadly conflicts.

To recognize the number and complexity of these threats is not to give way to pessimism. Rather, it is a call to action. These threats demand a new vision of leadership in the twenty-first century — a vision that draws from the past but is not bound by outdated thinking. The Bush administration responded to the unconventional attacks of 9/11 with conventional thinking of the past, largely viewing problems as state-based and principally amenable to military solutions. It was this tragically misguided view that led us into a war in Iraq that never should have been authorized and never should have been waged. In the wake of Iraq and Abu Ghraib, the world has lost trust in our purposes and our principles.

Explaining the Paradox of American Human Rights Policy: Rights Culture or Pluralist Pressures?

Andrew Moravcsik[1]

 

Conference on Unilateralism and U.S. Power Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University 5 December 2003.

 

 

Introduction

Why is the US so reluctant to ratify and apply multilateral human rights treaties? Compared to most advanced industrial democracies, the US still refuses to formally accept nearly all widely accepted international legal human rights norms and uniformly rejects legal enforcement of those norms within its borders, whether by international or domestic means. This is a paradox in a country with a robust tradition of domestic civil rights enforcement and a vigorous record of unilateral (even often multilateral) action abroad to promote human rights. The resulting ambivalence on the part of the US is now a striking exception among Western democracies and has been the target of criticism from domestic civil libertarians and foreign governments as being inconsistent, hypocritical and cynical.

How is this paradoxical policy mix to be explained? Explanations for US non-adherence can usefully be divided into two broad categories. The most common category contains explanations that stress the enduring, broadly-based “rights culture” of the US—the particular political ideals and notions of procedural propriety distinctive to the US. An alternative category comprises “pluralist” explanations, which stress partisan and material political interests, as filtered through American political institutions. I shall argue that the second sort of explanation—and, in particular, the combination of superpower status, democratic stability, concentrated conservative opposition, and fragmented political institutions—best accounts for this form of US unilateralism.

Although the object of considerable speculation, the causes of US exceptionalism in human rights constitute, above all, an empirical question of history and social science.[2] There are numerous prima facie plausible explanations—many of them consistent with the (often opportunistic) rhetoric of politicians with regard to human rights commitments. The difficult and more essential task is to locate and interpret empirical evidence that bears on this question. The best such evidence concerns neither the crude fact of US non-adherence nor the rhetoric of politicians, but instead the nature of domestic cleavages, the anomalous position of the US in comparative perspective, and the scope of US non-adherence. I present the most relevant data below.

Barack Obama and Joe Biden’s Plan to Secure America and Restore our Standing

The Obama-Biden Plan

- Iran

• The Problem: Iran has sought nuclear weapons, supports militias inside Iraq and terror across the region, and its leaders threaten Israel and deny the Holocaust. But Obama and Biden believe that we have not exhausted our non-military options in confronting this threat; in many ways, we have yet to try them. That’s why Obama stood up to the Bush administration’s warnings of war, just like he stood up to the war in Iraq.
• Opposed Bush-Cheney Saber Rattling: Obama and Biden opposed the Kyl-Lieberman amendment, which says we should use our military presence in Iraq to counter the threat from Iran. Obama and Biden believe that it was reckless for Congress to give George Bush any justification to extend the Iraq War or to attack Iran. Obama also introduced a resolution in the Senate declaring that no act of Congress – including Kyl-Lieberman – gives the Bush administration authorization to attack Iran.
• Diplomacy: Obama supports tough, direct presidential diplomacy with Iran without preconditions. Now is the time to pressure Iran directly to change their troubling behavior. Obama and Biden would offer the Iranian regime a choice. If Iran abandons its nuclear program and support for terrorism, we will offer incentives like membership in the World Trade Organization, economic investments, and a move toward normal diplomatic relations. If Iran continues its troubling behavior, we will step up our economic pressure and political isolation. Seeking this kind of comprehensive settlement with Iran is our best way to make progress.

Obama’s Foreign Policies Must Combine Hard and Soft Power

By Joseph S. Nye

 

President Obama faces a dilemma in foreign policy. On the one hand, he will inherit a legacy he cannot ignore: an economic crisis, two wars, a struggle against terrorism, and a set of problems in the Middle East among others. If he fails to fight these fires successfully, they will consume his political capital. On the other hand, if all he does is fight fires, he inherits Bush’s priorities.

Beyond dealing with urgent trouble spots, a key priority for Barack Obama will be to set his own tone that helps to educate the public at home and abroad. The “Bush Doctrine” of preventive war and coercive democratization, coupled with a unilateralist style, was based on a flawed analysis of power in today’s world. The paradox of American power is that the strongest country since the days of Rome cannot achieve its objectives acting alone.

Obama’s election itself has done a great deal to restore American soft power, but he will need to follow up with policies that combine hard and soft power into a smart strategy of the sort that won the Cold War. Democracy promotion is best accomplished by soft attraction rather than hard coercion, and it takes time and patience. Here he should lead by example and remember the historical wisdom of being Reagan’s “shining city on a hill.” Closing Guantanamo, while it raises tough questions about the future of some detainees, will give such a signal. As for democracy promotion, it is in our cultural genes. The United States should always encourage the gradual evolution of democracy but in a manner that accepts the reality of diversity. Right now, Bush’s calls for democracy are heard as an imperial imposition of American institutions. We need less Wilsonian rhetoric about making the world safe for democracy, unless combined with John F. Kennedy’s calls to “make the world safe for diversity.”

Obama should go beyond the false dualism of liberal vs. realist. American leadership remains crucial. A “liberal realist” policy should look to the long term evolution of world order and realize the responsibility of the largest country in the international system to produce global public or common goods as Britain did in the 19th century. As the largest country of the 21st century, the United States should similarly promote an open international economy and commons (seas, space, internet), mediate international disputes before they escalate, and develop international rules and institutions. Early signaling that the U.S. will take the lead in dealing with global climate change will be an important start.

The United States can become a smart power by once again investing in global public goods – providing things people and governments in all quarters of the world want but cannot attain in the absence of leadership by the largest country. That means support for international institutions, aligning our country with international development, promoting public health, increasing interactions of our civil society with others, maintaining an open international economy, and dealing seriously with climate change. President Obama cannot afford to fumble any of the hot potatoes he inherits from Bush, but showing that America is back in the business of exporting hope rather than fear must be a top priority.

 

Joseph S. Nye is University Distinguished Service Professor at Harvard. His latest book is The Powers to Lead.