Obama’s Foreign Policy: A Legacy of Interventionism

My colleague Colin Wolfgang recently wrote about Pres. Obama’s speech last Wednesday, in which the president announced that US airstrikes would extend from Iraq into Syria to combat the growing threat of the terrorist group ISIS(/IS/ISIL/who-cares-what-they-call-themselves-they’re-nuts). While many, including Mr. Wolfgang, point to the speech as a turning point in the Obama administration away from isolationism, it in fact continues the Obama White House foreign policy that has been in place since he took office: namely, Pres. Obama’s policy of small- to medium-scale military intervention by another name.

Whether you call it “police action,” “counterterrorism,” “targeted airstrikes,” or any of the other Obama administration euphemisms, this White House has pursued interventionist tactics in almost every global hotspot where it has encountered national security threats. The supposed difference from the George W. Bush administration has been the absence of “boots on the ground,” despite the fact that there will now be nearly 2,000 American “advisors” and who-knows-how-many special operations and CIA agents in Iraq. While large-scale military operations such as the Bush-era wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been wound down, the United States is far from an isolationist nation.

The most recent Obama speech does, however, point to the fact that the president is scaling up his military involvement in the Middle East. Recognizing that no fight against ISIS in Iraq alone could vanquish the group, he expanded his scope of military action to include the group's base in neighboring Syria. This policy may indeed have opened Pres. Obama (and his successor)'s administration up to an ever-growing military intervention in the region. Despite the dismal record of the US in blowing up and subsequently attempting to rebuild countries, Obama has placed the country in a position where it may find itself “reconstructing” war-torn Syria (as well as Iraq) in the years and decades to come.

Looking to the example of the Afghan reconstruction, setting aside the too-obvious disaster that was the Iraqi case, one can already see why this is a terrible idea. Despite over $100 billion spent in Afghanistan, over half of which was dedicated to building the Afghan security services, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, whom I had the honor of meeting last week, calls the program an almost completely unmitigated disaster. The country is far from secure, developed, or ready to transition to self-sufficiency as US troops prepare to withdraw this year. From mishandling of funds, to corruption, to downright idiotic policies and programs, the US appears to be ill equipped to try to rebuild even 20 percent of a country that was already at a very low level of human development. Given that Syria’s civil war is estimated to have cost the country 35 years of human development, rebuilding there will prove to be no easier task. Nor will it be easy to try to stabilize and rebuild Iraq, which was already in a precarious position (largely thanks to US and Maliki-era policies) before the invasion of ISIS.

Of course, for now, the president assures us that wider military action including “boots on the ground” is not an option in Syria or Iraq. Yet the regional partners he lauded in his speech, including Saudi Arabia, have not stepped up to the plate in a meaningful way that would decrease the chances of an ever-expanding US mission. Saudi Arabia and Iran, in particular, would be the most effective regional partners to stem the tide of money and arms to ISIS and other extremist groups, create training bases for alternative groups in the Syrian opposition, and work with leaders of the Sunni and Shi’ite communities in both countries towards political solutions for the two merging conflicts. With news today that Iran has declined to join the regional coalition on Iraq and Syria, and Saudi Arabia has only offered to create a training base for Syrian rebels, the odds for a truly regional solution seem to grow slimmer and slimmer.

The US does have growing support from longtime allies France and the UK, and given the tragic beheading of a British aid worker over the weekend this is hardly surprising. Yet a Western-led intervention can only breed more resentment, more calls of meddling, and more radicalization among citizens of Iraq and Syria. If the Obama administration is unable to convince at least Saudi Arabia that it faces a greater existential threat from ISIS than does the US, and should thus take the most active role in combatting the group, then the US mission will continue to creep, and creep, and creep, towards a conventional military conflict.

The Obama administration has been called weak again and again by hawks who think the absence of the march of thousands of the American boots means the US is not involved in the world’s conflicts. Yet anyone who has been paying attention can see the (albeit quieter) American hand in nearly every military conflict in strategically important states: drone strikes raining down over Yemen, Somalia, and Pakistan; the NATO mission to Libya; military posturing in the Pacific; and now both “advisors on the ground” and air strikes in Iraq and Syria. Despite the fact that many claim this is Obama’s first turn at true military intervention, in reality, he has been intervening in countries all over the world long before this, and, if his track record is any indication, will likely experience the same disappointing results of his interventionist strategy in Syria and Iraq.