[In a Wall Street Journal opinion
article on Friday, Gen. James L. Jones, the retired NATO commander and Mr. Obama’s
first national security adviser, said the president should have left some
troops in Iraq, retaliated against Syria for crossing his “red line” by using
chemical weapons, and pressured the Baghdad government to arm the Kurds.]
By Peter Baker
Americans often think of their
president as an all-powerful figure who can command the tides of history — and
presidents have encouraged this image over the years because the perception
itself can be a form of power. But as his critics have made the case that Mr. Obama’s
mistakes have fueled the turmoil in places like Syria ,
Iraq and Ukraine ,
the president has increasingly argued that his power to shape these seismic
forces is actually limited.
“Apparently,” he said in
frustration the other day, “people have forgotten that America ,
as the most powerful country on earth, still does not control everything around
the world.”
While as a statement of fact Mr. Obama’s
assertion may be self-evident, it was seen by adversaries as a cop-out and even
by more sympathetic analysts as a revealing moment for a president whiplashed
by international instability.
“At least since World War II, presidents have
been unwilling to discuss deficiencies in capability because they’re expected
to do everything, and they like that sense of omnipotence,” said Jeremy Shapiro,
a former Obama State Department official now at the Brookings Institution. “Obama
has been trying to change that in the last year because he senses that the
requirements of omnipotence have gotten so far out of whack with what he can
actually accomplish that he needs to change the expectations.”
The risk, naturally, is that the
president looks as if he is simply trying to excuse his own actions, or
inactions, as the case may be.
“It’s become a refrain to the
point where I think people are becoming quite critical that that’s his response
to everything,” said Daniel L. Byman, a former member of the Sept. 11
commission staff now teaching at Georgetown
University
The bill of particulars against
Mr. Obama is long. In the view of his critics, he failed to stanch the rise of
the Islamic State in Iraq
and Syria when
he rejected proposals to arm more moderate elements of the Syrian resistance. He
left a vacuum in Iraq
by not doing more to leave a residual force behind when American troops exited
in 2011. And he signaled weakness to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia ,
encouraging the Kremlin to think it could intervene in Ukraine
without fear of significant consequence.
“I certainly do not think
President Obama is responsible for all of the world crises that have taken
place during his time in office,” said William C. Inboden, a former national
security aide to President George W. Bush and executive director of the William
P. Clements Jr. Center on History, Strategy and Statecraft at the University of
Texas. “But he is responsible for actions and attitudes he took that have
contributed to some of those crises — and he is also responsible for how he
responds, or fails to respond.”
Republicans are not the only ones
voicing such sentiments. In her interview with The Atlantic that caused a
recent furor, former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said “the
failure” to build up moderate Syrian rebels left a vacuum for the more ruthless
forces of ISIS to fill.
In a Wall Street Journal opinion
article on Friday, Gen. James L. Jones, the retired NATO commander and Mr. Obama’s
first national security adviser, said the president should have left some troops
in Iraq, retaliated against Syria for crossing his “red line” by using chemical
weapons, and pressured the Baghdad government to arm the Kurds.
Such criticisms exasperate Mr. Obama
and his team. In some cases, they argue, the crises that have emerged were
wholly unforeseen. In others, they said, the solutions proffered by critics
would not have worked and, in fact, may have made things worse. And besides, they
often add, Mr. Obama inherited a situation that was broken when he got it, pointing
to Mr. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq
in the first place.
In his recent interview with
Thomas L. Friedman of The New York Times, Mr. Obama said “it’s always been a
fantasy” to think providing arms to moderate Syrian rebels would have helped
them against hardened Islamic extremists. And he said if he had left troops in Iraq ,
“The difference would be we’d have 10,000 troops in the middle of this chaos as
opposed to having a much more limited number.”
Former Representative Lee H. Hamilton,
Democrat of Indiana, said presidents can influence but not dictate events. “Americans
have a very strong tendency to think that whatever we do is the most important
thing happening everywhere, and we have so much power and so much clout that we
can control events everywhere,” said Mr. Hamilton, now director of the Center
on Congress at Indiana University
As it happens, Mr. Obama’s policy
of restraint seems to match the public mood — polls find little appetite for
robust American intervention in Ukraine ,
Syria or Iraq .
And yet, there is a palpable sense of disappointment with Mr. Obama’s
leadership on the world stage as well. Fifty-eight percent of Americans in a
recent New York Times/CBS News poll disapproved of his handling of foreign policy,
the highest of his presidency.
Presidents often find their
popularity suffers when the world seems off kilter and they are held
responsible even for events that may be beyond their sway. The who-lost-China
debate during the early Cold War has been replicated repeatedly ever since in
various forms.
Strobe Talbott, president of the
Brookings Institution and a former deputy secretary of state under President
Bill Clinton, said what makes this period different is the diffusion of power
from states to nonstate forces, the rapid spread of technology and the rise of
Islamic extremism.
“We have an overall contagion of
diffusion which makes it much harder to advance the cause of regional and
global governance,” he said.
Some Democrats said Mr. Obama’s
challenge has not necessarily been his approach to these crises, but his
ability to explain and sell it.
“What he’s come up with in Iraq
and in Ukraine
are sensible strategies,” said former Representative Jane Harman of California ,
now president of the Woodrow Wilson
International Center
Tom Donilon, another former
national security adviser to Mr. Obama, said the president has had to exercise
leadership in situations he inherited as well as in others that were not of his
making, but added that to avoid letting them consume his remaining time in
office, he should set the agenda for positive international initiatives.
“With almost two and a half years
left in his presidency,” said Mr. Donilon, “it’s important to get beyond the
incoming of crises around the world and look to a set of strategic initiatives
that the United States
can pursue that can bring change of a permanent nature.”
