LA SEGURIDAD NACIONAL SEGÚN OBAMA

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Obama's new national security vision

Barack Obama's national security strategy sees the world as it is – and recognises the limits of American influence

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• • Michael Boyle
  • guardian.co.uk, Saturday 29 May 2010 18.00 BST
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Barack Obama's national security strategy is a departure from those produced by George Bush and Bill Clinton. Photograph: Charles Dharapak/AP

The release of President Obama's 2010 national security strategy has generated a wide debate about whether this president – who came to office on a promise of change in American foreign policy – has actually delivered a new vision of what the US should aim to achieve in the world. His first foreign policy moves, such as his speech in Cairo and his overtures towards Iran, indicated his preference for engagement with adversaries and a desire to move away from the more belligerent tone of his predecessor. But until now it has remained unclear whether the president had a coherent foreign policy worldview, or simply an instinctual sense that whatever George Bush did must have been wrong.

The document is now out (pdf), and reaction is mixed. Those sympathetic to the president have noted with relief that the Obama administration has dropped the language of a "war on terror" and no longer speaks of America engaged in a struggle with "radical militant Islam". Administration officials have also pointed out that the document broadens the notion of security and lays out a call for "comprehensive engagement" with 21st century power centres (China, India, Brazil) and "principled engagement" with adversaries. Critics have pointed out that much of the document is the same old, same old, and that in practice it does little more than repackage elements of both President Clinton's and President Bush's foreign policy into a less than coherent whole.

These criticisms are partially right, but also unfair. Much of the document does endorse existing US policy and does not articulate a radical reorientation in alliance structure or preferred outcomes. But no one should expect radical thinking in this kind of document. The national security strategy documents are required by Congress and written by committee, thereby reflecting the most watered down consensus that the bureaucracy can bear. Most of the previous versions have been little more than glossed-up campaign briefs designed to sell whatever policy happened to be in play. As a rule of thumb, these strategy documents get noticed only when they introduce something disastrous, such as President Bush's embrace of preventive war in his 2002 strategy statement.

To its credit, the Obama administration's version of this document not only manages to avoid doing something disastrous but also quietly articulates a dissent with the conventional wisdom of liberal internationalist establishment in Washington. Since the end of the cold war, there has been a disturbing uniformity of opinion among liberal internationalist Democrats and Republicans alike on the nature of the threats facing the US (transnational and bad), the value of alliances (valuable and good) and the need for American "leadership" (essential). No matter their differences in tone or method, most liberal internationalist Democrats and Republicans (particularly neoconservative variety) have endorsed a hyperactive American foreign policy which sees every problem as an opportunity for America to exercise leadership (in other words, to call the shots). The majority of the Washington foreign policy establishment, no matter its partisan hue, tends to believe that American leadership abroad is necessary and unlimited, no matter its financial cost or level of domestic support.

What is striking about President Obama's version of this document is that it rejects the kind of triumphalism about American leadership that marked the Clinton and Bush versions of this document and instead insists on seeing the world "as it is". This kind of careful realism eschews the world-changing ambitions of the Bush strategy and recognises the limits of American influence, particularly in a world of global economic interdependence and new emerging power centres. Rather than emphasising America's ability to reshape international order, it resets America's priorities as collectively shaping incentives for other states to act responsibly. It also rejects the liberal internationalist assumption that international institutions and multilateral alliances are by definition good things; the Obama approach instead insists on being "clear-eyed" about the benefits and liabilities of institutions and reforming them to be more functional in achieving collective action.

Second, it recognises the necessity of rebuilding the economic sources of American power, instead of pretending that unlimited American engagement abroad can be reconciled with a spiralling deficit and crumbling infrastructure at home. The Obama national security strategy document insists on making economic recovery the centrepiece of American strategy, and recognises that unless domestic reform in education, healthcare and infrastructure takes place that America's international position will increasingly come under doubt. This directly challenges one of the central ironies of neoconservatism and liberal internationalist positions: that its advocates see no problem with building schools in Kabul or Baghdad, while neglecting the near-derelict schools in many major American cities. The Obama approach is an explicit attempt to link the domestic and international, but to reverse the priority that much of the Washington foreign policy establishment attributes to them.

Third, it recognises that the support of the American people must be at the centre of a coherent American foreign policy. One of the key tensions in American politics is between the internationalist orientation of its elite, and the more prudential, even sometimes isolationist, preferences of the wider population. Since the end of the cold war, much of America's foreign policy has mirrored the preferences of the elite, while treating the discontent of most of its citizens with American over-reach abroad as a constraint rather than a critique to be taken seriously. By contrast, the Obama document appears to recognise that its foreign policy cannot over-reach its domestic support base, and has coupled its pledges to engage abroad with explicit commitments to use taxpayer's dollars sensibly, to ensure transparency in budgeting and to reduce the enormous US deficit. Such pledges (if implemented) might limit America's involvement in foreign affairs, but it might also go some way towards reconciling foreign policy objectives with its domestic priorities and support base.

The question that remains is whether President Obama can follow through on this more modest and careful approach laid out here in the new national security strategy. There are tensions already evident in the document itself: how can America "underwrite global security" (p1) while not bankrupting itself? How can America advance an international order based on its leadership (p7), while not marginalising new power centres or over-extending itself beyond the natural restraint of its domestic population? The Obama strategy has made a tentative but important break with the most grandiose assumptions of the liberal internationalism that are still predominant in Washington. But it remains to be seen whether this president, already beleaguered by foreign crises and domestic economic constraints, can translate this quiet dissent into a more sensible and balanced foreign policy.