Dr. Steve A. Leibo directs the Sage Program in International & Globalization Studies
WAMC audio for Obama’s Afghan Choice
It may be not quite be a year but I think we’re justified in making at least a preliminary evaluation of President Obama’s Foreign policy. It does seem reasonable given that he has just made one of the most important short term decisions of his presidency; one that will deeply impact him and America in the immediate future.
Ok, maybe it’s not the decision that will have the longest impact on the American people. No, we will have to cede that legacy to his health care & green energy efforts. And the most obvious conclusion we can draw, is that he gets an “A” for consistency.
I mean it’s certainly obvious he has spent a great deal of time thinking through his options on dealing with Afghanistan. But it’s hard not to recognize as well that is so many ways, the eventual outcome of the president’s deliberations was in large measure pre-ordained.
After all, President Obama, more than most presidents seems to have remained much closer to his initial campaign promises. He has not, dramatically veered away from his core promises as George W. Bush did on climate change or Bill Clinton on the question of the federal budget deficit versus future investments. No here is a president who campaigned to commit his presidency to a series of promises from health care delivery reform to confronting the challenge of dangerous man made climate change. And remains committed to this day.
In foreign policy, Obama promised a more conciliatory foreign policy. Ironically a version of the “humble” foreign policy George W. campaigned on and promptly forgot once in office. But Obama has acted on that promise. With both Iran and North Korea, Obama he has been willing to offer more direct talks. He’s even started a tentative effort to dialogue with the leaders of Myanmar’s nasty junta, while trying to lower the tensions with the Islamic world.
Clearly an approach that has paralleled his campaign promises. And given that consistency can there be anyone who could possibly have imagined Obama would have chosen a different course in Afghanistan than the one he outlined Tuesday night.
I mean let’s be realistic. That choice, that strategy was after all the price of his admission to the presidential sweepstakes as then Senator Obama successfully out-campaigned Hilary Clinton by somewhat unfairly linking her to the vote to conquer Iraq which so obviously undermined Clinton with the activist anti-war wing of the Democratic Party.
But running as a pacifist does not win one the presidency of the Untied States, no, he also outmaneuvered the Republicans by undermine their post Nine Eleven war time leadership by attacking them, not for going to war but distracting themselves from the real war in Afghanistan with their reckless adventure in Iraq—that war he so often calls a war of choice.
No, despite the best hopes of some of his followers Obama campaigned not as an anti-war leader but as one who wanted to focus on the real war of necessity, the struggle in Afghanistan which of course made sense given that the horrors of nine eleven really had originated in Afghanistan.
Now, of course, President Obama has been forced by the logic of his own election to come down on the side making a real try in Afghanistan. After all Afghanistan’s former leaders once turned their nation into a haven for international terrorism. And they are capable of doing so again if not stymied. To be sure maintaining the stability of Afghanistan may not be all that important to America but a failure there will make Pakistan much more vulnerable and a stable Pakistan absolutely is in America’s best interests.
But Obama knows as well that his own democratic constituency is not going to follow him long just because he’s working so hard on health care. If you have doubts about that just conjure up the ghost of L.B.J.
Thus the very clear exit strategy he also enunciated Tuesday evening which is good politics both domestically and internationally. Especially so given how quickly so many Democrats could turn forcibly against his expanding Afghanistan commitment and how easily our very presence can arouse opposition among the very proud Afghans whether they like the Taliban or not.
On Being Wrong
December 17, 2009 by Steven LeiboWAMC Audio for “On Being Wrong”
Dr Steven A. Leibo is the Sage Colleges Professor of International History & Politics.
For a professor of modern world civilization this has been quite a week watching a good chunk of the leadership of the entire planet gathering in Copenhagen to protect a significant percentage of human civilization from catastrophic man made climate change. But doing so by looking for ways to transition us away from the very fossil fuels we built much of modern human civilization with.
How dramatic can it get! And of course, as has been the case for decades, there in Copenhagen has gathered as well a nasty crowd of anti-scientific climate change deniers. Folks who have so gullibly bought the fossil fuel industries understandable efforts to protect their long term profits by orchestrating a massive disinformation campaign
But just for the moment it seems worthwhile to ask the obvious question. What are the implications of either group the deniers or the international scientific community simply being flat out wrong?-
Ok, maybe it’s a silly question but stay with me for a moment. Let’s just put aside that the world’s climatologists have more than a hundred years of solid research behind them. Forget that the academies of science of all the major nations in the world back their claims that we face a planetary catastrophe.
Just pretend we are simply dealing with two opinionated blocks fighting over some issue more opinion based then temperature measures and ask ourselves what if one group or the other is simply wrong.
I mean, so what really happens if those who so loudly insist we must move toward a carbon free energy future because humanity’s generations long burning of fossil fuels has upset the equilibrium of our fragile planetary heat balance are flat out wrong. What do we end up with?
Well, let’s see, in that case we end up well prepared to deal with the reality that the world’s sources of conventional oil, the very fuels that power the global transportation system are running out. Indeed the international energy agency just recently doubled its estimates about how quickly we are depleting global oil resources, estimating that those conventional sources will start declining by 2020, only a decade from now. All that will happen of course, during an era when Asian giants like India and China, are using more and more of the stuff.
Let’s see, what if the world’s scientific community is wrong? And we blow money building the infrastructure necessary to tap the enormous potential of the world’s wind, solar and geo-thermal energy sources. Well in that case we will have employed enormous numbers of people for decades to tap the green energy resources found within each country, jobs that in large measure can’t be outsourced. With the eventual result of having created clean and less expensive energy sources for our children. Energy that unlike fossils fuel are absolutely renewable resources
Yes, what if the climate scientists are wrong and we unnecessarily wean ourselves from our addiction to the petroleum products largely dominated by nations that so often despise us. Well then, God forbid, we end up less likely to fight wars over foreign oil fields.
But what if the anti-science crowd is wrong? What if they are wrong in their effort to block America’s transition to a clean green energy future. What if their wrong in their claims that all this climate crisis talk is poppycock.
Well, that’s an easy one. We’ll see increasingly flooded cities, millions of climate refugees fleeing the world’s coastlines from Florida to Vietnam. While the continental interiors of the world, from north central China to the American west dry out faster and faster. Less and less able to support the agriculture production we absolutely depend on while the world ends up facing massively higher prices for diminishing oil resources. And seeing America face an increasingly aggressive energy competition with the ever more oil thirsty nations like China.
While the millions employed by our petroleum based global economy find their futures destroyed even as the leaders of the anti-scientific denial crowd end their days with their grandchildren lining up to spit on their graves
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