The Long Game: How Obama Defied Washington and Redefined America's Role in the World (Chollet, Derek)
Notes from relevant books on Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, Defence, Development and Humanitarian Action.
Chollet, Derek. The Long Game: How Obama Defied Washington and Redefined America's Role in the World. PublicAffairs, 2016.
These are my personal notes from this book. They try to give a general idea of its content, but do not in any case replace reading the actual book. Think of them as teasers to encourage you to read further!
Contents
“Good policy depends on the patient accumulation of nuances;
“Politics is not about objective reality, but virtual reality.
“Games are won by players who focus on the playing field—not by those whose eyes are glued to the scoreboard.”
Introduction: The Long Game
“What’s been lost is the hope side of the equation.”
we don’t know if we can get there because history intrudes.”
Obama has what academics call a “grand strategy,”
Obama has followed through on what he promised in 2008:
restoring America’s power at home by focusing on the economy;
revitalizing alliances;
pursuing tough engagement with adversaries;
reducing the US role in Iraq and Afghanistan while not getting overwhelmed by massive new military engagements;
modernizing the military while deemphasizing it as the primary tool of American power;
rebalancing towards the Asia-Pacific;
trying to involve Congress in decisions about the use of force;
executing an even more lethal fight against terrorists while ending excesses like torture;
and pursuing bold policy initiatives on such issues as climate change, trade, and nuclear disarmament.
Simply put, Obama has redefined the purpose and exercise of American power for a new era.
But on the issues that matter most for the Long Game—how and where America uses military force, how the US approaches its enemies and works with its partners, and how America should conceive of its power and exert its leadership—Obama’s mark will be enduring and largely positive.
Obama is a “consequentialist,” far less interested in appearances than in what actually works.
Obama’s Long Game checklist has eight criteria:
balance,
sustainability,
restraint,
precision,
patience,
fallibility,
skepticism,
and exceptionalism.
strategic patience
Obama is comfortable with incremental outcomes, believing that some problems can only be managed, while just a few can be immediately solved—and the trick is to distinguish between the two.
His Long Game approach may seem unexciting, often shining only after considering the alternatives.
Think of it this way: Obama is like a foreign policy version of Warren Buffett, a proudly pragmatic value investor less concerned with appearances or the whims of the moment, focused instead on making solid investments with an eye to long-term success. The foreign policy debate, on the other hand, tends to be dominated by policy day traders, whose incentives are the opposite: achieving quick results, getting rewarded with instant judgments and what will make the biggest splash, and reacting to every blip in the market.
most costly mistakes in the past have come when we were seduced by the idea of our omnipotence.
redefine America’s role in the world,
Policymaking is the collision of aspirations and limits, in which leaders are rewarded for aligning their goals with resources, and punished when they become out of balance. When approaching issues, leaders must constantly make difficult decisions and manage unpleasant trade-offs, often with little information and no time.
urgent constantly gains on the important,”
1. The Red Line
But there were many concerns about the danger to American pilots (Syria had one of the most sophisticated air defense networks in the world), as well as the possibility of escalation.
need to play a role similar to that of George Ball, the great diplomat who, in that same room decades earlier, had intentionally assumed the part of “house dove”
Congress and the American people proved strongly opposed to the use of force. They did not want to risk getting involved in another conflict like Iraq.
That the outcome and the interpretation should be so at odds reveals how poorly understood foreign policy is once it is reduced to politicized sound bites and ninety-second news items. They simply eliminate the complexities
Syria’s arsenal of chemical weapons was the world’s third-largest. It was ten times greater than the (erroneous) CIA estimate in October 2002 of Iraq’s chemical weapons, and fifty times more than Libya declared in late 2011.
On numerous occasions intelligence indicated that such weapons were about to be used or the security of a storage depot was under threat, and the administration would scramble to prevent something from happening. Sometimes that meant talking directly to the Syrian regime to warn it off, or getting the Russians to pressure Assad, or preparing military options.
urged the president to use precision strikes to destroy Assad’s aircraft and SCUD missile batteries. The conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer urged Obama to establish a no-fly zone by destroying Assad’s air defenses.
part of another same old story: once we did act, and things would not improve and in fact might get worse, the mood in favor of action would likely shift.
public opinion polls showed most Americans skeptical of using force,
They wanted to know for sure that using military force would work, that once we destroyed the sites the chemical weapons would be kept secure, and that Assad would not retaliate against our troops or allies like Israel.
The case for action was swallowed with a healthy dose of skepticism. It wasn’t easy for members of Congress:
started to consider the risks of acting—especially now that they were part of the decision—
stunning twist occurred that led to an outcome none of us had expected, planned for, or even dreamed was possible.
The credible threat of military force changed that. Now Moscow was ready to pressure Assad to comply.
Security Council endorsed the deal, which for the first time authorized international action if Assad failed to comply.
placed on a US Navy ship, the Cape Ray, which was specially outfitted to convert the weapons material into hazardous waste so they could be safely disposed.
incontrovertible if inelegant example of what academics call “coercive diplomacy,”
unscripted comments both got the US into this situation (Obama’s original red line) as well as out of it (Kerry’s musing that Syria could avoid strikes by giving up its chemical weapons).
If President Obama had passed up the opportunity for diplomacy and used force, and if that had in turn led to a loose chemical weapon being used to strike Israel or conduct a terrorist attack in the US or Europe, he deservedly would have been blamed and held accountable.
place higher value on being “tough,” especially if it involves military force, than on lasting accomplishment.
“credibility is the modern antiseptic buzzword now often used to cloak the ancient enthusiasm for honor.
“dropping bombs on someone just to prove you’re willing to drop bombs on someone is just about the worst reason to use force.”
The debate is often defined as “doing something” or “doing nothing,” but those are false choices. The policy disputes exist between these extremes—deciding the way to address a problem like Syria somewhere between being all-in (like the Iraq invasion in 2003) or standing aside entirely. How the United States navigated these competing interests and managed the trade-offs is one of the central stories of the Obama presidency. And it is a defining characteristic of his Long Game.
2. The Foreign Policy Breakdown
Obama believed that conventional thinking had generated a huge strategic mistake, the biggest since Vietnam: the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Washington “groupthink.”
America didn’t just have to end that war—we had to end the mindset that got us there in the first place. It was a mindset characterized by a preference for military action over diplomacy; a mindset that put a premium on unilateral US action over the painstaking work of building international consensus; a mindset that exaggerated threats beyond what the intelligence supported. Leaders did not level with the American people about the costs of war, insisting that we could easily impose our will on a part of the world with a profoundly different culture and history. And, of course, those calling for war labeled themselves strong and decisive, while dismissing those who disagreed as weak—even appeasers of a malevolent adversary.
“Conventional thinking in Washington has a way of buying into stories that make political sense even if they don’t make practical sense.”
How much should the United States care about the legitimacy of its actions—such as adhering to international law or working through international institutions? How much should it care about what happens inside other countries? When should the US use military force to solve problems? Fundamentally, the Foreign policy in the “post-Cold War era” finally had an overriding purpose: to defeat al-Qaeda and its ilk. America, it seemed, needed to fight “the long war”—which became the organizing framework for US foreign policy.
American leadership was headed in the wrong direction, too often defining itself as a matter of military strength alone,
Bush team handled all of this with prudent and steady management. But they failed to translate these huge successes into a lasting strategy that the American people could understand and rally around.
Powell represents a strain of foreign policy thinking that was once dominant, but is now far out of fashion. This school is represented by the elder Bush, who, while believing deeply in American leadership, hoped the US could exercise its influence through global institutions like the UN that had been hobbled by the Cold War’s divisions. “Bush 41” and his core team cared about legitimacy and believed it had to be earned, and they reasoned that working through institutions was a key way of doing so. And while they kept faith in the strong use of American power—and when necessary, the unilateral use of force—they also valued restraint.
Their understanding of American exceptionalism was a little like papal infallibility or Richard Nixon’s understanding of presidential power: if we do it, it must be right.
“war must be an option sometimes, but it should never be the first option.”
Obama made clear he was not against all wars, only “dumb ones.”
Second, Obama believed that the way you measure strength is by actually being strong, not just boasting that you are strong. He had little tolerance for posturing. It “has not the option as to whether it will or will not play a great part in the world. It must play a great part. All that it can decide is whether it will play that part well or badly.”
foreign policy had become defined by war, yet the American people had not been enlisted to do much of anything. Americans were asked to live normally, to act as though nothing had happened, to shop.
war without sacrifice,
by Obama’s inauguration, the US economy was shedding 800,000 jobs a month.
“Political play acting is better rewarded than hard work; political speech-making passes as serious policy making.” At the same time, foreign policy debates “give more weight to ideological ‘certainties’ rather than to the ambiguities of reality.”
3. Rebalance, Reset, Resurge
three components: rebalance, reset, and resurge.
stressed the importance of elevating diplomacy and development to work alongside defense as the “three D’s” of American power.
like water polo. On the surface, it is a rough game with rules where the goal is to achieve a “positive, cooperative, and comprehensive relationship,” a mantra recited often by American and Chinese officials. But underwater, the relationship is one of pulling, scratching, and cheap shots, and the objective is to win outright.
how much better America’s standing in Asia is today,
reset to repair America’s image and reestablish its leadership position.
“Straight up transactional diplomacy isn’t always pretty, but often it’s necessary.”
As of February 2010, just a little over one year after he took office, around 77,000 American troops were at war in Afghanistan, along with approximately 39,000 forces from forty other countries
The “disrupt, dismantle, defeat” formulation as the aim for military power was focused specifically on al-Qaeda and its affiliates, and denying the Taliban the ability to overthrow the Afghan government. This narrowed the goal militarily, but also left open the prospect of a diplomatic negotiation with the Taliban,
the most contested part of Obama’s Afghan strategy in 2009—the announcement of a timeline to start withdrawing American troops in less than two years and to transition responsibility
escalate-to-exit approach did make the strategy more difficult to communicate
“The American people need to know that the war is ending.”
Although Iraq had been one of the central issues of Obama’s campaign, the template for the withdrawal of the roughly 130,000 US troops had been established by George W. Bush.
Alongside these efforts to shape Iraqi politics were the preparations to establish an enduring relationship with Baghdad. While the US military withdrew, the relationship had to evolve into one between two sovereign states.
building the largest and most expensive embassy in the world, securing nearly 17,000 civilian personnel, many of whom would be private contractors, and allocating a massive influx of resources.
Washington had less leverage and capacity to influence Iraqi decision-making. Even the best American diplomats would never have the same tools and resources the generals had to wield influence. Simply put, with the military gone, the Iraqis would rely on us less.
was hardly averse to, as the military would say, “going kinetic.”
EFFORT TO recalibrate the instruments of US power did lead to tensions with military leaders.
“jamming” the president by raising the costs for him of “rejecting” their advice and, in effect, reducing his options
fundamental dilemma—one of communications.
4. A Cascade of Crises
debates were often seen as breaking down along generational lines, with older officials like Clinton and Gates counseling caution while younger advisors like Ben Rhodes and Samantha Power pressed for a bold change of course.
He did not believe the United States could or should stand in the way of the changes that were sweeping the region, but he saw that it was in America’s interests to see this transformation evolve in an orderly way.
The president said he wanted to speak about the underlying causes of the unrest, which he saw principally as autocratic governments trying to stay in power, using the lack of an Arab-Israeli settlement as an excuse not to reform, and drawing on the sectarian divides between Sunnis and Shia. He also thought it important to talk frankly about the difficult trade-offs the United States had to manage.
America’s actual resources to support political and economic reform fell far short of our stated aspirations.
alongside the frustrated aspirations of some, from others we faced anxieties and fears of US abandonment.
The administration, Lynch accurately describes, “struggled to grasp the fact that the old order under attack was a US-backed regional order, defended by US allies concerned, above all, with keeping themselves in power.”
emphasis on reform failed to keep pace with events once the regional order unraveled further and faster.
Despite all the unknowns, he wanted to recall the reasons to have hope. He cited the examples of the Libyan city of Benghazi, at that moment protected by US and allied planes; young people cramming Egypt’s Tahir Square to demand political change; and the protestors in Syria, braving bullets while chanting “peaceful, peaceful.”
“It’s just a show to protect backsides, politically,” Obama later said of the idea, giving politicians comfort that they could not later be accused of inaction. He fumed that after weeks of deliberations, the only policy his advisers had come up with was little more than an empty gesture. The choice the president had before him was unappealing: to refuse to support the British and French proposal, or to agree and participate in something he knew would not work.
only three choices emerged: do nothing and let the Europeans proceed on their own; join the Brits and French in a symbolic no-fly zone; or enlarge the military objective to protect civilians by attacking Libyan forces
“Can I just finish the two wars we’re already in before you go looking for new ones?” In his memoirs, Gates says he considered resigning over the decision to intervene.
the president proposed an innovative hybrid approach, widening the goals but tightly scoping America’s involvement. Instead of a no-fly zone, the United States would take on a broader mission of protecting civilians by attacking Qaddafi’s forces on the ground (some called it a “no-drive zone”). The US military would lead at the beginning of the intervention, rolling back the immediate threat to Benghazi and taking down Libya’s air defenses, which would set the conditions for the allies, led by NATO, to act. Then, we would continue to help our partners by providing “unique capabilities” such as intelligence assets, refueling, or precision-strike munitions. But we would not seek to dominate the strike missions, and would not put American troops on the ground.
FOR THE NEXT seven months, America and its allies bombed Libya, conducting nearly 10,000 airstrikes.
“immaculate intervention.”
This looked like a new kind of American leadership, one that was both decisive and inclusive,
overwhelming evidence of Qaddafi’s intent on mass slaughter.
As Obama explains, taking the time to build a coalition has multiple benefits—it allows the United States to carry a “lighter load” and to “look before we leap,” asking the toughest questions ahead of time. It also helps uphold the global “rules of the road” and gain legitimacy. “Multilateralism regulates hubris,” he later said.
Once in, it was hard to reconcile these limited military goals with the maximalist political objective that Qaddafi must go.
perhaps we could have pushed for a ceasefire without conditions, deferring the question of Qaddafi’s future. This would have been similar to the 1999 NATO air campaign in Kosovo, which was also aimed at protecting civilians and ended with Milosevic still in power (only to see him overthrown in a revolution the following year);
air campaign in Iraq, where the US military bombed Iraqi targets for four days but deferred Saddam Hussein’s fate for the future.
if we had ceased bombing and allowed Qaddafi to stay in power, the war likely would not have ended—and it is reasonable to think we would have seen even more bloodshed in Libya as a result.
COULD WE HAVE done more to prevent Libya’s postwar troubles?
the US had amassed vast experience in how to do nation-building, with thousands of experts and significant resources ready to offer assistance. The bureaucracy’s muscle memory was for the United States to go in big, offer the Libyans help on everything, and if necessary be ready to do the job for them.
With the international community’s assistance, in 2012 Libya held its first democratic election in fifty years. Perhaps most important, the United States worked with the Libyans to address two urgent security concerns: to find, secure, and destroy leftover chemical weapons from Qaddafi’s undeclared arsenal; and to help secure thousands of shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles
More of a tragedy than a policy failure,
is very difficult to exercise influence if one is unwilling to take some risks on the ground. “The killing of Chris Stevens had the effect of helping the terrorists acquire greater power,” one administration official later explained. Leadership requires presence.
“LEADING FROM BEHIND.” Unfortunately, those three words came to sum up more than the Libya campaign.
Other recent presidents had been tagged with similar awkward phrases: think George H.W. Bush and the “vision thing,” Bill Clinton and “foreign policy as social work,” and George W. Bush and “mission accomplished.” But as stated “leading from behind the scenes.”
When the military stepped in and removed Morsi from office and put al-Sisi in power—and then took violent action against pro-Morsi protestors, killing over a thousand people and injuring many more—US-Egypt relations fell into its greatest crisis since the 1970s, and the Obama administration faced yet another formidable test.
5. The Tide of War
No issue has tested the Long Game more than Syria. Nor has any foreign policy dilemma proved more vexing or demoralizing for those of us who played a role in shaping and implementing it.
What started in 2011 as another Arab Spring ember ignited into a regional inferno. In her memoirs, Hillary Clinton accurately described Syria as a “wicked problem”: it defied easy solutions, and all the choices were bad. “Do nothing, and a humanitarian disaster envelops the region,” she wrote. “Intervene militarily, and risk opening Pandora’s Box and wading into another quagmire, like Iraq. Send aid to the rebels, and watch it end up in the hands of extremists. Continue with diplomacy, and watch it run headfirst into a Russian veto. None of these approaches offered much hope of success.” And over time, the choices only became worse.
This might seem to be a clear failure of American policy. But when one weighs the possibilities for greater US action alongside competing goals, and the demands of managing trade-offs and risks, it is more accurately a cautionary tale of the limits to American, or anyone else’s, power.
“Managed Transition” best describes the Obama approach to Syria’s future—
Yet we always got stuck on the question of what would come next.
The best outcome would be for Assad to leave as part of a negotiated settlement, in a way that would allow a transitional government to take hold and basic order to be preserved.
the two military options we considered most carefully were to create a “no-fly zone” over Syria and a “buffer zone” or “safe area” inside Syria, along the border with Turkey.
In Bosnia in the 1990s, the NATO-enforced no-fly zone did not prevent ethnic cleansing on the ground.
Our Turkish colleagues were particularly enthusiastic about this idea—which they called a “safety belt”— if attacked, and it almost certainly would have been, we would be obliged to defend it. The lawyers asked what legal authority we would have
The deal to get chemical weapons out of Syria also taught different lessons, shaping both the US and Russian approach toward the conflict in the years to come. In Washington, this showed that Russia had leverage over Assad, and that when pressed it would use its influence to get the regime to relent. Yet Moscow took away something else: that Assad was indispensable to get anything done inside Syria.
Obama has resisted any proposal that would have led to the United States owning the problem
roots of the debate about what to do in Syria go back to the 1990s debates about the Balkans—starting with the Srebrenica massacre
8,000 innocent Muslim civilians
Kofi Annan concluded, “The cardinal lesson of Srebrenica… is that a deliberate and systematic attempt to terrorize, expel, or murder an entire people must be met decisively with all necessary means.”
George Packer observed in 2002, Bosnia had turned many liberals into hawks.
America should not topple governments and occupy countries without a clear sense of what it wants to achieve and what sacrifices it is willing to endure.
Obama sought to apply the lessons of both Srebrenica and Iraq, threading the needle between taking urgent military action to save lives while preventing the United States from getting sucked into another morass.
“Do we have an answer for the day after?”
THE COMBINED EXPERIENCES of Bosnia, Iraq, and Libya infused the debate over what to do about Syria, yet the lessons were often difficult to reconcile.
importance of Bosnia, where US dithering failed to prevent a genocide, but its belated intervention ended a war.
If “managed transition” was the political objective, an additional goal could be summed up by another mantra, this one never uttered: “contain and mitigate.”
we “hardened” Syria’s neighbors.
make the opposition more cohesive and capable.
full-scale program to equip and train the opposition.
Defense Department, this program would be large-scale—aiming to train as many as 5,000 fighters by the end of 2015—at a hefty price tag of $ 500 million. Obama announced this effort in his May 2014 speech at West Point, and its ambition and scope were news
our experience providing military support to the opposition had improved our understanding of what was possible. We now had better answers for the president’s questions about how precisely this would work.
The spectacular collapse of the US military program to equip and train the Syrian opposition—with the revelation in September 2015 that just a handful were still in the fight—
Working to arm, train, and sustain insurgent or indigenous forces is hardly new, and history offers a few cases showing that it can be effective.
actually asked the CIA to analyze examples of America financing and supplying arms to an insurgency in a country that actually worked out well,” he said in a 2014 interview. “And they couldn’t come up with much.”
Is it possible to build an indigenous force that will actually take control of its own destiny?” asked Army General Martin Dempsey, who before becoming chairman of the Joint Chiefs had spent two years training the Iraqi security forces. “I don’t know.”
do what his critics (and some senior advisers) had been advocating for years: conduct American airstrikes in Syria and insert special operations forces on the ground. A year after the red line, the United States military was back in Iraq and waging war in Syria.
June 2014 ISIS captured the northern Iraqi city of Mosul,
world’s attention was captivated by the crisis in Ukraine.
ISIS now had its hands on millions in cash from captured Iraqi banks, along with heavy armor and vehicles and tons of weapons from overrun Iraqi Army depots—most of which had been provided by the US after its forces withdrew. With Iraq seemingly on the brink of collapse
disrupt, degrade, and ultimately defeat ISIS, so it would not be a threat to us, our allies,
three assumptions.
· First, Obama remained determined that the US not “own” the ISIS problem outright.
· The second assumption is that the strategy will take time.
· third assumption, “Syriaq”, in which the lines on a map are meaningless.
Although these efforts operate under a common military banner—“ Operation Inherent Resolve”—it is a struggle to implement a one-size answer. In Iraq, the government could be part of the solution, while in Syria the government was part of the problem.
“Iraq First” strategy.
In addition to arming the Syrian opposition earlier—even though experience shows this likely would not have been dispositive—four possibilities stand out.
· The first is whether the rise of ISIS could have been avoided if US troops had stayed in Iraq after 2011.
· Second, the US could have initiated airstrikes earlier in the crisis, just as it was prepared to do in order to deal with the specific threat from Syria’s chemical weapons.
· Third, once the US started conducting strikes in August 2014, it could have taken greater risks in the targets it hit, which could have done more to make Assad wonder whether eventually he would be next.
Since it would not be in our interest to escalate, he did not want to put Assad in the position of calling our bluff.
“discrete” use of force at regime targets—not some massive, “shock and awe” air campaign, but precise, tit-for-tat actions against things Assad valued (such as his presidential helicopter fleet, or a favorite residence).
· Finally, one must ask if the administration erred by focusing so much on Assad’s departure
He has never believed in complete US withdrawal from the Middle East or renounced the importance of military power. In words and actions, Obama has made clear his commitment to America’s interests and partners in the region, and to defeating ISIS. But he is equally determined not to ruin the country in the process or let the problems of the Middle East become the singular obsession of American foreign policy.
6. The Bear Roars Back
Importantly, the sanctions were imposed together with the countries of the European Union, which made their bite far more painful.
In Putin’s mind, he’s defending a basic principle against “outside intervention” to bring down an allied government—as he has angrily watched what has happened over the last 15 years to former Russian allies like Serbia, Iraq, Libya and Ukraine.
This was one of the few occasions I can recall in the Obama administration in which just about every senior official was for doing something that the president opposed.
FINALLY, THERE IS the argument that in Ukraine the US has ceded too much control to the Europeans (especially the Germans) and should have asserted more leadership in the diplomacy with the Russians.
7. Playing All Four Quarters
When Obama came into office, Iran had the wind at its back. There were many reasons: the Iraq War had taken out Tehran’s main enemy, Saddam Hussein, only to replace his regime with a sympathetic, Shia-led government. Iran’s coffers were flush with oil revenues, which it poured into modernizing its military and projecting its nefarious influence throughout the Middle East. Iran was fueling its main proxies—Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip—
“dual track” policy of engagement and pressure.
Patience and thick skin were needed to see it through, as critics would pick apart every move and try to throw the strategy off course.
These steps had a profound impact on Iran’s economy, which contracted severely. Inflation spiked by more than 40 percent, and the value of the Iranian currency plummeted.
leverage from sanctions, however crippling, would not be enough. We needed to add military pressure as well.
Obama directed the Pentagon to get ready for such a contingency, making clear that if he ever decided to strike, he did not want to be told it would take months to plan and prepare.
“break glass” plans to handle them.
The result was a robust enough force presence to make good on Obama’s pledge that he was not bluffing.
capabilities the US military had in and around the Persian Gulf, including over 35,000 military personnel, the most advanced fighter aircraft, and over forty naval ships (including an aircraft carrier strike group).
Obama administration invested heavily in special weapons to penetrate Iran’s defenses.
“Massive Ordnance Penetrator,”
At times such doubts led them to consider taking matters into their own hands and attacking Iran,
enormously complicated relationship between Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
ensuring that Israel maintains its “qualitative military edge”, or “QME,” in the region—which is policy-speak for the idea that Israel has the capability to protect itself, by itself, against larger-sized militaries in the region.
Like the Israelis, America’s Gulf partners were suspicious about our diplomatic effort, preferring the United States to take military action—or, in the memorable words of the late Saudi King Abdullah Al Saud, to “cut the head off the snake.”
Whatever one’s view of the outcome, it was one of the most consequential diplomatic undertakings in American history, standing alongside Richard Nixon’s opening to China in 1972, Jimmy Carter’s brokering of peace between Egypt and Israel with the 1978 Camp David peace agreement, George H.W. Bush’s diplomacy to build the Gulf War coalition and the “two-plus-four” process to reunify Germany in 1990–91, and the US-led Dayton Peace Accords which ended the war in Bosnia in 1995.
Even our most optimistic assessments suggested that a military “knock-out punch” would only set Iran’s nuclear programs back by a few years.
Obama correctly argued that many who opposed the Iran deal were the same people who had advocated for the Iraq War—and who fell back on the familiar arguments about weakness and futility of negotiations. Obama chastised those who played on fear and belittled diplomacy.
The core difference was in the definition of American strength.
Strength is using all of our assets—diplomatic, economic, and military—to build a global coalition to solve a problem. Strength is having the confidence, patience and persistence to implement the strategy over many years and in the face of many obstacles.
pursuit of peace is not as dramatic as the pursuit of war.
Conclusion: History’s Web
Niebuhr observed, that all great nations are “caught in a web of history in which many desires, hopes, wills and ambitions, other than their own, are operative.”
must play the essential part, but alone does not have the power to dictate outcomes. To best position the US to do what only it uniquely can—bring countries together to solve problems, set agendas, and seize opportunities by channeling the hopes, wills, and ambitions of others—
measuring the Long Game strategy against the eight fundamental components of its checklist: balance, sustainability, restraint, precision,
patience, fallibility, skepticism, and exceptionalism.
They were dubious of an excessive faith in military force to solve problems, and were wary of the idea that once unleashed, military power could be completely controlled.
lessons of Ike’s leadership, “you’ve got to be careful, you have to be thoughtful, you can’t rush in.”
“tough talk draws headlines, but war rarely conforms to slogans,”
As the Soviet Union was collapsing in 1991, Bush went to Kiev and warned Ukraine not to secede quickly—which deeply angered the more hard-line Pentagon led by Cheney and was mocked by critics as the “Chicken Kiev”
The Ike-Bush 41-Obama approach—powerful yet modest, ambitious yet aware of limits, decisive yet suspicious of impulse—
Obama was widely perceived as never relishing the personal aspect of foreign relations.
gap between concept and action.
long-term strategy that combines balance, patience and restraint is difficult to sell. It is hard to inspire people when you are stressing what not to do, even if it would avoid trouble.
“new period of creativity”
“America goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy.”
The Checklist Manifesto, Atul Gawande explains the power of a simple checklist to enhance strategic decision-making.
Obama caught a lot of flak for being uninspiring by explaining his foreign policy as “don’t do stupid stuff.”
naming the terrorist leaders American forces had killed or captured in places like Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and Libya—names few Americans would be familiar with. By doing so, he was making clear he had no compunction about taking finely targeted lethal action.
Too much patience can lead a policy to be overtaken by events—what bureaucrats call “OBE”—