OBush Foreign Policy
by Donald Devine
Issue 130 - April 22, 2009

From anti-war libertarian Rep. Ron Paul to hyper-interventionist paleoconservative guru Robert Kagan, almost everyone now concedes that Barack Obama is pursuing a George W. Bush foreign and defense policy. Even former Bush UN ambassador John Bolton agreed, on NPR, especially regarding what he considered a similarly insufficiently aggressive Bush policy on North Korea and Iran.

President Obama seems to concur. When asked by a Turkish student whether even his Iraq policies were fairly close to President Bush’s, he replied: “Well just because I was opposed at the outset, it doesn’t mean that I don’t have responsibilities now to make sure we do things in a responsible manner” As the Wall Street Journal editorialists cleverly interpreted his reply, “We’ll mark that down as a ‘yes.’”

In many ways, this is a vindication of President Bush. After winning his nomination running against the Bush foreign policy, President Obama has now accepted it. Adoption of one’s predecessor’s policies is certainly the sincerest form of flattery. It is, however, simply tit-for-tat. After campaigning against Bill Clinton and Al Gore in 2000 opposing their nation-building in the Balkans, President Bush later adopted nation-building, indeed going well beyond his predecessor. Still, the harmony between Obama and Bush is even greater than between Bush and Clinton. Of course, there are some important differences but there is much more agreement than disagreement.

Yes, many try to obscure the tie between the two administrations’ foreign policies. The Obama White House – having been elected on a platform of “change” - naturally denies the continuity in fear that its anti-war left might revolt. Paleocon-central at the American Enterprise Institute dispatched two of its top defense analysts to write a Journal op-ed with the provocative title “Obama and Gates Gut the Military” - but the specifics reported belie the supposed radical Obama policy departures from Bush implied by the headline. Like Obama, AEI is simply rallying its troops and lobbying to keep its supporters’ favorite defense programs. Both sides are simply playing politics. As far as policy, the continuity vastly overwhelms the differences. Let us call the general agreement our OBush foreign policy.

The place where rhetoric hits reality is the Budget, where talk must be turned into operations. Defense Secretary Robert Gates introduced the details himself at a standing-room only news conference, explaining and defending its provisions. Just about every subsequent news report proclaimed defense spending had been “cut” substantially from the Bush years, which a Washington Examiner editorial embellished as “Obama/Gates defense cuts will leave America vulnerable.” In fact under the Obama budget, defense spending (not counting Iraq and Afghanistan) for fiscal year 2010 would increase by 8.3 percent from actual spending the previous year and would be even 4.5 percent higher than what President Bush proposed but did not obtain. This is hardly an austerity budget, much less one that will make America overall any more vulnerable than under Mr. Bush.

Obama spending is even higher over Bush’s when considering Iraq and Afghanistan. For the latter, President Obama has actually increased the number of troops, the amount of money, and U.S. support substantially over the Bush level of commitment for 2010. There will be 17,000 more soldiers and billions more in aid and support. Even the reduction of fighting forces in Iraq will only be shortened marginally over Bush’s of last September. President Obama will now stretch his cut in combat troops over 19 months and 50,000 or so troops will remain indefinitely as regional or emergency forces if allowed by the Iraq government.

There are some proposed reductions that might be considered inappropriate by a Bush supporter. Secretary Gates announced that strategic missile defense will be downgraded, a major change in direction, although doubts about strategic missile defense surfaced under Bush too. Moreover, Gates proposed to increase funding for short-range theater defense to protect battlefields instead, certainly a reasonable alternate at least for the near term. In any event, Congress might not go along. But this is one among what even the hawkish Wall Street Journal editorialists call “reasonable judgment calls.” While they question the limiting of the F-22 fighter to only 187 aircraft, and do not consider the F-35 as an adequate replacement, this can hardly be considered an imminent threat to U.S. air superiority. But Obama proposes to build 2,443 F-35’s and not one of the existing F-22’s is used in fighting either of the ongoing wars. The editors also are concerned about a Navy with fewer than 300 ships but both this and the F-22 decision likely would also have been made under President Bush.

While AEI and some other hardliners have questioned the decision to cut the Army’s Future Combat Systems project and the giant Mine Resistant Vehicle, few seem to think them essential. The Journal editors did not vigorously support these and even praised Mr. Gates’ greater funding for unmanned aerial vehicles, for special forces, and for cyberwarfare. They expressed concern with what they consider weakness in dealing with Iran and North Korea missile and nuclear weapons threats but this is simply a continuation of similar concerns they held about the Bush Administration.

The worst one could accurately say about the perceived “weakness” of the Obama Administration on foreign policy is that it is not spending enough overall – but, again, not when compared to the Bush Administration’s actual projections for the future. The Wall Street Journal editors judge policy by the percent of Gross Domestic Product allocated to defense, saying that spending only four percent of GNP in itself “means too little investment against potential threats.” But is it so simple and mathematical? In fact, the last Bush Budget was only marginally over four percent. Was Bush’s budget inadequate? Does a constant percent of GDP mean defense spending should decline during recessions even if threats increase? Rather, should defense spending be based on what is needed for protection of the homeland? If the Obama defense budget also funded strategic as well as theater missile defense and focused on true strategic threats rather than overextending limited resources, would this not provide at least as much security as under Bush?

The fear on the right is that the Obama Administration will not be aggressive enough in meeting foreign threats. Yet, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton supported her husband’s nation-building in the Balkans when Bush opposed it and supported Bush’s military involvement in Iraq from the beginning. Defense Secretary Gates actually worked for and authored Bush’s forceful policies. The Obama leadership just below them is even more aggressive, including those who created the Clinton Balkan policy. Indeed top State Afghanistan/Pakistan official Richard Holbrooke was the primary architect of that nation-building policy which was then supported by the Democratic and opposed by the Republican party platforms. Those worried about the prospects of a sound foreign policy during the Obama years might be more wisely concerned about too much rather than too little aggressive nation-building.

Donald Devine, the editor of Conservative Battleline Online, was the director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management from 1981 to 1985 and is the director of the Federalist Leadership Center at Bellevue University.