Obama to Detail a Broader Foreign Policy Agenda

Obama to Detail a Broader
Foreign Policy Agenda
President Obama, with Chancellor Angela
Merkel on May 2, will reveal specifics of his
foreign policy agenda on Wednesday.
DOUG MILLS / THE NEW YORK TIMES
By MARK LANDLER
May 24, 2014
WASHINGTON — President Obama,
seeking to answer criticism that he has
forsaken America’s leadership role,
plans to lay out a retooled foreign-
policy agenda on Wednesday that
could deepen the nation’s involvement
in Syria but would still steer clear of
major military conflicts.
In a commencement address at the
United States Military Academy at
West Point, N.Y., Mr. Obama will seek,
yet again, to articulate his view of the
proper American response to a
cascade of crises, from Syria’s civil
war to Russia’s incursions in Ukraine,
according to a senior administration
official who is helping draft the
speech.
Sketching familiar arguments but on a
broader canvas, Mr. Obama will
emphasize his determination to chart
a middle course between isolationism
and military intervention. The United
States, he said, should be at the
fulcrum of efforts to curb aggression
by Russia and China, though not at the
price of “fighting in eight or nine
proxy wars.”
“It’s a case for interventionism but
not overreach,” Benjamin J. Rhodes,
the deputy national security adviser,
said in an interview. “We are leading,
we are the only country that leads, but
that leadership has to be in service of
an international system.”
Mr. Obama, however, will emphasize
Syria’s growing status as a haven for
terrorist groups, some of which are
linked to Al Qaeda , officials said. That
could open the door to greater
American support for the rebels,
including heavier weapons, though no
decisions have been made.
The president’s speech will kick off an
intense, administration-wide effort to
counter critics who say the United
States is lurching from crisis to crisis,
without a grand plan for dealing with
a treacherous world. While such
critiques slight Mr. Obama’s
accomplishments, Mr. Rhodes said, he
conceded the president had not put his
priorities, from climate change to the
nuclear talks with Iran, into a
comprehensive framework.
Mr. Obama plans to elaborate on his
ideas during a trip to Europe in early
June. Over the next few weeks, the
White House will roll out issue-specific
speeches from Secretary of State John
Kerry, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel
and other senior officials.
“We understand that there are a lot of
questions swirling around not just our
foreign policy but America’s role in
the world,” Mr. Rhodes said. “People
are seeing the trees, but we’re not
necessarily laying out the forest.”
The trouble is, as Mr. Obama takes a
stage where his predecessors have
signaled new directions in foreign
policy — George W. Bush used a West
Point speech in 2002 to revive the
principle of pre-emptive military
strikes — his ideas are likely to have a
familiar ring.
In a speech on terrorism last year, Mr.
Obama warned of an arc of Islamic
extremism stretching from the Middle
East to North Africa, which he said
was the successor to the Al Qaeda
threat in Afghanistan and Pakistan
that was fought with troops and
drones.
The president’s calibrated rationale
for military intervention will draw on
a speech he gave in 2011 justifying
American backing for NATO airstrikes
on Libya. And his broad definition of
America’s responsibilities as a global
power will inevitably echo the
principles he outlined in accepting the
Nobel Peace Prize in December 2009.
Critics are also likely to argue that the
president’s words have not been
backed up by actions. Administration
officials, for example, have long
promised to bolster support for the
Syrian rebels. But they have so far
refused to supply them with
antiaircraft missiles because they fear
that these weapons could fall into the
hands of extremists.
Mr. Obama’s anguished response to
Syria has hung over the White House
and fueled critics who say the
president’s foreign policy is
rudderless: He threatened, then pulled
back on, a missile strike against Syria
for its use of chemical weapons and
resisted pleas for greater American
involvement, even as the death toll
rises above 160,000.
“I realized last night that the
administration has no policy in Syria,
has no strategy in Syria,” Senator Bob
Corker of Tennessee, the ranking
Republican on the Foreign Relations
Committee, said last week. He had just
attended a White House wine-and-
cheese reception to discuss foreign
policy — a gathering he described as
“very bizarre.”
Denis R. McDonough, the White House
chief of staff, said he invited Mr.
Corker and other senators to meet
with him and Susan E. Rice, the
national security adviser, because
these issues are going to loom large in
coming weeks, and the administration
wanted to consult Congress. “I thought
we had a good back-and-forth,” he
said.
Mr. Obama’s promise last year to
overhaul the counterterrorism policy
has been bogged down, officials say,
in part because of the distraction of
the surveillance disclosures by the
former National Security Agency
contractor Edward J. Snowden.
And the president’s pivot to Asia has
seemed more promise than reality,
with negotiations for a trans-Pacific
trade deal dragging on and the
restoration of American military
presence limited to announcements
like a base-access deal in the
Philippines.
It was on Mr. Obama’s trip to Asia last
month that his frustrations with his
critics boiled over. “Why is it that
everybody is so eager to use military
force after we’ve just gone through a
decade of war at enormous cost to our
troops and to our budget?” he said in
Manila.
Asked in a news conference to
describe his foreign-policy doctrine,
he said, “You hit singles, you hit
doubles; every once in a while we may
be able to hit a home run.” But, the
president added, the overriding
objective is to avoid an error on the
order of the Iraq war.
While Mr. Obama will most likely
shun such colloquialisms at West
Point, the baseball analogy is an apt
summary of his philosophy. In other
conversations, aides say, the president
has used a saltier variation of the
common-sense saying, “Don’t do
stupid stuff.”
In Asia, however, Mr. Obama framed
the debate over military intervention
in a binary way that aides say does
not reflect his views. They said he
agreed with the ambassador to the
United Nations, Samantha Power, who
recently criticized those who say there
are no options between doing nothing
and putting boots on the ground.
“We believe there is an alternative
approach,” Mr. Rhodes said.
To offer more than competent crisis
management, Mr. Obama will also
promote initiatives, like a global
climate change treaty, as well as the
Iranian nuclear negotiations — long-
shot diplomacy that could nevertheless
be a legacy achievement for him.
Mr. Obama will also argue he showed
firm leadership in marshaling support
to resist Russia’s aggression toward
Ukraine and in backing allies in
territorial disputes with China. The
president, Mr. Rhodes said, will draw
a line from Russia to China,
presenting the United States in both
cases as the ultimate guarantor of an
international order.
Such coalition-building, however, does
not have either the speed or satisfying
clarity of military action. “It’s a long
game,” Mr. Rhodes said. “It’s not one
that solves the problem yesterday.”
Jonathan Weisman contributed
reporting.
Correction: May 24, 2014
An earlier version of a picture caption
with this article misstated the date on
which President Obama appeared with
Chancellor Angela Merkel. It was May
2, not Friday.