Spain’s greatest living writer Juan Goytisolo says that Putin keeps winning in Syria because he knows exactly what he wants to achieve there, and Americans are losing because they only know what they don’t want to happen. Obama doesn’t want to be embroiled in another endless Iraq/Afghanistan type of conflict. But there is no proactive, concrete vision of what the US does want to happen in Syria. Putin, on the other hand, has a very specific goal: to position Russia as a superpower and get the US to forget about the sanctions.
You can’t exist without a specific, detailed and clear foreign policy. If all you have is strictly reactive, you’ll keep ending up in situations where you hemorrhage resources and achieve nothing.
But even the most educated, intelligent Americans don’t care about foreign policy. And elected officials have no reason to fashion a foreign policy agenda. Which means that we have many Afghanistans and Syrias in our future.
Clarissa's Blog 
This is a good point. We don’t, and especially obama does not have a clear vision for what they want in syria.
I don’t agree that the most intellligent don’t care at all (I surely care, and if I am considered NOT intelligent by some of the galllery here…well then it either further proves my point that people care). I know many with foreign policy ideas, but I do agree write large its a hard issue, because frankly what people DO care about is that we are “safe”. Which is very hard to prove and define.
Ultimately our goal should be a long-term stabilizing force like we have been in asia-pacific,with our long-term base in south korea and japan.
We should keep 20k troops in Iraq, Afghanistan, and probably similar number in northern africa. Move half from asia-pacific to bases in the middle east. That is about as concrete any politician would say.
So agreed, tough to articulate, but can be done. I can’t comment prior to bush because I was too young, but bush and obama have both been bad at STRATEGY and COMMUNICATION on a coherent foreign policy.
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Arguably, the last coherent strategy on the part of the US was the one that got us into Vietnam. Even US support for the Taliban against the Soviets in the 1980s was basically a skunkworks arrangement, not US policy. Please recognize that we go through periods in which the US population (and leaders on the right) want to withdraw from the world and focus on policy issues and spending at home. I suspect we’re there again, and we’re likely to see demands for dramatic cuts in foreign aid that will leave the playing field wide open for both Russia and China.
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“Even US support for the Taliban against the Soviets in the 1980s was basically a skunkworks arrangement,”
Background. From some time in the 1940s through the 1980s Warsaw pact countries had scholarship programs for students from a wide variety of third world countries, including Afghanistan. There was generally an intensive year of language learning and then they were put into the regular university student body (they had some privileges that locals didn’t have but they took classes with the locals).
Anyhoo, a little known fact is that a majority of the Afghans studying in the USSR or Warsaw Pact countries were on the Soviet side. Not because they had any illusions about communism or the system in the countries they were studying in (they had direct firsthand experience with most of the things wrong with them).
The basic reason was they thought being a Soviet satellite would represent a civilizational step forward for Afghanistan which has always been an uneducated, violent place filled with ornery mountainfolk engaged in endless feuds with each other (the Hatfields and McCoys X 1000).
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As a practical matter in the United States, foreign policy is determined by exactly one person: the President. Everybody else in the executive branch (the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, the Armed Forces, etc.) works directly for the President and carries out his goals — neither the cabinet secretaries and nor the uniformed military set policy.
The legislative branch is supposed to be involved in foreign policy by approving budgets, declaring wars, and approving treaties, but in modern times Presidents have essentially ignored Congress and the Senate, and done whatever they damn well pleased with international issues.
When a President is reckless and aggressive (George W. Bush), he can quickly make a global mess despite any efforts of people who disagree with his policies to stop him.
And when a President is feckless and weak (Obama), he can allow American influence and power to dissipate like snow on the desert, and the “most intelligent” people in the country — whether or not they “care at all” — can’t stop him.
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“The legislative branch is supposed to be involved in foreign policy by approving budgets, declaring wars, and approving treaties, but in modern times Presidents have essentially ignored Congress and the Senate, and done whatever they damn well pleased with international issues.”
Yes, this is a problem. The Bible crazies like to bellyache about “judicial activism” and the judicial branch taking over the powers of the states and the legislative branch but the executive branch has experienced a huuuge increase in unchecked power over the last 40 or so years.
Unlike Clarissa, my guess is that Obama does think a good deal about foriegn policy but his motivations in that area are almost entirely negative and/or defensive
a) he doesn’t want the US to seem like a bully or colonial power
b) he doesn’t want the US to be seen as pushing around muslims
c) he doesn’t want the US to be seen as too partisan
He has no clear idea of what he wants US FP to be, just what he doesn’t want it to be – neo-colonial, invasive, partisan, anti-muslim, anti-african etc and so he’s paralyzed because actually doing anything will make some people unhappy that he doesn’t want to be unhappy.
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