{"id":33161,"date":"2015-10-13T03:00:35","date_gmt":"2015-10-13T07:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=33161"},"modified":"2015-10-12T14:06:32","modified_gmt":"2015-10-12T18:06:32","slug":"there-is-no-such-thing-as-an-american-foreign-policy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2015\/10\/13\/there-is-no-such-thing-as-an-american-foreign-policy\/","title":{"rendered":"There “is no such thing as an American foreign policy”"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the Wall Street Journal<\/em>, Niall Ferguson<\/a> describes the “Real Obama Doctrine” in US foreign policy:<\/p>\n

Even before becoming Richard Nixon\u2019s national security adviser, Henry Kissinger understood how hard it was to make foreign policy in Washington. There \u201cis no such thing as an American foreign policy,\u201d Mr. Kissinger wrote in 1968. There is only \u201ca series of moves that have produced a certain result\u201d that they \u201cmay not have been planned to produce.\u201d It is \u201cresearch and intelligence organizations,\u201d he added, that \u201cattempt to give a rationality and consistency\u201d which \u201cit simply does not have.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two distinctively American pathologies explained the fundamental absence of coherent strategic thinking. First, the person at the top was selected for other skills. \u201cThe typical political leader of the contemporary managerial society,\u201d noted Mr. Kissinger, \u201cis a man with a strong will, a high capacity to get himself elected, but no very great conception of what he is going to do when he gets into office.\u201d<\/p>\n

Second, the government was full of people trained as lawyers. In making foreign policy, Mr. Kissinger once remarked, \u201cyou have to know what history is relevant.\u201d But lawyers were \u201cthe single most important group in Government,\u201d he said, and their principal drawback was \u201ca deficiency in history.\u201d This was a long-standing prejudice of his. \u201cThe clever lawyers who run our government,\u201d he thundered in a 1956 letter to a friend, have weakened the nation by instilling a \u201cquest for minimum risk which is our most outstanding characteristic.\u201d<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s see, now. A great campaigner. A bunch of lawyers. And a \u201cquest for minimum risk.\u201d What is it about this combination that sounds familiar?<\/p>\n

I have spent much of the past seven years trying to work out what Barack Obama\u2019s strategy for the United States truly is. For much of his presidency, as a distinguished general once remarked to me about the commander in chief\u2019s strategy, \u201cwe had to infer it from speeches.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the Wall Street Journal, Niall Ferguson describes the “Real Obama Doctrine” in US foreign policy: Even before becoming Richard Nixon\u2019s national security adviser, Henry Kissinger understood how hard it was to make foreign policy in Washington. There \u201cis no such thing as an American foreign policy,\u201d Mr. Kissinger wrote in 1968. There is only […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[84,13],"tags":[158,432,529,515],"class_list":["post-33161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government","category-usa","tag-barackobama","tag-diplomacy","tag-lawyers","tag-richardnixon"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-8CR","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33161"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33161\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33162,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33161\/revisions\/33162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}