THE OBAMA DOCTRINE - January 23, 2009

President Obama's inaugural address devoted relatively

little space to international affairs, unsurprising amid an

economic crisis. His remarks on foreign policy, though

limited, were on the one hand a rejection of Bush

unilateralism and on the other hand were notably

muscular in tone. Though early opposition to the Iraq

war was a key to establishing him as a contender for the Democratic nomination, he committed himself only to "begin to responsibly leave Iraq to its people." And in

just nine words he provided a mission statement for an

Obama Doctrine: You cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you.

These words unmistakably evoke the postwar doctrine

of containment, proposed by George Kennan in a famed 1946 cable that provided the basis of US policy through the Cold War. After prospects for a constructive postwar relationship with the Soviet Union faded, containment was the alternative to the more militant doctrine of 'rollback,' which can be taken as the intellectual ancestor of the neoconservative Bush Doctrine. Obama's reference to 'sturdy alliances,' besides being a rebuke to the neocons' contempt for diplomacy, is a further evocation of containment doctrine and its network of alliances, particularly NATO.

Obama's implicit argument, like Kennan's and Truman's is that America's adversaries, today a network of mostly Islamist militants, are neither the wave of the future nor the sign of an inevitable clash of civilizations, but a transitory force that can be defeated by outlasting it. In making this argument he lays claim not only to our national tradition of optimism (with more than a bit of self-congratulation), but specifically to the received version of Cold War history: that the US did indeed outlast and prevail over Soviet communism.

Obama's personnel choices further suggest a bid to establish a new national foreign policy consensus. Hillary Clinton, for all her history of public controversy, was noted as a collegial workhorse in the Senate, while her relatively hawkish reputation is reflected by good relations with many in the defense establishment. Obama further chose several people having past connections to Brent Scowcroft, an eminent Republican foreign policy establishment figure who in the summer of 2002 was all but jumping up and down, waving his hands and shouting "Don't go into Iraq, Mr. President!" Scowcroft dutifully got on board that fall, but Obama clearly understands how deeply disaffection with the neoconservative agenda reaches into the US foreign policy establishment.

In combination with active engagement in the Israel-Palestine peace process – his first international initiative as president was to make phone calls to four key regional leaders – Obama has set out swiftly to define a new framework for US foreign policy, an effort which if successful may shape American policy for decades.

Rick Robinson

--------------------

Author of the article holds B.A. degree in Economics from the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) and M.A. degree in English from California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, California . Mr. Robinson worked as a county-level campaigner in Dukakis (1988) and Clinton (1992) presidential campaigns. He presently works as a journalist and political commentator.

--------------------