Another insightful opinion piece last Thursday was David Ignatius's consideration of Obama's foreign policy doctrine. Reviewing Obama speeches and other policy declarations of administration officials, Ignatius concludes there is a theme of balancing "rights and responsibilities," which needs fleshing out into a policy mechanism for decision-making. Ignatius suggests that applying this nascent Obama doctrine to Afghanistan would mean we cannot abandon responsibilities we have taken on to train Afghan security forces and support economic and political development.
That doesn't seem to lead us to an answer on the big question of a troop surge, though. Obama's approach, as described by Ignatius, is very lawyerly. By coincidence (?) Obama is a lawyer. I've generally found lawyers are not decision-makers; their focus is on getting all the facts, exploring all the angles, checking on the precedents, and taking their time about it. Decisions in any field, but especially in the foreign policy/national security arena, almost inevitably need to be made on the basis of incomplete information, uncertainty about the other parties' intentions, and lack of predictability in outcomes.
The difficulty of transitioning from lawyer mode to decision mode is one reason that Senators have often had difficulty moving from their deliberative chamber into the realm of executing policy; some of the wiser ones have refused to make such a move, despite seemingly favorable political conditions. Obama's "doctrine," if Ignatius has correctly identified it, will need to make the leap soon; failure to do so before now has left the impression of fecklessness on matters that the new President has identified as priorities.
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