BOOK REVIEW:

FULL NAME OF THE BOOK: NATIONAL SECURITY IN THE OBAMA ADMINISTIRATION (REASSESSING THE BUSH DOCTRINE)

AUTHOR: STANELY RENSHON

PUBLISHED in 2010                                        PUBLICATION: ROUTLEDGE

Number of pages : 308

                                                                                                    

DESCRIPTION:

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: He is the professor at the City University of New York Graduate Center, and a psychoanalyst as well. He grew up in New Jersey and studied international relations at American University. He received his PhD in political science at the University of Pennsylvania in 1972. He received trainings on psychology at Long Island University. He has published 15 books and nearly ninety articles related to presidential politics, leadership and political psychology. Some of his books are:

-          Barack Obama and Politics of  Redemption ( 2011)

-          The Bush Doctrine and the Future if American National Security(2008)

-          The 50% American : National Identity in a Dangerous Age(2005)

-          Political Psychology: cultural and Cross-cultural foundations ( 2000)

Summary:

An overview of the current situation of an unpredictable and rapidly changing world is presented in the foreword. The world that Obama inherits is the one with too many tribulations at home and as well as the globe. In the global arena, Obama and the US face with a rapidly growing China, this currently a key worldwide power. And an uprising Russia with much more sway on the former satellites of the USSR while at the same time extends its hand to help the NATO troops in Afghanistan. The other issue Obama facing is the elevating threat of the nuclear proliferation, of contemporary re-birth of piracy, distressed states like Pakistan and Mexico. At the same time he should deal with countries like Great Britain, Germany, and France which their support cannot be taken for granted. Many believed that American headship, supremacy and power have declined so the new president has to find solution to cope with this widely perception. This view is strongly held by Obama administration that Bush’s policies and rivalries seriously damaged the American leadership. Obama is searching for a new American leadership which other countries leaders held other viewpoint as Russian Foreign Minister , Sergey Lavrov puts forward “ America has to recognize the reality of a “post – American “ world “ .

 Obama likely holds similar view to JFK’s that there cannot be an American solution to every world problem. Accordingly he has accentuated on the engagement and cooperation and new partnerships as a return to realism. Obama repeatedly has said that he is willing to see the world in terms of common security and common prosperity with other countries. Other than, Obama believes that if American national interests are not at stake, moral issues are at stake so he asserted that those issues should be considered as American national interests. The last part of the preface dedicated to answer this vital question whether Bush’s doctrine is still alive and what part of the Doctrine Obama administration will to continue. So it is prudent to watch over parts of the Bush’ Doctrine.

Part I

The Bush Doctrine Reconsidered:

The Evolution of a post -9/11 National security Perspective:

The vulnerability of the US was shown by the 9/11 attacks both inside at home and abroad as well. The attacks damaged the Hegemony of the American leadership and power. The attacks targeted America’s so-called military, economic, and political icons. Besides, these attacks demonstrated that non-state organization like Al-Qaeda, could inflict disastrous damage and poses and unexpected and unprecedented security dilemma. It was in such situation that Bush’s Doctrine was borne. Both liberals and conservatives criticized the Bush’s Doctrine for different reasons. Conservatives criticized it for lack of assertiveness and its failure in anticipating and managing the post Saddam Hussein Occupation. The Bush Doctrine could be best understood as a part of strategic premises or a framework for analysis. It can be traced back to a group called “Vulcan’s “. Among them were Dick Cheney, Francis Fokuyama, Paul Wolfowitz, and Donald Rumsfeld. Their statement of principles included increasing defense spending and strengthening relationships with democratic allies. They want to promote freedom and democracy, challenge hostile regimes, extend America’s preferred international order, and of course remove Saddam Hussein from power. These suggestions were the basics and fundamental ideas of the Bush diplomacy. Given the Bush worldview that evil remains despite of the fall of the Soviet Union and that there are enemies who hate American values, he himself clearly favored a forward-looking offensive stance toward national security. The author argues that as circumstances change, doctrines must as well if they are to remain useful. So, the fact that the Bush Doctrine evolved should not be surprising. And it is the failing of Bush Doctrine critics that they fail to recognize this fact. No doctrine, however conceptually sound, guarantees successful implementation. Even when the worldviews of a grand strategy are essentially accurate, major new events can have a dramatic effect on the doctrine and lead to modifications. The worldview foundations of the Bush Doctrine, for example, were in place well before 9/11 but 9/11 brought new circumstances and new understandings, and, as a result, new policies. The question is whether there could be a mixture of the central national security questions of our time and policies of Bush and Obama administration.

The Real Bush Doctrine

In this chapter, the author watches over and reviews the changes due to circumstances given to the Doctrine and compares Bush’s and Truman’s one in which both changed because of the change in situation.  This was a reflection of the true reality of any strategic doctrine that has to be appropriate for specific situations. It may receive low public approval rating but leaders do what they consider favoring to their country.

The premises of the Bush Doctrine reflect five related strategic elements including American primacy, assertive realism, stand-apart alliances, a new internationalism, and democratic transformation. Primacy suggests preserving U.S. supremacy by politically, economically, and militarily outpacing any global challenger. The author mentions that the idea of imposing American values by force of arms is absurd. President Bush invaded Iraq because he came to the conclusion that Saddam Hussein was extremely dangerous to American national security and could not be contained or deterred. Developing Iraqi democracy was a by-product of that central judgment, not its motivating reason. The author, however, believes that it is not only the Bush Doctrine’s wish for primacy that results in American leadership worldwide but also world demands for American support and commitment are a large part of the reason, and America’s world leadership thus begins with a paradox; that worldwide America is both a leader and a clerk. Bush’s view of assertive realism is an offensive stance rather than a defensive one. On terrorism, the best defense is a strong offense, though; it not necessarily means a military action. For example, Bush Doctrine’s National Strategy to Secure Cyber space and its Strategy for Homeland Security and National Intelligence are assertive but not military. Obama’s view, but, on those issues is opaque since he expressed a double-edged view. American international relationships are based on convenience, necessity, and true friendship. Although the world is anarchic but there is one thing that many realists do agree upon and it is cooperation which is a must and very difficult, though.

A new internationalism and selective multiculturalism is the next element of the Bush Doctrine. The Bush Doctrine views international institutions unsatisfactory because they cannot be in concert with the US national interests or security issues. For example the members of the Security Council have no common grounds. So, Concert of Democracies, a post-Bush Doctrine strategic option, as an alternative to international institutions has been suggested. The idea seems very attractive but questionable, though. Then there is the issue of democratic transformation. Referring to Bush and Obama statements, the author argues that Democracy is a process that sometimes even needs to impose via military defeat and long years of occupation.

4 The Bush Doctrine

Myths and criticisms

Realists’ disapproval of the Bush Doctrine was due to its transformative vision. They see the world as it is, not as it wished to be. The Bush Administration was careless in this respect since it did reject the status quo and sought to transform instead of managing American national security circumstances. It even inserted such a type of language as good or evil into US foreign policy literature. That issue left America less room to accommodate the interests of those who opposed it. Realists claim that gaining more power demands gaining more interests. That reason justifies, partially, US expansion of its interests for it is the most powerful country. But the author argues that the Bush Administration’s interest expansion was a reaction to 9/11; it was not continuation of manifest destiny but a by-product of a severe national shock. So we should not expect presidents to behave in accordance to general theories or claims but they should be more modest in terms of the dilemmas that presidents face.

The author, then, goes to the some myths including that the Bush Doctrine has been inspired by a group of so-called neoconservatives. Among them are Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, both of whom served in the Department of Defense. The group is believed that is Jewish and beholden to beholden to Israel. But Francis Fukuyama, himself a neoconservative critic of the Bush Doctrine, says that much of the accusations are wrong, animated by ill-will. Another criticism of the Bush Doctrine is being unilateralism. The usual criticism is of ignoring and alienating important allies and the rest of the world since he tried to build an empire on American power alone. Evoking to Global warming and Kyoto accords, critics consider the United States as being unilateralism. He argues that many criticisms of the Bush Doctrine have a partisan political nature. Disagreement between France and the US are highlighted; but agreements between them on fighting terrorism are treated as less important.  So, he believes that some of the disagreements to Bush administration policy have partisan nature. Renshon, the author puts forward that Anti-Americanism stems not only from Bush’s policy but from a volatile world with structural uncertainty. American soft power, its ideas and economy, not only is envied but also has destroyed many aspects of traditional culture. Finally, the author argues that elite consensus and public understanding are essential to any successful doctrine, something that the Bush Doctrine lacked. So, division among the parties in viewing the world issues and considering national interests and lack of consensus among elite and public understanding are defects of Bush Doctrine. Accordingly, given these profound strategic differences, it’s almost impossible for the Bush Doctrine to reach the level of consensus akin to that of the Truman Doctrine.

Part II

The Strategic World after 9/11

The New Calculus of Risk

September 11 made Bush believe that the world is not a safe place. Understanding the Bush Doctrine without considering the 9/11 is ridiculous for it brought about a set of international security issues. So, the way looking into issues changed a lot. For example immigration, before 9/11, was considered as a political issue but it now reframed as a national security issue. Cold War threats and then revolutionary zeal now replaced by non-state actors inspired by religious zeal, and die for their cause. Unlike Cold War era, American public, now, has not reached a general consensus concerning national security issues because of strategic split among political leaders’ worldview.

        Prospect theory and expected utility theory are presented here to explain leaders’ behavior under the conditions of uncertainty. People usually go to cognitive shortcuts in decision making. Two domain of prospect theory are the domain of loss and the domain of gain. Losses usually carry more psychological weigh in the decision process. The domain of losses in national security policy falls into three categories of catastrophic, dire and tolerable losses. The first a state’s basic power status, national security, or way of life. The 9/11 attacks fall into this category and Georg Bush did what prospect theory exactly predicates. Dire losses put national security at greater risk but don’t immediately threaten state’s existence or way of life. The loss of Vietnam War falls into this category. Finally tolerable losses don’t directly threaten the country like the elections of Eva Morales in Bolivia and Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. National security gains also fall into two categories; triumph and success. Success occurs when a country obtain a number of important national security goals while not having suffered substantial losses. Invasion of Iraq and toppling Saddam Hussein is considered a partial but an important success. President Bush’s 9/11 assessment of risk was, somehow, based on Cheney’s concise statement that the risks of inaction are far greater than action and that was the new calculus of risk for President Bush. What discern the role of a president and a theorist is that the former has a set of responsibilities that would affect both the United States and the other countries but in the case the latter isn’t so. So predicating the future requires some erroneous risk calculation that is inevitable. Many theorists tried to explain states’ foreign behavior within some theories, though, most of them attempted to analyze the issue according to realists’ viewpoints.

6          Deterrence, Containment and Adversarial Bargaining Post-9/11 North Korea and Iran

This chapter features some strategies to deal with post 9/11 milieu concerning Iran and North Korea including deterrence, containment, bargaining, and so forth. Mr. Bush’s statement “different threats require different strategies” demanding different behaviors against China, Iran, Syria, North Korea, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Venezuela, and the Sudan. Some enemies cannot be deterred so it’s better to go into the psychology of strategic options concern different leaders. For example, given their differences, personalities, and situational forces, Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong-Il need different approaches. To apply dual strategy of containment and deterrence toward countries depends on a target‘s motivations, intentions, and capacities, though, with the passage of time, containment and deterrence have found new meanings. Countries behavior is a reflection of their psychology, their worldview, and their thinking. Patterns of behavior can give helpful clues to the motivations that underlie them. So ignoring what countries do, why they do so, and not understanding their worldview is a misreading of containment theory.

7                    Dangerous Threats and the Use of Force

This chapter begins with this argument that the Bush Doctrine was ambiguous because it failed to revise clear criteria for whenever preventive war is legitimate and when we ought to use coercive force. President Bush did find deterrence out of date because he came to the conclusion that terrorists or rough states welcome death in the service of their cause. So, given the costs and benefits, he decided to eliminate the threat of Saddam Hussein and that was the general calculation behind the U. S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 akin to the basis upon which Israel attacked Iraq’s nuclear reactor at Osiraq in 1981.

Strategic worldview, thinking and judgments are the factors that should be considered when studying leaders. Leaders operate with a set of strategic assumptions. A dangerous worldview would be the belief that conflict or war (with your enemies) is unavoidable. Another dangerous worldview is one’s system or ideology demand the second level of comparison is related to the characteristics of the countries involved. The United States has a mature diplomacy; debate about a variety of issues is the reality of American political life. It has the combination of the separation of power, checks and balances, periodic elections. Public opinion is mattered and policy is subjected to different reviews but none of these was true about Saddam’s Iraq.ing regional hegemony. Combination of dangerous leadership traits and dangerous thinking or belief system is troubling. In Iraq, power was maintained by fiat not legitimacy. Elections are manipulated and no one can challenge it, and one effective political party in Iraq had a monopoly of political power. The author sums up his analysis of dangerousness with this statement that a sound perception of dangerousness and its features is central to understand dangerous threats and the use of force.

8                    Strategic Options and the Future of the Bush Doctrine

In this chapter, many strategic options to the Bush Doctrine have been proposed; many of these replacement doctrines focus on avoiding using force, preferring instead to put their focus on options not requiring the use of force. Given this issue, many of the proposed doctrines fall short to be a replacement for the Bush Doctrine. Among the theories are offshore balancing, selective engagement, realistic Wilsonianism, progressive realism, ethical realism, neo-isolationism, and integration. Critics are agreed upon the idea that we must farewell with the Bush Doctrine, but their proposed replacements are myriad and recommendations contradictory and fail to meet the Bush Doctrine circumstances. All replacements to Bush Doctrine hold a passive stance while the Bush Doctrine holds the idea that in an age of catastrophic terrorism, national security passivity is a form of suicide. And the Bush Doctrine’s covert idea is that America military and economic power would dissuade potential rivals from acquiring the means to challenge American interests, something that critics failed to notice. Finding a viable option for the Bush Doctrine is not an easy matter. Some focus on the importance of restraint in the use of force but restraint is an enigmatic strategy since it may reassure some of American allies some of the time. Some options, including the dismantling of partnerships that have taken decades to develop like NATO and SEATO, require the United States to suffer high costs. None of the proposed theories provide comprehensive options to the Bush Doctrine, and controversies around the Bush Doctrine is unlikely to be resolved via academic debates and they will be resolved, if at all, at the level of America’s political leadership since political leaders are the ones who charged with the actual stewardship of American national security.

Part III

The Politics of Post-9/11National Security

9                    The Politics of Risk Assessment

The war against Saddam in Iraq terribly damaged Americans and raised the controversies about the issue both inside and outside as well. The administration credibility was also damaged due to the serious controversies.  Many argue that lack of enough information and poor risk assessment of the administration were the cause. Others have accused the administration of intentionally distorting data to further war aims, consequently, among them, the charges of poor judgment, avoidable error, misrepresentation, and bad policy. Given the above disputes, it should be said that the future safety of the United States depends on assessing precisely the risks of dangerous regimes and non-state actors. The errors that American intelligence agencies made occurred because of erroneous assumptions, confidence in the predicative power of past behavior of Saddam Hussein, failure to think through alternative explanations, or to ignore favored one. The same is true about risk assessment of withdrawing from Iraq; at this point, failure in Iraq may give rise to a regional war among Iraq’s neighbors that in turn endanger American interest in the region. This issue, thus, must be studied in detail given the deep divides surrounding national security worldviews.

10                The Politics of Post-9/11National Security

A Profound Worldview Divide

Here the focus is on the deep worldview divide that President Bush’s policies created among people. Bush era left the public exhausted by harsh partisanship over his national security policies. The public is also divided on many of the Bush Administration policies and on the premises that underlie them. The author believes that oppositions to Bush stems from several reasons. Firstly, because of the disputed election in 2000 in which by the decree of the Supreme Court Mr. Bush won the election. So, accordingly many cast doubt on the president honesty, competence and motives. Then it is originating from an urgent need to devise a doctrine after 9/11. Next the president’s style of leadership and partisan considerations should be put into effect. Bush’s leadership style was assertive and his response to 9/11 was typical of his style. Many argued that Bush’s policies was enacted without Congress engagement and dubbed him another imperial president. It’s true that Mr. Bush assertive leadership style and his transformational agenda did matter but the real cause of divide was strategic worldviews among Democrats and Republicans. Republicans, generally, aligned with assertive realism and a strong real politic while Democrats favor a cooperative internationalism and liberal strategies for peace, though; strategic worldview depends on other factors including geography, circumstances, and specific issues. Assertive realists argue that a less assertive national security stance might heighten the dangers of other attacks so all risks were worth taking. Generally Republicans place the threat in the domain of catastrophic losses while Democrats seem to place it in the category of undesirable but tolerable losses or perhaps in the domain of possible success. The author believes in wide America’s strategic divide that ushered into less legitimacy and less security for the United States. He, however, argues that the United States needs both parties to adopt the most basic principles of realism that the world is a dangerous place.

11                Obama’s National Security Tasks

Worldview, Leadership and Judgment

The Legitimacy crisis facing Obama is that on the one hand the US is powerful, and on the hand, it lacks the international support for forging its power. The Obama administration tries to overdue the problem by distancing his predecessors’ policies and taking advantage of his election time popular affections and approval. One of the dilemmas Obama faces is the American tradition of pushing democracy worldwide, while there is little emergency of this policy as felt by foreign policy analysts. The US confronts a changed world order, with no unipolar superiority thanks to the revival of the traditional “great powers” policies. As regards with the terrorist attacks, esp. the 9/11 profile, the Bush Doctrine inclined toward a tough stance against the threat. Several polls by the PEW surveys mainly, stressed that the public opinion is “strongly” wanted for protectionist measures. Meanwhile, it has not to be interpreted in a way that justifies the overt use of force, rather patience, and making alliances with the international institutions are recommendable alternatives. Surely the seeking alliance with an institution like the UN is a challenging effort, for in so doing, every American president must ask firstly “what if they don’t agree to allow me to act, and I must?”

Certainly, Obama has the responsibility of repairing the US reputation among the critics well after the 9/11 responses. The polls indicate that the first three indicators for a presidential functionality here are: “strong leadership”, “working well with leaders of other countries”, and “bringing unity to the country”. To some degrees, being a new president provides the situation for; conditioned that Obama considers the good neighbor policy.

There are priorities among the security issues regarding the challenges of terrorist attacks, rising of rivals in different part of the world. But there is a partisan debate over the priority of national vs. international issues which says that a series of factors are satisfied for a minor foreign security issues. This is an indication of poor decision making.

Regarding character, Obama is smart and ambitious, but inexperienced. He also lacks clarity of ideas, regarding the coping of actions with ideas. If we parallel his foreign policy with domestic one, his domestic lack of sincerity might indicate the same in his foreign policy. Nevertheless, the domestic realm is balanced with partisan overview, and the foreign with countries’ ranges of power.

Obama’s doctrine or worldview is perceived to be a distracted one. Beyond a euphemist language is a psychology of his enemies and rivals, which says the Muslim world and America’s enemies in general want respect, which he provides. His truism also inclines apologizing for historical foreign and domestic abuses. The question is if truism and lenience is the strategy, what role coercive policy might play.

Afghanistan case is the realm that shows Obama’s use of force. Other than several hundred troop surges, he committed the plan for several hundred reconstruction workers, and 1.5 billion dollars a year for 5 years for Pakistan’s military accommodation. Although Obama’s strategy for Afghanistan has been known to be an “exit strategy”, the fact has been the survival of troops there until the “central goal” is achieved.

The commitment has aspired some questions on the viability of the Bush Doctrine. The answer to three questions might be very conductive in this regard. First, whether the Bush Doctrine provides a viable framework for addressing American post-9/11 security concerns. It seems that no other theory has been competitive to Bush’s, including “selective engagement, neo-isolationism, and realism. But have the Doctrine and its associated policies helped to secure the American homeland from further attack? The fact that today the security initiatives and operations are well better operated is a direct result of the so called Bush doctrine enacted. And finally, have the policies pursued by the Bush Administration abroad, most notably the war in Iraq but also in Afghanistan and the push for democratization helped the national security position of this country? There are strong psychological and strategic grounds that Saddam Hussein has been a dangerous tyrant against whom the sanction system has been eroded.