Promise Audit - Foreign Policy: Experts' Grade for White House
Journalist: David Gauvey Herbert
CNAS Author: Dr. Patrick Cronin
Original Post: Promise Audit - Foreign Policy: Experts' Grade for White House
Type: CNAS Commentary
January 6, 2010 — Nowhere was Barack Obama's campaign rhetoric as bold as on foreign policy, where he laid out ambitious plans to rebuild America's standing in the world. He's made headway on promises to expand aid and to open more diplomatic channels to the nation's antagonists abroad, but supporters haven't always been happy with the professor-cum-president's deliberative pace in fulfilling them.
The White House took two months to appoint a Sudan envoy and 10 months to tap a new head for the U.S. Agency for International Development, delays that frustrated the aid community. When Obama's deliberations on Afghanistan stretched from days to weeks, conservatives protested and former Vice President Dick Cheney called him "dithering." Although nuclear nonproliferation was supposed to be a centerpiece of the White House's national security policy, Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev waited until the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty had nearly expired before agreeing on a replacement.
Obama has made strides on two big-ticket items in his foreign-policy agenda: drawing down troops in Iraq and expanding military forces in Afghanistan. But a handful of pledges -- including reinstating a special envoy for the Americas and giving a "state of the world" address -- haven't seen any action so far. File them under campaign promises that may have fallen through the cracks permanently. Others promises, such as creating an independent Palestine and recruiting linguists for the State Department, are long-term projects that will be tough to declare "accomplished." (How do you define "peace" in the Middle East?)
Experts' Grade For White House: B-
Obama hasn't strayed too far from his campaign script in this area: He has expanded aid, opened more diplomatic channels with our antagonists abroad and drawn down troops from Iraq. But at times, critics argue that his inner professor has taken over, and they criticize his deliberative decision-making process.
How important his successes and perceived shortfalls are is up for debate, so NationalJournal.com polled experts from across the political spectrum and asked them to grade Obama's first year at the helm of America's foreign policy on an A-to-F scale.
Poll respondents were: Larry Diamond, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and Freeman Spogli Institute; Rep. Michael McMahon, D-N.Y., a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee; Patrick Cronin, senior director of the Center for a New American Security's Asia-Pacific Security Program; Mauro De Lorenzo, vice president of the John Templeton Foundation and visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute; Todd Moss, vice president for corporate affairs and senior fellow at the Center for Global Development; J. Peter Pham, Africa Project director at the National Committee on American Foreign Policy; and Andrew Natsios, former USAID administrator.
Patrick Cronin: B+ In the space of a year, he has largely transformed America's tarnished global image through pragmatic engagement.... But 2009 has been more of an agenda-setting year for the president than a year of tangible accomplishments. The hardest challenges are yet to come, namely translating newfound goodwill into tangible successes; determining what to do if engagement fails; and maintaining U.S. influence in the midst of a recession.
Related:Topic(s): Development and Diplomacy, U.S. National Security and Defense Policy
People: Dr. Patrick Cronin
