5:39 pm ET Oct 10, 2014
Think Tank
What Obama Could Gain From Shaking Up His Foreign Policy Team
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President Barack Obama last month with, from left, Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes; the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power; Secretary of State John Kerry; and National Security Adviser Susan Rice. Associated Press
The knives are out. Two columns this week–in the Washington Post and on ForeignPolicy.com, both by respected mainstream commentators–suggest that President Barack Obama needs new national security advisers. The Sunday talk shows are bound to pick up the theme. Leon Panetta’s new book gives them plenty to work with. So does an excellent Reuters story in which mid-level types across the administration trash its Syria policy.
There are familiar complaints in all these accounts: Decision-making is too centralized; experienced, independent figures should be brought in to invigorate the apparatus. Something of the sort may be unavoidable, but it will be hard to separate personalities and process from substance. The story of President Obama’s foreign policy, after all, is not just about White House dominance. It’s about the president’s success in imposing his views on skeptical advisers. Turning things around depends on whether he’s ready to rethink.
At the start of the administration, remember, the crucial fact about Mr. Obama’s relations with his advisers was not–advertising slogans aside–that he had assembled a “team of rivals.” (That term applied only to Hillary Clinton.) It was that almost all of them–Mrs. Clinton at State, Mr. Panetta at the CIA, Robert Gates at Defense, Gen. Jim Jones at the National Security Council, Gen. David Petraeus at Central Command, and others–favored a more activist American role in the world and were not afraid to say so. Gradually, however, President Obama wore them down, replacing most with his own staffers–or, in the case of Chuck Hagel at Defense and John Kerry at State–with veteran senators he could count on to not rock the boat. With his second term ahead of him, the president clearly thought he had a policy that worked.
Now, it seems, he doesn’t. His overall reputation is still more up for grabs than is commonly assumed, but the result depends on how he handles two crises on his plate: If, when he leaves the White House, he can claim to have succeeded–really succeeded–in dealing with both ISIS and Ukraine, Mr. Obama can still hope to be called a great president. If he deals successfully with even one, “good enough” will be within reach. If he fails at both, his reputation will never recover.
If Mr. Obama picks a new team, this is what he should tell them. And then put them to work.
Stephen Sestanovich, a professor at Columbia University and senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, is the author of “Maximalist: America in the World From Truman to Obama.” He is on Twitter: @ssestanovich.
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