'American leadership is the one constant in an uncertain world': Barack Obama addresses America last week. Photograph: Rex
Iraq… America just can't quit you. For 23 years and across four presidencies, American planes have been waging war either against or on behalf of Iraqis. And if
President Obama's prediction of a long-term struggle against Isis is correct, it might soon be five presidents and a quarter of a century.
How does that keep happening? How did a candidate who won the nation's highest office on a platform of ending the war in Iraq find himself six years later announcing yet another military engagement in Iraq? How has a president who has seemingly made it his priority to pivot to Asia, rely less on the military and put forward a more restrained foreign policy been thwarted once again?
A good part of the reason is that while Americans might talk about imposing limits on American power and defining our global interests more narrowly, we rarely follow through – and here Obama, who has sought to step back from using American power to solve every international problem, must shoulder some of the blame.
The fact is, the same president who has tried to offer something of a more modest and realistic vision for American foreign policy can't seem to keep himself out of the swampy environs of American exceptionalism. Don't take my word for it – look at his
speech on Wednesday announcing America's strategy for "degrading and defeating"
Isis.
On the one hand, Obama played down the threat from Isis by noting "we have not yet detected specific plotting against our homeland" (even though he warned that Isis could attack in the future). His strategy was eminently reasonable and relatively restrained. America would be one of many acting in Iraq; would rely on air power and no boots on the ground; would work with regional allies and utilise a few tools in the national security toolbox other than aerial bombardment.
This looks a lot different from the wars in Iraq or the ill-fated 2009 surge in Afghanistan. It's outsourced counter-terrorism, reliance on proxy militaries in Syria and Iraq and American air power. So far so good, right?
It's the rest of Obama's speech that is more problematic, because to sell his strategy for destroying Isis he laid it on pretty thick. According to Obama, the reason for America to act in Iraq is not just because Isis might one day be a threat or because it challenges key US interests in the region or because the group is a deeply nihilistic and malignant force that merits a militarised response to its hateful actions, but rather, well, because we're America.
"American leadership is the one constant in an uncertain world," said Obama. "It is America that has the capacity and the will to mobilise the world against terrorists."
It is America that "rallied the world against Russian aggression"; "that can help contain and cure the outbreak of Ebola"; "that helped remove and destroy Syria's declared chemical weapons" and "is helping Muslim communities, not just in the fight against terrorism, but in the fight for opportunity and tolerance and a more hopeful future". That's a lot of responsibilities.
And in case you thought those recent public opinion polls that showed the American people were a bit tired of playing the role of global cop, think again. "As Americans, we welcome our responsibility to lead," said the president. "Our endless blessings bestow an enduring burden."
Moreover, America's "own safety" and its "own security" depends on its "willingness to do what it takes to defend this nation and uphold the values that we stand for". Except if upholding those values is really difficult, like in Syria over the past three years.
Pointing out this rhetorical inconsistency isn't necessarily a policy criticism. Obama's strategy for dealing with Isis and his approach to the bloody civil war in Syria have demonstrated modesty and restraint. These are underrated and underappreciated attributes; as, too, are Obama's deliberation and caution, which you'd want any American president who commands the world's largest military, several times over, to exhibit.
But if you really want the US to play a less active role in global affairs or even "lead from behind", making the claim that only America has the capacity and will to mobilise the world … well, guess who is going to get asked to organise a posse when there's trouble? By describing America as the indispensable nation, Obama and his Oval Office predecessors have created a self-fulfilling outcome in which it's basically impossible for the US to share the responsibilities of maintaining global peace and security with anyone else. Of course, doing so also leaves the rest of the world, and in particular our close allies, off the hook. Why should they take the lead when they know the
United States always will?
Perhaps there is no way around this dilemma. Every group needs a leader and why not America? After all, we certainly do benefit from a world that is more stable and peaceful; that is more democratic and prosperous and that abides by global rules and norms. In a very real sense that's the postwar world we were trying to create at the end of the second world war and, nearly 70 years later, one can say that we've largely succeeded. But in an era when the threats to America are few and far between and when, current events notwithstanding, the world is unusually safe, this would be the perfect moment for America to fob off some of its global responsibilities to others and, as Obama has often said in the past, conduct some nation-building at home.
But the practically unquestioned notion of US global responsibility and leadership makes that nearly impossible. The contradictions in Obama's approach are ones that are evident among the American people who on the one hand want the US to remain the most powerful country in the world but also want other countries to share more of our international burdens.
So perhaps Obama has little choice but to appeal to American's sense of national pride when asking them to support yet another military engagement in a nation where so much American blood has already been spilled. And that's perhaps why a less ideologically tinged, more interest-based argument won't do. After all, dropping bombs seems a bit more legitimate when it's done on behalf of values rather than interests. But to be clear, all this chest puffing comes with a price.
In 2008, when Obama was running for president he said his goal wasn't simply to
end the Iraq war but to end the mind-set that got America involved in that terrible conflict in the first place. Six years later, there's a lot more work to do and it begins with Obama's bully pulpit.
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