Table Of ContentBarack Obama’s Post-American Foreign Policy
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Barack Obama’s
Post-American Foreign Policy
The Limits of Engagement
Robert Singh
B L O O M S B U R Y A C A D E M I C
First published in 2012 by
Bloomsbury Academic
an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
50 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP, UK
and
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA
Copyright © Robert Singh 2012
This work is published subject to a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Licence.
You may share this work for non-commercial purposes only, provided you give attribution
to the copyright holder and the publisher. For permission to publish commercial versions
please contact Bloomsbury Academic.
CIP records for this book are available from the British Library and the
Library of Congress
ISBN 978-1-78093-038-1 (hardback)
ISBN 978-1-78093-037-4 (paperback)
ISBN 978-1-78093-113-5 (ebook)
ISBN 978-1-78093-112-8 (ebook PDF)
This book is produced using paper that is made from wood grown in managed,
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Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Group, Bodmin, Cornwall.
Cover image: © Jason Reed/Reuters/Corbis
www.bloomsburyacademic.com
To Alia
Advance Praise for Barack Obama’s
Post-American Foreign Policy:
The Limits of Engagement
Outstanding. This is the single best book to grasp and assess the international priorities
and overall foreign policy record of the Obama administration. Rather than simply
taking for granted the superiority of the president's distinctive foreign policy approach,
Singh subjects it to a genuinely sophisticated, nuanced, and critical analysis. He fi nds that
Obama has transformed US foreign policy much less than might have been expected,
and that an emphasis on diplomatic engagement has run up against its own limitations.
Systematic, intelligent, and thoroughly convincing.
— Colin Dueck, George Mason University, USA
Rob Singh has two big things exactly right: Barack Obama's hope to transform
American foreign policy is truly audacious, but his struggle against past American
strategic culture and habits of international leadership is, at best, incomplete. And he
offers not just an analysis of the story to date, but a way to understand what a second
Obama term would mean.
— Thomas Donnelly, Director, Marilyn Ware Center for Security Studies,
American Enterprise Institute, USA
Singh has done the debate over the Obama presidency a great and necessary service. He
has managed to depoliticize the assessment of one of the most polarizing presidents of
the recent past and offer a preliminary judgement devoid of the rancour and eulogising
that accompany contemporary Obama studies. I can think of no book that ‘gets’ Obama
in the manner Singh does here. This book is a seminal accounting of what promised to
be a transformative international agenda and yet became a misunderstood reworking of
the Bush Doctrine. You don’t have to like this interpretation; you do have to deal with it.
This book is required reading for everyone – American and non-American – that in
2008 invested the Obama presidency with too much hope or too much cynicism. Singh
avoids the delusions of both and offers a portrait of a foreign policy that is compelling,
critical and historically-informed.
— Timothy J. Lynch, editor of the Oxford Encyclopedia of American Military and
Diplomatic History, University of Melbourne, Australia
The co-author of the prescient and groundbreaking After Bush now focuses his
considerable expertise on President Obama’s foreign policy. The result is a highly
informative, thought-provoking and important work that challenges much of what
passes for conventional wisdom on the subject. A must-read for all those interested in
contemporary international affairs.
— Rory Miller, Director of Middle East and Mediterranean Studies,
King’s College London, UK
Covering a wide swathe of issues, Singh presents a well-rounded exposé of the strengths
and weaknesses of Obama’s foreign escapades, ensuring this is a must-read for anyone
seeking to comprehend the direction of US foreign policy in the post-Bush years.
— James D. Boys, Richmond University, London and the Global Policy Institute, UK
Contents
List of Tables x
Preface and Acknowledgments xi
1 A Post-American Foreign Policy for the Post-American World 1
Introduction 2
Audacious No Longer: From the Fierce Urgency of Now to
the Timidity of “Hope” 9
Contextualizing Obama 15
Plan of the Book 18
2 The “Human Ink-Blot”: Obama, Foreign Policy and the
2008 Election 21
Introduction 21
“I’ve Got a Confusion on Obama”: Cosmopolitan,
Liberal Internationalist, Realist, Reaganite, Leftist? 25
The Stealth Candidate: Symbolism as Strategy (Hope) and
Substance (Change) 28
Commander-in-Chief/Cosmopolitan-in-Chief 31
Conclusion 37
3 The Obama Doctrine: “Leading From Behind” 39
Introduction 39
Obama’s Grand Strategy: Engagement 41
Implementing Strategic Engagement (2009–12) 48
The Conservative Critique: Obama and the End of
American Exceptionalism 56
Conclusion 63
4 Afghanistan, Pakistan and the War on Terror 66
Introduction 66
Un-Declaring the War on Terror 68
From the Team of Rivals to Rival Teams 73
Pakistan: Failing State of Terror 77
Conclusion: the Limits of Strategic Engagement in South Asia 86
vii
viii CONTENTS
5 Iran 89
Introduction 90
Extending a Hand, Unclenching a Fist: Towards a “Grand Bargain” 91
The Iranian Presidential Election Crisis of 2009 93
From Engagement to Sanctions to Regime Change 95
Evaluating Obama’s Iran Strategy 98
Iraq 105
Conclusion: the Limits of Strategic Engagement with Iran 107
6 Israel, Palestine and the Arab Spring 111
Introduction 111
Obama’s Strategic Options 113
Israel and the Palestinian Territories 115
The Arab Spring: the Inevitable Surprise 123
Egypt 125
Libya 127
Syria 130
Conclusion: the Limits of Strategic Engagement in the Middle East 134
7 China 139
Introduction 140
US China Strategy for the 2010s: Peaceful Rise,
Post-Ascent Aggression or Unpeaceful Collapse? 143
Obama and China: from Engagement to Hedging 148
Economic Relations 149
Chinese Military Developments: Enter the Dragon 154
Taiwan 157
Conclusion: the Limits of Strategic Engagement with China 159
8 Russia 162
Introduction 163
Resetting Russian-American Relations 166
Missile Defense, New START, and Afghanistan 169
Missile Defense 169
New START 172
Afghanistan, Central Asia and the “Post-Soviet Space” 175
Resetting the Reset? 176
Conclusion: the Limits of Strategic Engagement with Russia 180
CONTENTS ix
9 Keep the Change: Continuity We Can Believe In 184
Introduction 185
The Four Limits of Strategic Engagement 190
Conclusion 199
Notes 203
Bibliography 227
Index 243
