Against Accomplishment
I think Stephen Walt misses the mark with his post urging the Obama administration to start working on a "Plan B" to accomplish its foreign policy objectives. It's not that I think everything's going swimmingly, but that the standard is unreasonable. Take Walt's list of things that won't happen by 2012:
1. There won't be a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians, and Israel will still be occupying the West Bank and controlling the Gaza Strip....
2. The United States will still have tens of thousands of troops in Afghanistan. Victory will not be within sight.
3. Substantial U.S. personnel will remain in Iraq (relabeled as "training missions"), and the political situation will remain fragile at best.
4. The clerical regime in Iran will still be in power, will still be enriching nuclear material, will still insist on its right to control the full nuclear fuel cycle, and will still be deeply suspicious of the United States. Iran won't have an actual nuclear weapon by then, but it will be closer to being able to make one if it wishes.
5. There won't be a new climate change agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol.
6. Little progress will have been made toward reducing the number of nuclear weapons in the world. ...
Looking at this list, what's striking is that with the exception of the second and third item, these are basically challenges that transcend the ability of the U.S. to deal with. At least, they transcend the ability of a single U.S. administration. Number 1 has eluded any number of presidents. Number 4 is inevitable unless Walt believes the U.S. should wage an overt or covert effort at regime change - which I don't believe he advocates. Number 5 and Number 6 depend in large measure on Congress or the willingness of other major powers to go along.
More broadly, the tendency to treat foreign policy like domestic policy - where the president is supposed to boast a set of achievements at the four year mark - strikes me as unreasonable and actually encourages the kind of international activism that I've always assumed Walt was skeptical of. Worse, it obscures the complex nature of the issues and the reality that America only has a limited ability to influence events.
(AP Photos)
